Austin Rodriguez, a gay teen at Wellsville High School in Ohio who came out of the closet 6-8 months ago and immediately faced bullying from fellow students, attempted to take his own life last Friday by swallowing pills, and remains on a ventilator in the hospital, WFMJ reports:
She says at first her son appeared happy and relieved [after coming out], and then she thought he may have been going through a depression and asked him about it several times, but he never really explained the extent of what he was going through…
…From what his mother has learned, the bullying was not only cruel, but enough to make a teenager who was already introverted, feel like an outcast. “It was electronic, it was face to face bullying, they were hiding his gym clothes because they didn't want him changing in the locker room with them. They didn't want him to eat by them, or in the school lunchroom,” Rodriguez said.
The Wellsville mother prays that what happened to her son will spark open discussions on the issue of bullying in school. She warns parents that if you feel there's something going on with your child, trust those instincts and be aggressive in getting to the bottom of it.
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