Jamey Rodemeyer: Even After Suicide Bullies Say “We’re Glad You’re Dead”

Jamey Rodemeyer, the 14-year old Buffalo, NY area student bullied for his sexual orientation, cannot rest in peace. Nor is his family getting the peace or respect they deserve. Despite the fact that local police say they are investigating R0demeyer’s suicide to potentially prosecute the actions of classmates that bullied Rodemeyer to death, students are still harassing and bullying Rodemeyer’s family.

WATCH: In his It Gets Better video, Jamey Rodemeyer said he “came out for being bi and got so much support” from his friends.

At the Williamsville North High School Homecoming dance last weekend, Rodemeyer’s sister, Alyssa (image, above), was harassed and jeered, and, as she says in this video, her brother’s bullies yelled at the school dance, “We’re glad he’s dead,” a comment reminiscent of those found in Jamey Rodemeyer’s Formspring account, like,  “I wouldn’t care if you died. No one would. So just do it. It would make everyone WAY more happier!”

Via The Buffalo News:

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Timothy Rodemeyer, the father of Jamey and Alyssa, said of the suspension.

In other developments in the case, which has grabbed intense national attention:

• Alyssa revealed new details about the day Jamey killed himself and the events at the homecoming dance in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
• Someone recorded parts of the homecoming incident, according to Alyssa, but police do not yet have the video.
• Alyssa spoke to Amherst police detectives Thursday, and she and other students are scheduled to meet with district officials Monday.
• Williamsville Schools Superintendent Scott G. Martzloff has begun to publicly defend the district’s response to Jamey’s suicide; he will attend a meeting Monday of the Parent Teacher Student Association at Williamsville North.

“Let me be clear: We will not let the actions of any student threaten the emotional well-being of others,” Martzloff said in a video posted late Thursday on the district’s website that revealed the suspension.

The suspension is the first disciplinary action taken since Jamey’s Sept. 18 suicide.

Jamey was subjected to relentless bullying at Heim Middle School, harassment he documented in online forums where cyberbullies attacked him.

One student — out of several — has been suspended for the school dance attack, but there are several others that reportedly have not been questioned or face any disciplinary or legal action. How this is possible, weeks after Rodemeyer’s tragic suicide, is unimaginable. Moreover, it is a lesson to bullies in Williamsville and across the nation that you can get away with these heinous inhumane acts.

The Williamsville Superintentent of Schools released this video message, almost five minutes long, that serves not as a warning to bullies, but as a feel-good PR stunt to calm outsiders and parents. Additionally, in the video below, initially Superintendent Scott Martzloff had declined to publicly share with students steps being taken to warn of disciplinary actions that could be or are being taken, in order to to protect the perpetrators.

Penn Bullock at Towleroad today posits,

And a broader question: when is anti-gay bullying going to show up on the Republican Party’s radar? Hundreds, maybe thousands of LGBT schoolchildren face daily savagery straight out of Lord of the Flies – while the conservative establishment remains dead-silent. Bachmann, for instance, has failed to sign a petition against homophobic bullying, even as the Justice Department targets the school district in her congressional zone for laxity on bullying.

The silence isn’t uniform. In Albany, State Sen. Stephen M. Saland, a Republican, is sponsoring an anti-bullying bill. But, by and large, the party’s national leadership has nothing to say about the pervasive harassment of LGBT children. Why?

In a nation that has no problem putting elementary school children in handcuffs for fighting, surely doing the same for acts of bullying and harassment leading to suicide should be equally punished?

In a nation that cheers the death penalty and the death of the uninsured,and jeers gay soldiers, why is it when LGBTQ children are attacked, the nation becomes warm and fuzzy — for their tormentors?

The Williamsville police and school district did far too little to protect Jamey Rodemeyer, and now they are doing far too little to protect his family, and to prosecute his tormentors.