Student commits suicide after years of unchecked bullying at school

 ROME - He was only 14 years old, and he killed himself on the morning of Sep. 11, only a few hours before the start of the school year in the town of Santa Cosma e Damiano (Latina region).

 Now, with regards to the death of Paolo Mendico, the Cassino District Attorney is also investigating and have opened a case to investigate the suicide, ll Fatto Quotidiano reports.

 According to the boy’s parents and brother, the young man was a victim of bullying: a condition that the family declared that they had mentioned multiple times to the school and teachers. The investigators heard from the school principal and ordered the seizure of the boy’s phone and devices. According to some rumours, they also took the phones of some of the boy’s peers.

 In the last few hours, the brother, Ivan Roberto, wrote a letter to Giorgia Meloni to tell her of the bullying of which the young man was a victim. The Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditare is known to have organised two inspections: in the middle school that Mendico attended in the past, and in the high school where he should have started the new school year.

 “Our son was harassed,” declared his mother Simonetta La Marra to La Repubblica, “we have always mentioned everything to the school. But we remained unheard and ignored. He was a good student but recently he had said that he didn’t like school anymore. At elementary school the aggressions from his classmates arrived and the mockery from teachers, and in middle school bullying from teachers. Then came the approvals in his first year of the computer school Pacinotti. More bullying, and more suffering. I saw him cry so many times,” she said.

 “Paolo loved having his blonde hair very long. After the first four days of high school, they began to call him ‘Paoletta’, ‘wuss’, ‘Nino D’Angelo’. They waited for him in the bathroom. First it was one, then they became more and more. We turned immediately to the school, who assured us that they would help him. But everything only stopped after Paolo decided to cut off all his hair. The other phrase to make fun of him was ‘Little Prince’ because every morning my son did not leave the house if he had not showered first.”

 According to what his mother has declared, the first complaint happened in his fifth year of elementary school.

 “We turned to the police because a classmate had pointed a plastic screwdriver at our son and had said that he had to kill him. And the teacher had not intervened. We as parents were very present in our son’s school life and this angered us. For everything else we also submitted written and verbal complaints, but the school did nothing.”

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