Fifteen-year-old Amanda Todd posted a YouTube video last month that detailed her brushes with online and offline bullying, and this week she was found dead in her home in Canada as a result of a suspected suicide.
The chilling video shows the teen explaining, via a series of notes, how a picture of her breasts was disseminated online. A year later, she revealed, the person who posted the photo created a Facebook page.
"My boobs were his profile pic," Amanda wrote. "I can never get that photo back. It's out there forever."
She soon changed schools, but a sexual encounter with a boy at her old school caused his girlfriend to confront Amanda. "A guy then yelled, 'just punch her already,' so she did," she wrote. "Kids filmed it.
" … I wanted to die so bad."
Her dad found her in a ditch. She went home and drank bleach, but was taken to the hospital and lived. She returned home to find Facebook messages taunting her. She moved again and thought things were improving.
But then, the cyberbullying kicked in again, she recalled: "6 months has gone by. People are posting pics of bleach, Clorox and ditches. Tagging me. … They said, 'She should try a different bleach. I hope she dies this time and isn't so stupid.' They said, 'I hope she sees this and kills herself.'"
Amanda, a 10th-grade student, was found dead Oct. 10 in her Port Coquitlam, Canada, home. Police aren't releasing the cause of death yet, but the coroner's office says preliminary signs point to suicide.
The teen's mom, Carol Todd, told The Vancouver Sun in a message on Twitter she thinks the video "should be shared and used as an anti-bullying tool. That is what my daughter would have wanted."
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