I’m a wife, mother, and parent to two beautiful, healthy, and respectful children. My husband and I have raised our kids to be kind, loving, and most of all, to be their own person. To stand up for what they believe in, even if they stand alone. We’ve taught them since they were little if ever they are influenced in their decision-making by peer pressure, to take a brief moment and imagine their parents, grandparents, or anyone else they respect and love were watching them, like on television. Then to ask themselves, “Would I make this decision if my loved-ones were looking?” We also stressed whatever their decision might be, it should never involve hurting anyone, in any way, unless unavoidable, as in self-defense.

I would hope most parents present their children with the same values, and give them similar decision-making tools, as we have with ours. And I especially hope, they teach their kids that there are consequences to every action. I believe it is okay, and sometimes necessary, to tell our kids, “No.”

Unfortunately, not all families, or adults, teach their children respect, responsibility, and accountability. Not even at a school where we, as parents, entrust the adults in-charge to protect our children.

On April 23, 2017, our family was rocked to our core. That was when we found out our 15-year-old daughter, a sophomore at San Ramon Valley High School, was singled-out and targeted as the victim in a six-month long campaign of criminal cyber-bullying. We learned that in November of 2016, a varsity athlete, in the junior class, who is not my daughter’s friend, (merely an acquaintance and fellow teammate), took her cellular phone into the restroom where our daughter was going to the bathroom. This upperclassman then deliberately and secretly placed her cellular phone underneath the partition of the locked bathroom stall our daughter was using, and video-recorded her removing her shorts, sitting on the toilet, and using the bathroom.

The perpetrator then shared the video with other students. We didn’t know any of this until six-months later, after the perpetrator came to our home with several friends in the middle of the night, vandalized our property, and then uploaded the secret bathroom video to social media where she bragged about the act in vulgar terms. Most of the individuals she shared the video with were members of San Ramon Valley High School’s varsity athletic teams. There’s no way to know for sure how many students viewed the video. It is a fact, however, that several-dozen of them ‘Liked’ the video before it was taken down.

For those who may not know, spying on someone in a changing or bathroom is a crime. Video-recording someone using a changing room is a crime. Sharing that video with others is another crime. And uploading the video to a social media platform on the internet to be viewed by hundreds of people is yet another crime. The perpetrator made it clear what her intent was when she uploaded the video. She wrote it was to ‘hit’ our daughter. Her crimes were not committed out of a sick sense-of-humor, or as a prank, or to garner harmless laughs. The acts were done deliberately to embarrass, humiliate, bully, and harm our daughter.

I cannot begin to convey the impact this has had on our daughter. Until this event, she was a positive, outgoing, well-adjusted student who was thriving both emotionally and academically. Her grades, and outlook, as well as her physical health, have suffered dramatically since the incident. Finding out that countless of your fellow high-school students have seen you use the toilet on the internet, over a 6-month period without your knowledge, can have that effect. Teens across the nation have run away, turned to drugs or alcohol to numb the pain, and even killed themselves, for far less bullying than our daughter suffered.

I will never forget how my daughter cried, on the morning of Sunday, April 23rd. While she was in our yard, helping her brother, father and I clean up several pounds of melted candy dumped on our lawn, a friend emailed her and disclosed she’d discovered the video. I have not seen my daughter cry like that since a toddler. I suppose some adults might shrug-off finding out a bootleg video of them using the toilet was circulating the internet. I can assure you from personal experience, teenaged girls do not.

The police were notified. The video was recovered from the perpetrator’s phone. She (at least partially) confessed. She was arrested. Her guilt is not in question.

Given the seriousness of the crimes, and the fact that they occurred on school grounds, in a school bathroom, during school-sanctioned athletic practice, our daughter expected the student who perpetrated these acts against her would be expelled from school and prohibited from participating in extra-curricular sports activities. Especially, since in addition to breaking the law, the offender clearly violated both the school’s disciplinary policies and the school’s Athletic Code-of-Conduct.

Our daughter was wrong.

Our daughter expected her criminal bully would be expelled from school and removed from participation in school sports because that would be the standard anywhere else. If an employee or patron at any office, restaurant, corporation, business, private entity, or government facility video-recorded someone using the toilet, and uploaded that video to the internet, the offender WOULD NO LONGER BE ALLOWED ACCESS TO THAT FACILTY! In no place I know of, except the San Ramon Valley High School, would someone who did these deliberate, criminal, acts be allowed to have continued access to the place they committed their crimes.

Instead, though a 5-day suspension is required to facilitate expulsion, the offender was issued only a 3-day suspension, and forced to miss a few sports practices. This punishment was issued the morning of the day after she was arrested, before the school’s investigation was even completed, and before the school district’s anti-bullying forms were even filled out. She was back to school the following Monday and playing in the championship game a week later. Our daughter still encounters her every day. Worse, the criminal cyber-bully is STILL IN POSSESSION OF HER CELL PHONE WHILE ON-CAMPUS.

We’re appalled at how the administration of the San Ramon Valley High School has handled this criminal cyber-bullying event. They have minimized the incident, tried to sweep it under the rug, and treated it as ‘girl drama’ between two quarreling teens instead of what actually occurred, textbook acts of criminal bullying with a clear victim and perpetrator. What’s more, by the inadequate manner they have handled the incident, that have failed to protect our daughter from future acts of reprisal from the bully or her friends, (remember, dozens of students ‘Liked’ the video). Worse, they have sent a terribly-wrong message to the entire school that there are no significant consequences for committing multiple crimes while bullying another student on campus.

Our daughter has turned to us, her parents, for answers. She wants to know why her criminal bully is still at school, and she has to suffer. She asks us, “What did I do to deserve this? Why are the school’s administrators protecting my bully over me? Is it because I’m a sophomore and she’s a junior? Is it because I’m Chinese-American, and my bully is Caucasian? Is it because my bully is the star-player on a varsity sports team? Is it because my bully just got awarded a sports scholarship to college? Is it because the championship game was only a week after she was arrested, and they wanted her to play? Is it because my bully’s mom is the Northern California Director for the sport she plays? Why are they protecting her so much?”

We don’t have the answers for our daughter. What we do know, as any reasonable person would know, is if the school janitor had used a cell phone to video-record a student using the toilet, and uploaded it onto the internet, (instead of a 17-year-old-female student), in addition to being arrested and charged with crimes, that adult janitor WOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED ON CAMPUS AGAIN. EVER. Not only to prevent the victim from being re-victimized every time she came face-to-face with her perpetrator each day, and to protect others from the potential of repeated criminal behavior, but because the school couldn’t sustain the civil liability if they allowed the offender to remain. Why our daughter is afforded a lower level of protection on -campus because her criminal bully offender is a fellow student a few months shy of 18 years-old is baffling to us.

There are four other, excellent, high schools within the school district. If the crimes our daughter’s bully committed against her don’t warrant expulsion from the school, what does?

Every day we turn on the news or internet, we are informed of yet another of our precious children who has taken their life because of bullying. What more does it take for educational administrators and school district officials to understand that the solution starts with them. Not within the dry pages of their ‘Zero-Tolerance Anti-Bully Policies,’ but with their ACTIONS.

It’s an amazingly simple formula. What you don’t condemn, you condone.

If the schools won’t protect our kids, we must not remain silent. We, as parents, must step up, be our kids’ advocates, protect them, help them, support them, and most of all, fight for them, even if we’re standing alone in the fight. It’s the right thing to do. As it stands now, the San Ramon Valley High School administration is sending a profound message to the student body that the needs of the perpetrators of criminal bullying are far more important than the well-being and safety of their victims.

Please Convey to your child if he or she is a victim on campus, they didn’t do anything wrong. Nobody deserves to be bullied. No child should be deliberately violated, humiliated, and embarrassed at school.

Like any cancer or virus, bullies can only operate in an environment where there is fuel to feed them. Clearly our daughter’s bully felt comfortable sharing the illegal video she’d obtained of our daughter with her teammates on her varsity high school sports team, for months, without fear of disclosure or repercussion. That alone should give the administration at the San Ramon Valley High School pause to consider how effectively their current anti-bully policies are being integrated within the culture of their athletic program. Not so much as one team captain, or varsity player, supposedly school leaders, came forward to a mentor, coach, or teacher to report what they had seen on the internet.

Instead, they ‘Liked’ it.

That is exactly what perpetrators, predators, and bullies want. In our case, the perpetrator and the family are operating just fine, unlike our daughter. The bully hasn’t lost any privileges, is still playing varsity sports, her college-scholarship is secure, and she has been allowed back on-campus where she committed her crimes.

I’m betting the bully’s still got her cell phone while at school…

I presume the perpetrator and her family don’t want her transferred to another school, just like my daughter didn’t ask to have a video of her pulling down her shorts and using the toilet shared on the internet. I want to let the perpetrator and her family know the same thing I want the administration of the San Ramon Valley High School to know - it’s time for you to do the right thing. You’ve done enough damage to our family.

Contact the San Ramon Valley Unified School Board here…

http://www.srvusd.net/district/board_contact

…and ask them why a criminal bully remain on-campus, playing varsity sports? Our family would love to know the answer…

To read about how a neighboring school district dealt with a recent act of cyber-bullying involving an illegally-obtained video, see below:

Read about the case of Concord High School Rocked By Nude Video Scandal, http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/…/concord-high-school-roc…/ One has to ask, “Why does a student have less protection than an administrator?”