A Troubled Victim Clouds the Picture
Phoebe Prince was a girl with a complex and emotionally troubled past, according to Emily Bazelon, a Senior Research Scholar in Law and Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School. She writes in her Slate.com article, “What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?” of July 20th of 2010, “My investigation into the events that gave rise to Phoebe's death, based on extensive interviews and review of law enforcement records, reveals the uncomfortable fact that Phoebe helped set in motion the conflicts with other students that ended in them turning on her. Her death was tragic, and she shouldn't have been bullied. But she was deeply troubled long before she ever met the six defendants. And her own behavior made other students understandably upset.” Ms. Bazelon, according to her bio on the Yale website, “is a senior editor at Slate.com and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine.” Bazelon also discusses her choice to reveal the facts of Phoebe's past. According to Blazon, while admittedly difficult for Phoebe’s family, the decision was precipitated by the actions of Elizabeth Scheibel, the District Attorney bringing the case against the teens. She writes, “[W]hen the D.A. charged kids with causing Phoebe's death and threatened them with prison, she invited an inquiry into other potential causes.”
A District Attorney On a Mission?
Bazelon goes on to reveal that district attorney Scheibel’s past could suggest a personal connection to this case, not only as a South Hadley High School alumnus, but as a person who, as a child, performed schoolyard vigilante justice against a bully. She writes in part two of her slate.com series:
At the top of Scheibel's National District Attorney's Association Web profile (The link to this site came up “cannot be found” when I tried it out) is this anecdote:
A lawyer friend who has known her since kindergarten remembered how she beat up a bully who was picking on her younger brother, commenting, “Even in her youth she wasn't afraid to hold her position and pursue justice as she saw it.”
Bazelon reports on other instances of Scheibel's zealous prosecution of teens from South Hadley, focusing on a sexual assault/intimidation case against a seventeen-year-old named Max. The effect of exposing his court proceedings, in the piece, is to give the reader an emotional preview of the pending cases in the bullying of Phoebe Prince.
If pictures speak a thousand words, what do the players in this contest of legal minds look like?
Emily Bazelon 
Elizabeth ScheibelAnd what is the role of beauty in Phoebe’s suicide, and in her tragedy capturing the national heart?
As contrasted with the lesser attention given to eleven-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, a fifth grader who committed suicide, also by hanging hismself after suffering homophobic taunts? Bazelon suggests that it does make a difference as, it certainly seems, do race and ethnicity 
Is Immaturity a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card?
In the course of detailing the drama of Max's sexual harassment hearing, Bazelon notes the young man’s connection to Sean, one of the six accused of bullying Phoebe, mentioning Sean’s name in his Facebook posting regarding the impact on a person’s future of this one event. Max later explains this, saying, in part, according to Bazelon’s reporting on a recollection of one of Max's friends, “I did something I shouldn't have done. It wasn't like I planned it. I didn't think.”
I believe that this quote is pivotal to Bazelon’s argument for leniency in the pending cases. It begs a generalized acceptance of the teen immaturity, which she is offering throughout the piece in order to frame their actions as defensible enough to warrant milder consequences for gross misdeeds—which, in fact, is the basis of juvenile versus adult prosecution in the state and federal systems of justice in America. West's Encyclopedia of American Law explains that “In the law a juvenile is defined as a person who is not old enough to be held responsible for criminal acts.” And, that the age generally varies between eighteen and sixteen with one state setting it at nineteen. However, the juvenile court may waive jurisdiction over teens (usually above thirteen years of age, according to West’s encyclopedia) that are accused of committing violent or other serious crimes.”
Refocusing on Scheibel, and her office’s crusade-like intensity, Bazelon records what she observes in Max’s hearing. “[Assistant District Attorney Janine] Simonian turned to Martin (the victim of homosexual based abuse) and his mother. I heard her tell them that if the case went to trial, she would take off the table her offer to drop the other two charges.” If convicted the consequences of this one crime would include his registration as a sex offender for at least ten years, possibly twenty. Bazelon reports this being objected to, by Max's lawyer, as a matter of excessive penalty, versus the emotion and rationale of the judge’s remarks that followed: “…Now I ask you… [Max], when you're 30, if you have a son, what would you want done if he was a victim of an act like this? An apology [There was a misplaced letter of apology sent by Max via a friend to the victim through the school principal.] doesn't give back what you took away.” Bazelon, here, gives clear voice to all of the arguments on the table.
And then, she records, his family’s pain as the judge denies request for probationary favors and Max is cuffed and taken away. “His sister gave a long keening moan.” Truly an artfully drawn window into suffering by the families of Phoebe's accused attackers.
Who Else to Blame?
When someone commits suicide, with or without contributory aggressor involvement, the natural response is to try to figure out who knew what and how or if it could have been prevented. The school’s failure to coordinate information between responsible parties regarding Phoebe’s fragile state of mind is a natural, and justifiable, target for blame. After all, the law mandates education and parents are not in control of those hours of their children’s lives, for the most part. So, when a district has ongoing bullying issues brought to its attention and a parent has duly made them aware of a student’s troubled emotional history there is a specific responsibility, which, in South Hadley, unfortunately, had yet to be put into coherent practice or under proper oversight to maximize the potential for heading off tragedy.
Bazelon cites experts in the fields of child psychology and bullying prevention who point out that there is a failure to perceive children over twelve as still needing (and wanting, I would argue, even if outwardly resistant) adult assistance with navigation of the social quicksand that school can become. Especially profound is the devastation done in cyber space, they point out, with the audience and the permanent ramifications to self-esteem, current and future reputation, and the anonymity of the attackers breaking down normal checks against gross misbehavior.This moment is so important; the urgency of the issues Bazelon is reporting rightly demands public attention.
What’s to be Done?
First, Bazelon emphasizes that here are six more lives to consider saving. She suggests that the losses in reputation, school attendance privileges, and previously bright futures that they have suffered, “Maybe that is already enough.” She ends the piece.
An earlier link in Bazelon’s article (guidance) takes the reader to Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Bullying Prevention and Intervention Resources, well almost, a redirect gets you there. From the school resource page a link to Facebook’s “Stop Bullying: Speak Up app [which]… As part of… [that media] initiative, CNN's Anderson Cooper, will host a town hall on bullying at 8 p.m. ET, Sunday Oct. 9 on CNN., broadcasting from Rutgers University.
