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Mar. 29—COLUMBUS GROVE — Gabbi Wild checked her phone for the first time in days, but the messages confused her.
"It's not all true." "You didn't deserve this."
Wild didn't have access to her phone while she was hospitalized at the Kobacker Center for child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Toledo Medical Center, where she had been admitted for suicidal ideation. She hadn't seen the photos a classmate shared on TikTok, Wild recalled.
She logged onto TikTok and saw the photo, taken in a bathroom without her consent, juxtaposed next to a meme: "me vs the girl that keeps my name in her mouth."
Commenters called Wild a "snitch" and a "bop," slang for whore.
"Literally the only thing she does is tell the principal. Can't even handle it by herself," the post's author said in the comments, according to screenshots.
Wild shared her story with The Lima News to document the deadly stakes of online bullying and harassment.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found 53% of high school girls reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness — far higher than the 30% of high school boys who reported the same.
Twenty-seven percent of high school girls seriously contemplated suicide, and 12% attempted suicide, according to the report.
A judge's crusade falls on 'deaf ears'
Putnam County Juvenile Court Judge Michael Borer started his own "little crusade" talking to teenagers about bullying and the stakes of sending nude photos to one another — a problem which occasionally manifests in his courtroom — but his presentations have "mostly fallen on deaf ears," he said.
Bullying is a "nebulous and amorphous topic" with jurisdictional dilemmas, Borer said.
Law enforcement can only intervene when conduct rises to the level of criminal activity, and prosecutors may decline to pursue charges, Borer said.
The prevalence of smartphones and social media, which grant children and teens constant access to one another with limited parental oversight, exacerbates the problem by keeping kids connected online.
"When I was in high school, whatever issues happened at school were over at 3 p.m. ... We weren't inundated with Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram where all of the day's events could live on until the next morning, and never get a chance to dissipate," Borer said.
'It was me against all of them'
Jennifer Doyle started collecting screenshots of her daughter's interactions on social media when she noticed girls bullying Wild when she returned to Grove in fifth grade.
"FIGHT @RECESS EST COLUMBUS GROVE MIDDLE SCHOOL," reads a Snapchat message inviting students to come watch girls fight Wild at recess her fifth grade year.
"Gabbi is anorexic," another post reads.
Doyle showed the screenshots to administrators so they would intervene.
School officials offered to find Wild a bathroom buddy or let her spend classtime in the office away from her peers, but they didn't notify Doyle of any discipline against the other students, she recalled.
The bullying persisted and intensified: Classmates threatened to fight Wild and left notes urging her to kill herself, Wild said.
They mocked Wild on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and the class group chat for years and even created a website to taunt her, Wild and Doyle said.
Then rumors of a nude photo depicting Wild circulated toward the end of her seventh-grade year.
The school notified Doyle but didn't show her the photo, which Wild denied sending, Doyle and Wild recalled.
Doyle took Wild to the Kobacker Center weeks after school let out as her daughter became suicidal.
"I had no one at Grove," Wild recalled. "It was literally just me against all of them, so I felt really alone."
Challenge of limited jurisdiction
Columbus Grove Superintendent Nick Verhoff and Principal Brian Best declined to comment on specific allegations due to federal student privacy laws, which prohibit school employees from disclosing academic records, mental health information or disciplinary action taken against a student.
The district investigates all reports to determine if the alleged conduct constitutes harassment or bullying, they said.
Interviews are kept confidential, and administrators take immediate action to stop the behavior, relying on progressive discipline when necessary, they said.
The district's jurisdiction is limited to school hours and school functions, but incidents occurring outside school hours may carry into the school day, so administrators may make other accommodations such as moving a student's locker or changing their class schedule when discipline isn't an option, they said.
"Those are the challenges with the advent of social media, and students have phones at young ages," Verhoff said.
The school notifies counselors and parents when a student expresses suicidal ideation or threatens self-harm, and they will contact law enforcement about social media posts made outside the school day, they said.
Escalating tensions
Wild's stay at the hospital provided a temporary reprieve, but the comments continued in her absence.
She saw the TikTok videos a classmate had made about her soon after she was discharged, she said.
"A bunch of people who I thought were my friends were commenting and stuff," Wild recalled.
Wild tried to ignore it, she said, but the classmate kept making TikTok videos accusing Wild of "showing (her) body to all these boys for attention," Wild recalls.
Earlier, Doyle called Columbus Grove Police when her daughter started getting calls and messages from strange men. A classmate reportedly shared Wild's phone number on Snapchat inviting boys to call her for a "good time," Wild and Doyle recalled.
The officer answered a few calls and encouraged Wild to change her number but said there wasn't much he could do because the callers likely used spoofed numbers, Doyle said.
Doyle called police again when a classmate banged on her front door in a game of ding-dong-ditch. The boy reportedly threatened to shoot up the house, prompting an investigation by the Putnam County Sheriff's office, according to a police report of the incident.
Doyle notified Columbus Grove schools when another boy left a voice message threatening to rape Wild but didn't hear back about an investigation, she recalled.
'Help my kid before I end up losing my kid'
Best assured Doyle he would "put his foot down" last fall at the start of Wild's eighth-grade year, but Wild came home from school crying by her fourth day, Doyle recalled.
Doyle told Wild not to fight back and to go to the principal or guidance counselor instead, she said.
Wild attempted suicide twice while she attended Columbus Grove, Doyle said.
"I'm trying to keep my kid in a good state of mind from hurting herself ... from believing what all those girls were saying," Doyle said.
Teen girls are more likely to report being bullied in school or online and to attempt suicide than their male peers, though 80% of suicide deaths in Ohio were among boys, according to a recent report by the Girl Scouts of Ohio's Heartland, which surveyed girls' mental health trends.
Borer, the juvenile judge, tries to impress those consequences upon teenagers when he visits Putnam County schools to discourage students from sending nude photos or harassing peers online.
"Who among us would be strong enough to withstand that kind of negative attention without having an impact?" he said.
Doyle pleaded with Grove administrators to intervene, as Wild continued to express suicidal thoughts: "Help me help my kid before I end up losing her," Doyle said.
She removed Wild from Columbus Grove in January to homeschool her for the remainder of the year, disappointed in the school's response and worried for her daughter's safety.
"She told me if I (Wild) go back to school, 'I'm going to kill myself,'" Doyle said.
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