Adriana Kuch is said to have been bullied at the New Jersey high school that she attended before committing suicide, and a former student there is sharing her own similarly “humiliating” experience there.
Speaking of her time at Central Regional High School in Berkeley Township, student Olivia O’Dea told CBS2 last week, “I went through physical assault in the same school when I was a freshman, and the humiliation, the bullying.”
Olivia informed the publication that she was assaulted by two other kids at school in January 2022, and a video of the incident was posted online. Olivia’s family has filed a lawsuit against the district over her ordeal.
Her experience is uncannily similar to that of Adriana, 14, who committed suicide on February 3, two days after being pummelling in a school hallway and video of the altercation going viral online. Adriana was 14 years old at the time.
Adriana’s passing has caused significant outrage over the district’s unwillingness to address the pervasive bullying problem at the school.
Superintendent Triantafillos Parlapanides abruptly resigned over the weekend in response to criticism he had received from Adriana’s family and from student demonstrations the previous week.
The four girls accused of attacking Adriana were also charged with different felonies, including aggravated assault, last week after initially escaping punishment.
“It’s a travesty that [the bullying is] continuing,” Olivia’s mother, Rachael O’Dea, told NJ Advance Media of Adriana’s death.
O’Dea claims that CRHS did not call authorities when her own daughter was assaulted. She subsequently removed Olivia from the school, and filed a lawsuit on her behalf against the Central Regional School District in October 2022.
“There’s no accountability [from the school], there’s no changes being made. This isn’t something new to them,” she lamented.
According to NJ Advance Media, the family’s legal lawsuit claims that Olivia received a text threat from another student before she was attacked in the corridor.
She apparently spoke with a teacher, a guidance counsellor, and officials about the alarming messages, but nothing was done.
“This goes on in other districts. But in this particular school, there’s a real pattern of events like this, and this should never have happened with this young girl,” the O’Deas’ lawyer, Jonathan Ettman, told the outlet.
Ettman’s description of CRHS dovetails accurately with online allegations that emerged in the wake of Adriana’s suicide that administrators’ complacency exacerbated the school’s serious bullying problem.
“As a teacher there and a parent there who dealt with intense bullying, we would often plead with administration to get things under control, and only one of them ever tried,” former teacher Daniel Keiser wrote in a Facebook post.
“They were notorious for brushing things under the carpet.”
Ettman continued by saying that the prevalence of social media adds a fresh, unsettling component to the bully culture.
“Today, everything is recorded on video and uploaded to the internet. Bullying now has a different face, he said CBS.
The zero-tolerance bullying policy at the high school will apparently be strengthened by Berkeley Township officials, but Adriana’s father, Michael, has already declared that he won’t be pleased until the entire system is modernised.
