The Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT) March 11, 2011
"Alexa Berman was a busy eighth-grader who loved dancing and poetry and had secured the lead role in the middle school play.
But as the year wore on, she grew increasingly despondent, her mother says, after a tight clique of girls began to shut her out, using social networking sites to deceive her. On Aug. 23, 2008, three days before she was to start high school, Alexa hung herself. She was 14.
Her mother, Debra Zegas Berman of Brookfield, said she did not grasp the depths of her daughter's pain, and neither did anyone else. 'She fooled her teachers, she fooled us,' Berman said.
Berman was one of dozens of people who came to the state Capitol complex Friday afternoon to speak out on a bill that seeks to strengthen the state's anti-bullying laws. The measure, proposed by the legislature's education committee, would require schools to intervene more quickly when students are harassed or threatened; it also would add cyberbullying to the list of prohibited activities. And it would mandate that schools appoint an anti-bullying specialist from its staff, establish a school safety committee and develop an anti-bullying curriculum." Read More
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