By Aquinnah Flores
The story of Amanda Todd is one that took the world by storm in 2012. She became a
household name just six years ago due to the tragic end to her life. Amanda was only 15 years old when she took her own life on Wednesday, the 10th of October, 2012. Amanda posted a video to her youtube detailing the events that led up to her suicide, just over a month before she took her own life. Holding up flashcards that told the story of her cyber-bullying.
During the video, Amanda wrote that when she was in grade 7,she used video chat to
meet new people over the Internet and got praise on her looks. A stranger convinced her to
show her breasts on camera, after attempting to convince her to do so for a year. He later
blackmailed her by threatening to give the photo to her friends unless she gave him a "show".Amanda wrote that during the 2010 Christmas break, police informed her that the photo was on the Internet. She wrote that she experienced anxiety, depression, and panic disorder due to having been sexually exploited online and cyberbullied. Her family moved to a new home, where Amanda later said she began using alcohol and drugs.
A year later, Amanda’s tormenter reappeared, creating a Facebook profile that used her
topless photo as its profile image and messaged classmates at her new school. Again Amanda was teased, eventually changing schools for a second time. She wrote that she began chatting to "an old guy friend" who contacted her. The friend invited Todd to his house, while his girlfriend was on holiday. The next week, the boy's girlfriend and a group of 15 others confronted Amanda at school, shouting insults, with the boy's girlfriend punching her multiple times. Amanda fell to the ground, then lay in a ditch, where her father later found her. After the attack, Amanda attempted suicide by drinking bleach, but survived after being rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. "It killed me inside and I thought I was gonna actually die", Amanda said in her video.
After returning home, Amanda discovered abusive messages about her suicide attempt
posted to Facebook. In March 2012, her family moved to another city to start fresh, but Amanda was unable to escape the past. According to her mother, "Every time she moved schools he would go undercover and become a Facebook friend. What the guy did was he went online to the kids who went to her new school and said that he was going to be a new student — that he was starting school the following week and that he wanted some friends and could they friend him on Facebook. He eventually gathered people's names and sent Todd's video to her new school", including students, teachers and parents. Six months later, more messages and abuse were still being posted to social media sites. With Amanda’s mental state worsening, she overdosed and was hospitalized for two days.
Todd was taunted by other students at her school for her low grades, a consequence of
a language-based learning disability, and for the time she spent in the hospital to treat her
severe depression. "It didn't really help that after she got out of the hospital recently some kids started calling her 'psycho' and saying she had been in the crazy hospital," her mother said."She went to the hospital, she had therapy, she had counseling, she was on a good track. On the day she gets out, that happens. I shake my head and I think, 'Are kids really that nasty, do they really not think, what if it was them?'”
On October 10, 2012, at about 6:00 PM, Todd was found hanging at her home.
Amanda’s story is one of many surrounding young kids being bullied and committing suicide. It is also one of many surrounding pedophiles on the internet and cyberbullying. Suicide is the ninth leading cause of death in Canada among the general public. It’s the second leading cause of death in people 15-24 years old in Canada. It is becoming more and more of an epidemic each day.
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