Unfortunately the story of Phoebe Prince’s suicide is not a bad movie. We cannot rerun the script, deciding to make the Mean Girls into Good Girls, finding heart and compassion in their treatment of Phoebe. Indeed, the South Hadley High girls were and remain Mean Girls, hounding a 15-year-old girl to death.

Nine students have been charged with crimes ranging from stalking to statutory rape in the Mid-Jan 2010 suicide death of South Hadley, Mass teenager Phoebe Prince.

No school officials have been charged, although Northweatern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel said that school officials ignored pleas for help from ‘at least two school staff members’ about the bullying.

Four students and two faculty members tried to intervene in the tragic situation, one that spilled into Facebook and other digital media.

“Phoebe’s death on Jan. 14 followed a torturous day for her, in which she was subjected to verbal harassment and threatened physical abuse,” Scheibel said.

The young 15-year-old woman, who only recently emigrated to the US from Ireland, went home and hanged herself.

This sad story isn’t new in American history, but the consequences are amplified in today’s digital culture.

The sad, disgusting story of human behavior involves Phoebe’s brief, romantic fling with a football star Sean Mulveyhill, then being called the ‘slut girl’ when Mulveyhill was finished with Phoebe. Mr Mulveyhil has been charged with statutory rape.

The Mean Girls at South Hadley went into action, not appreciating the fact that ‘new girl’ Phoebe had hooked up with a football star. Called the Mean Girls on Facebook, Kayla Narey, 17, Ashley Longe, 16, also Mean Girls Flannery Mullins, 16, and Sharon Chanon Velazquez, 16, and their friend, Austin Renaud, 18 who had some fun with Phoebe, relentlessly hunted her.

The main charge against the Mean Girls is that they prevented Phoebe from physically going to school.

We won’t say that the Mean Girls operated like animals, because so many animals exhibit socially superior behavior than they did.

From our first reading of this story, we’ve likened the Hadley High crew to the Taliban. Their parents can talk about all the ‘good values’ these kids possess, but outsiders like us don’t see it that way. In a politically correct American culture that has an excuse for every offence committed, we hold the community, school, parents and the teens themselves responsible.

Most concernful is trying to understand how many students live with this reality in America’s schools. From all we know about today’s teen culture, Phoebe’s story may be among the worst, but she’s not alone in her suffering.

Perhaps it’s time to call the Vatican and have them send an exorcist to the scene of the crime. The parents of the charged South Hadley kids insist that good Catholic values live in their families and somehow Phoebe “asked for it’. Right on, mom. Anne

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