Bullying caused boy’s suicide, high court rules
Posted by Matt Dioguardi on March 30th, 2007
I want to sort of think aloud about an article that appeared in the Japan Times, entitled Bullying caused boy’s suicide, high court rules
Bullying caused boy’s suicide, high court rules
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By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
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The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday expanded a lower court ruling and ordered Tochigi Prefecture and the city of Kanuma to pay a combined 8.6 million yen in compensation to the parents of a 15-year-old boy who committed suicide after being bullied at school.
That’s the equivalent of about $73,000.
It is the first time a court has acknowledged that depression caused by bullying resulted in suicide, according to the lawyers for Katsuji and Haruyo Usui.
The Utsunomiya District Court ruled in September 2005 that Takehito Usui was bullied at school and ordered Kanuma’s board of education, Tochigi Prefecture and the victim’s classmates to pay a combined 2.4 million yen in compensation.
So the lower court stated that there should be compensation for the bullying. They ordered compensation by the school district *and* the victim’s classmates because of the bullying. The amount was about $20,000.
But the district court did not agree that the bullying was the cause of the November 1999 suicide.
Why is it the courts job to determine why the boy committed suicide? Note, motivation is important in murder cases, because it helps establish blame, but we know who is to blame for the boy’s suicide in a literal sense. The boy is. Trying to look at various factors that influenced the boy’s decision and assign blame there is similar to saying criminals commit crimes because they were brought up poorly and are therefore not responsible.
The law isn’t suppose to work this way nor should it.
This prompted the parents to appeal.
The parents claimed the board of education and the prefecture could have prevented the suicide, which they say was directly caused by the bullying in class and had asked for 110 million yen from the two defendants for not doing their duty to protect their son.
I’m sorry, but the parents are simply wrong here. The bullying that took place at the school was wrong. There are not ifs, buts or ands about it, it was horrendously wrong. But to the extent that human beings are legally responsible for their own actions, it does not make sense to assign the blame for the suicide on anyone else but the boy.
Saying the bullying caused the suicide is saying something along these lines:
1. The boy was a machine, such that when certain things happened, suicide became inevitable. The people who set off this chain of events was the school board, therefore they are responsible.
-or-
2. Suicide was the only solution available to the boy for the problem of bullying. That is, when school boards fail to act against bullies, such as those involved here, students have no recourse but to take their own lives.
Presiding Judge Hiromu Emi said Usui’s suicide was caused by the bullying, and agreed the boy had been bullied in class and “the teachers did not provide the required protection for Takehito.” He said the boy was harassed for a long time, causing him to become depressed.
There is no known medical (physical) test for depression. It’s true that some people can take certain popular drugs and these drugs make some feel better. Prozac for example. If people wish to do this, then that seems fine to me. For some it might even be a good idea. However, just because a drug made someone feel better, can we really say they were diseased in the absence of any hard criteria?
Note, we have to be very clear here. The claim of depression is not being used in a passing way, they are claiming the boy had a (mental) disease. They are saying he had a disease and that this disease was caused by the school board. And they want the court to legally acknowledge this. But then why not say that the parents failed because they did not get the boy medicine for his disease?
The parents said they were satisfied that Wednesday’s verdict included the acknowledgment that the bullying was the direct cause of the suicide…
Sorry to be so coarse here, but the direct cause of the suicide was the decision of the boy to take his own life. To argue otherwise is to argue against the notion that humans are responsible for their own actions.
… but said they would appeal the case to the Supreme Court because the high court did not hold the board of education directly responsible for the suicide — only for the bullying — ruling there was insufficient evidence to support the claim.
“The court ruled that bullying caused the suicide but denied that the school was responsible for what happened on its property. It doesn’t make sense,” Katsuji Usui, 54, told reporters.
This just sounds confused to me. The bullying was responsible for the suicide, but the board of education was not responsible for the bullying? It should be just the opposite.
According to the court, Usui’s classmates began harassing him autumn 1998 when he was an eighth-grader at Kitainukai Junior High School. The other children physically attacked him, forced him to expose his genitals in the classroom and stole his belongings.
School is compulsory. You are legally obligated to go. So the boy was legally obligated to go to a place where he was forced to show his genitals and physically attacked. There should be criminal charges here. For the minors, I would suggest they be treated however the law treats minors. For the school officials involved, they should be arrested for negligence. But apparently none of this has happened.
Instead, we have the parents wanting to say the school board caused the death of the boy by not correcting his tormentors, who by tormenting the boy gave him a sort of terminal disease.
The problem is clearly that the law is lax, and the parents *correctly* feel justice has not been served. They are looking for some way to show the suffering brought upon their son by the bullying that took place, and have for various reason latched on to the idea that the suicide was caused by the school board in some scientific sense.
While causality might be easy to establish for a physical law of science, even attempting to establish the same for human behavior undermines the notion of human responsibility, which is necessary if the legal system is to work at all. Here I’m basically a student of Thomas Szasz.
He began refusing to go to school in November 1999 and was found hanged at his home on Nov. 26.
The suit was originally filed in July 2001 against Kanuma and Tochigi Prefecture and two of Usui’s classmates, who cannot be named because they are minors.
The two classmates and their parents reached an out-of-court settlement last July for 1.2 million yen each and an apology to Katsuji and Haruyo Usui for having bullied their son.
Kanuma and the prefecture have continued to fight the lawsuit.
The two boys should have been criminally charged, at least in so much as a minor can be criminally charged, or at the very minimum they should have been given a stern warning by the police the first time an incident like this arose.
What would have happened if all those involved had been adults and the incident had happened at a major Japanese company? Would there have been speedier intervention by the relevant authorities? Are children less important in some way?
April 18th, 2007 at 9:10 am
As a psychiatric specialist practitioner who worked with children in this field you have many misunderstandings reference suicide、depression and blame
The fact that bullying is mentioned in the case you talk about only draws more attention to bullying as a cause of mental illness and the consequences of ignoring it. His illness was just the same as being depressed because of overwork, being bullied at work or any other social situation which causes extreme mental stress in adults. He is no different. You are trying to make a link between murder and suicide and that’s why the victim is responsible. This is far too simplistic, disrespectful to the victims/families of suicide and white washes other peoples responsibility in this case. My guess is you have never actually met many people who have attempted suicide, self harmers, or murderers who are mentally ill.
“Why is it the courts job to determine why the boy committed suicide?”
It is the courts job to pass down judgments and set presidents which they would do if any work environment where a law was been broken. The school is a child’s work place and should be entitled to the same protection and rights as an adult would in his place of work for his health and safety. People ignore this issue and blame the victim who commits suicide in an attempt to protect themselves or others from their responsibility.
You are not saying that this child’s suicide should not be investigated are you? Or because he was a child it was not important? Or do you wish to wash your hand of it and turn away because he TOOK HIS OWN LIFE and he is responsible and therefore nobody else had a part to play in this tragedy. The courts don’t agree and they have investigated and ruled that although he is responsible for hi actions others failed to take any real action to prevent his suicide.
You argue that the B0E education should have been held responsible and then you say they should not be held responsible because it was the boys own choice to take his own life. You don’t answer your own question. He and his family clearly did take action to stop the bullying and his depression by consulting with doctors, school teachers, headmasters, homeroom teacher and also the board of education So what is the schools responsibility in all of this? You seem to ignore the schools and BoE responsibility. Child mental health is very different from adults and has special needs. More so, since children are not assertive enough, have poor legal rights, are often ignored by adults. That’s why they need protection and people who can act as their advocates. These are not even discussed in your article. Many adults believe that bullying is not that bad, its character building, or it’s the victims fault. You say the Boy is responsible? In what way is a victim responsible? being weak? having some character flaw? being fat? blue eyes? Or even a foreigner? Or do you some how see bullying, as a natural part of school life and character building? The courts job is to decide whether the board of education has a responsibility to protect the child in its care. Like any business it has a duty of care to protect the people on its property not just the staff but also the children they are entrusted with. The court found they have a duty to protect. Not that they directly caused the child’s suicide or depression, but that they failed to act appropriately when they knew what was happening and indirectly let the situation continuing which lead to his illness and suicide when they could have prevented his suicide by intervening earlier. That’s why they were found responsible. Inaction is negligent too and an inaction is an action in itself. So they are responsible. If you believe that “human beings are always legally responsible for their own actions” Then so should the BoE and those who ignore it.
You fail to highlight the recent scandal that boards of educations have not been reporting suicides of children to the central government for several years. Again ignoring children’s mental health needs.How many other victims who have taken responsibility and asked for help but the school and BoE have not taken up their responsibility? Of course the bullies should also be held responsible for their actions. That’s a no brainer. But if you think the school has no fault in this suicide because the child committed suicide then would you argue that when an adult commits suicide because of bullying and depression at work, then company is not liable either? Companies are now being found guilty for people’s mental health as well as physical health and that includes medical staff. We think nothing of having our heart disease, diabetes or headaches, measured tested and treated, and having a safe working environment. Why not mental health? Preventing the environmental things which have an adverse affect on our mental health is just as important and a responsiblity. The brain is just as much an organ as any other. Nothing more, nothing less and is likely to suffer a whole number of illnesses too. The scars are just as real and cut just as deep with depression but you can’t just cut them out and this organ requires health and safety too.
Having a mental health disease such as depression affects the way we think, whether it is rational or irrational, affects perception of situations, the future, and hope. Hopeless being the biggest predictor of suicide and self harm. It is a vital sign to watch for when assessing someone for suicide risk. Like any disease it has physical symptoms too. Including early morning wakening, general malaise, lack of appetite, loss of motor skill and volition, weight loss, in children, bed wetting and hypochondria are also present as well as school refusal Clearly the child could see no hope as all the adults he turned to let him down. To use your own guru this boy did have a disease and he states a disease is a “biological abnormality that affects living tissues”.
All the recent research has shown that people with depression have low level of neurotransmitters serotonin. This is physical, is it not? There is a strong genetic link, again physical as well as the physical symptoms I outlined earlier. Scans are showing the physical complexities of mental illness. So it is now seen more as a biological illness which has a mental component.This ruling clearly shows our children are to be protected when children and parents bring bullying to the BoE/schools notice or they can be held responsible for there innaction.