A tragedy.
What bothers me the least is that the school recommended he go to different school the next year, that in itself may sometimes be a help. What bothers me is how much these teachers and administration contributed to making this boy become despondent, afraid and a poor student. This is very disturbing.
This sad boy having to die to bring this sorrow to a greater spotlight. And that is bullying anywhere, not just Catholic schools. Bullying via face to face or through social networking is a great failure on this nation. Educators, government, the public, whoever it is to blame needs to address this universal problem now and do something more about it.
I wish the article would have commented more on what this boy’s mother did in confronting school officials? Or was she mostly in the dark?
This is what I found:
nstead of helping, administrators at a Brooklyn Catholic school sicced child-welfare investigators on the family of a 13-year-old boy — who then killed himself after complaining that classmates bullied him, his distraught parents said.
Danny Fitzpatrick’s family charges that sending the Administration for Children’s Services to their home was the wrong call by officials at Holy Angels Catholic Academy.
Instead, they said, the school should have stopped the bullying that led Danny to hang himself with a belt in the family’s attic. His older sister found him dead late Thursday.
“They called ACS on us,” in November 2015, mom Maureen said of administrators at the Bay Ridge school, fighting back tears as she sat at a kitchen table covered with family photos.
Danny told us they [administrators] were asking questions: ‘Do Mom and Dad drink? Do they feed you? Do they have clothes in the house?’ ” the mom said.
“Next thing you know, 7:30 at night, I have an ACS officer at my door, and my son told him, ‘I just want a friend.’”
The parents agreed to drug testing and to a thorough investigation, which ultimately turned up nothing, they said.
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Daniel Fitzpatrick, 13Photo: G.N. Miller
When the parents met with Principal Rosemarie McGoldrick, they were told that the bullying was just a phase and would pass.
Parents of bullied kid who killed himself say school did nothing
and other stuff:
Daniel Fitzpatrick Suicide: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
From the New York Post:
“They called ACS on us,” in November 2015, mom Maureen said of administrators at the Bay Ridge school, fighting back tears as she sat at a kitchen table covered with family photos.
“Danny told us they [administrators] were asking questions: ‘Do Mom and Dad drink? Do they feed you? Do they have clothes in the house?’ ” the mom said.
“Next thing you know, 7:30 at night, I have an ACS officer at my door, and my son told him, ‘I just want a friend.’”
The parents agreed to drug testing and to a thorough investigation, which ultimately turned up nothing, they said.
Modal Trigger
Daniel Fitzpatrick, 13Photo: G.N. Miller
When the parents met with Principal Rosemarie McGoldrick, they were told that the bullying was just a phase and would pass.
The outraged parents arranged for him to start at another school in the fall, but the bullying continued, they said.
The school maintained that they “did everything in their power” to help Danny and his complaints about bullying did not fall on deaf ears.
“Conflicts with other students were never ignored,” Holy Angels Academy said in a statement.
“The school provided counseling for Daniel, suspended students accused of bullying him, and met with those students parents.”
They also said that Danny attended three counseling sessions until his parents decided to discontinue the service.
The parents claimed that this past spring, four or five boys from the school ganged up on him on school grounds in a fight that left Danny with a fractured pinkie.
Instead of coming to Danny’s aid, administrators put all the boys in a room to ask what happened.
“How do you conduct an interview with the victim and his attacker in the same room?” the mom asked.
“If he said what happened, it would come back to him tenfold.”
By then, Danny trusted no one.
“Not the teachers, not nobody,” said the mom. “He didn’t want to report anything or [have] us writing letters. Nothing.”
“I’ll never have my baby back,” mom sobbed, describing her son as humiliated and shunned.
ACS, McGoldrick and the Diocese of Brooklyn did not return requests for comment Saturday.
A wake for Danny will be held Monday and Tuesday at Harmon Funeral Home on Staten Island. A funeral Mass will be said Wednesday at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Staten Island.
“Monsters,” the boy’s anguished dad, Daniel, called his son’s young tormentors in a Facebook video posted Saturday.
“My son didn’t have a violent bone in his body. He had a heart of gold.”
