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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. We hope everyone's had a good week this week. We got so many new followers on our social media. So hello everyone, if you're new, if you're a continued listener. We also had so many people share this week. So thank you so much to everyone who shared it. It's amazing.
It's been super fun. It really has been. Yeah. We also got sent something in our PO box. It was a customized vinyl decal. We want to put it on the back of our car. It said murder with my husband podcast. She loves it and he hates it. It was so cute. It was from at Haley Conrad designs on Instagram. So thank you Haley so much. It was seriously so fun to get that in the mail. I was freaking out.
Okay, should we just jump right into the story? Yeah, let's do it. Our case sources today are BullyingStatistics.org, Legacy.com, CNN.com, WLRN.org, USAToday.com, NewYorkTimes.com, and CBSNews.com.
Cyberbullying is a new form of bullying that we see only getting bigger every single year. I definitely saw cyberbullying during my time in high school. There was actually this thing when I was in middle school called Ask.fm. Did you have that? No, I've never heard of that. It's like this thing where you have a profile and anyone can anonymously post a question or a comment on your page and vice versa, like you could do it to someone else. And
And you get to choose to reply or not, but it's all anonymous. So I never had one, like I said, but I remember reading people's and wondering why they would ever put themselves out there to get like bashed on like that because people would just bully each other because it was all anonymous. Was a lot of it though because people wanted to be able to tell people like, oh, you're hot or something like that? No, not really. Like I didn't at least.
From my school, it wasn't like that. It was like, why'd you hook up with this girl's boyfriend? We all know you did it. Stuff like that. Yeah, just drama. It was all just people attacking people. I never got one because I was like, I don't want to do that. Here are some actually statistics about cyberbullying that I found on bullyingstatistics.org.
Over half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online and about the same number have engaged in cyberbullying. More than one in three young people have experienced cyber threats online. Over 25% of adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cell phones or the internet. Well over half of young people do not tell their parents when cyberbullying occurs.
Over 80% of teens use a cell phone regularly, making it the most popular form of technology and a common medium for cyberbullying. About half of young people have experienced some form of cyberbullying and 10 to 20% experience it regularly. Wow, that's a lot. So...
Our story takes place between 2012 and 2013, just kind of like, I think it's December 2012 to February 2013. Okay. And this is the story of Rebecca Sedwick. Okay.
Rebecca Ann Sedwick, I think she went by Becca, but all of the sources referred to as Rebecca, so I'll call her Rebecca, was born October 19th, 2000 in Sibring, Florida. 2000. That's so weird to hear. I know, right? 2000 doesn't even seem that long ago, but it was like 20 years ago. It was long. Yeah.
Her family and her eventually moved to Lakeland, Florida. When Rebecca turned 12 years old and was finally at that awkward middle school phase, things became extremely hard for her.
Rebecca broke up with a boy and that is ultimately when the trouble at school began. Rebecca began getting bullied. The sources aren't clear, but apparently a girl went on a date with one of Rebecca's ex-boyfriends, that boy she broke up with. And then the girl who like went on a date with him started attacking her online and in person.
What social media platforms were they using to... Instagram, Facebook, because this is 2012. Oh, okay. Sorry. I got confused because you said born in 2000. Oh, yeah. Okay, so 2012. Yeah. So she's in middle school. And yeah, it's 2012, 2013. Yeah, that makes sense. So after this, you know, the boy, she breaks up with him and all the bullying begins. Rebecca actually starts cutting her wrists and...
In December. And when her mother noticed. She sent Rebecca to be hospitalized for three days. So she was like something's going on. So she got admitted into a hospital for three days. That came along with counseling and everything. She gets out of the hospital. And is sent back to school. Where the bullying got worse.
Oh, man. Rebecca's mother complained to the school at this point about the bullying, but nothing was really done. I think they tried to like separate the girls schedules or whatever. But we all know that doesn't really stop anyone from talking or being rude. And so when nothing got fixed at school, Rebecca's mom just pulled her out of school and homeschooled her for the rest of the year. She also took her phone and deleted all of her social media apps because a lot of it was happening online as well.
As the year rounded up, Rebecca actually started to get better. Like, her mom noticed that she wasn't as sad all the time and didn't look like she had been harming herself. So for the new school year, Rebecca decided to move to a brand new school, get a brand new start, and things really did seem to be getting better. She was, like, going to try out for the cheer team, the choir. She had a whole bunch of plans. But...
Oh, go ahead. I don't know enough about, I guess, the whole logistics or legality behind all this cyberbullying stuff, but you would think if...
You knew your kid was cyberbullying someone, you would tell them to stop. You would think that if you knew your kid was cyberbullying or if the school knew they were cyberbullying, they would try to put a stop to it. And maybe they do. But I don't know. It just kind of sucks that it kept going on. Yeah. So, I mean, this is a little bit younger. This is middle school. So I do think they would be contacting parents. Mm-hmm.
But I think in high school, at least like from my experiences there, I don't think they contacted parents for bullying issues. They just pulled the two people in. If you wanted to get your own parent involved, you could. But they didn't like call parents and be like, oh, this is happening.
even if a parent called on another kid like her mom did they would just pull a kid in and say stop doing this I don't think they would call his parents but maybe his or her parents but maybe they should because I feel like cyber bullying now I mean it's it's the new wave of bullying it's bad I don't know how else to say it but it's it's a
It's a big issue. And it's worse because you get to hide behind a screen. And there's so many social media apps. You used to take guts to have to say that to someone's face, you know? But yeah, no, it's sad. Yeah, I get nervous. Like...
I mean, I was on, I had social media in high school, but it was still fairly new. Not every single person I knew had a smartphone. And so it scares me thinking of raising my own kids or the kids nowadays, how hard that is to grow up in that atmosphere where everyone is on social media. About the parent thing, I mean, it also is pretty common for parents to think that their own kids do no wrong. Like you...
I mean, we see it in some of the murder cases. The parents just can't comprehend the fact that their kid would do it. So I think that can also be on a smaller scale related to bullying. Like they just can't comprehend the fact that their kid would even say that online or even had an Instagram account. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm.
So when she gets sent, so we're back, Rebecca gets sent to her new school. Her parents decide to give her her phone back. I think they made a rule, though. You still have to delete Instagram and Facebook. Like you can't have that, but you can have your phone back. So Rebecca gets her phone back. Keep in mind, she's a 12, 13 year old teenager. She downloads other apps such as Kik.com.
Ask.fm, Voxer, WhatsApp, all these other things that you can message people on, that you can create a profile on. I've never really used those. I mean, I use WhatsApp now for some work stuff, but I never used those growing up. Yeah, I mean...
I didn't use, I've never used any of those, but I've definitely heard of them. I mean, I didn't know anyone who like actively used them, but also she's a lot younger than I was. So I don't know how this was for their age, you know? Yep. And I think this part does go to show that there are so many apps out there that parents don't know that kids have and that they use. I mean, that this is the first generation of kids we have who are growing up in this age.
this weird technological everything's online era. And parents are just trying to keep up or just trying to catch up, you know, like, oh, and so her mom was like, oh, I got rid of Instagram and I got rid of Facebook. Like now the threat is taken away. It's like, oh, there's...
Once you take one down, there's another one right there standing in its place. Yeah, totally. So the bullying for Rebecca started up again via these new apps. And keep in mind, she was at a new school at this point. So everything is now cyberbullying. On September 9th, Rebecca's mom found her phone and school books hidden, even though she was supposed to have left for school already that morning.
After some time, Rebecca was found. She had climbed a tower at an abandoned concrete plant that morning and jumped to her death. When they went through Rebecca's phone, they found that she had actually changed her username on kick to, and I quote, that dead girl.
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Were these bullies from her old school or her new school? Old school. Okay.
messages like, and these are verbatim, go kill yourself. Why are you still alive? You seriously deserve to die. Nobody cares about you. Drink bleach and die, et cetera. I mean, the messages just went on all about you should kill yourself essentially. I mean, there were messages that called her ugly and stupid and stuff like that, but there were messages every day about this. I'm so confused why someone would tell someone else
To go kill themselves. It's so drastic to me. I literally wrote that. My initial question is how could 15 girls actually say these things to someone else? Like I get one big bad bully, but a group of 15 girls who are messaging this, like whatever. Oh, 15. But,
But I think when everybody around you is doing it, like 15 girls were in on it, it maybe seems like it's not that big a deal. Like everyone was telling Rebecca to go kill herself. So for me to send the message, it just desensitizes it for them. Oh, that's horrible. So...
So now what happens? Do they all get tried or? So they searched Rebecca's phone. They also found signs of serious depression. She had taken pictures with razor blades laying on her arms, her head resting on the edge of railroad tracks. She had also searched one of the most heartbreaking things on Google. What is overweight for a 13 year old girl? Because they were calling her fat. And she also searched this. How?
How much Advil do you have to overdose in order to die? That last one makes me sad because it doesn't even make sense. The term overdose is used in the wrong way, which further proves that she had no idea what she was even doing. She just she didn't even know the enormity of what she was typing in. She used overdose in the completely wrong. Yeah, this one kind of breaks my heart. And keep in mind, she's in eighth grade at this point.
Only about a month after Rebecca had passed, two teenage girls, the two who kind of started the whole thing, one of the girls who went on the date with her ex-boyfriend that kind of started this whole bullying thing, one was 12 and one was 14, who I will not name because they are underage and they haven't been convicted, were arrested and charged with aggravated stalking.
The arrest happened after the older 14-year-old one posted on Facebook, yes, I know I bullied Rebecca and she killed herself, but I don't give a f- Oh my gosh. The 14-year-old's mother later told cops that her Facebook was hacked and she didn't post that. She was sleeping when that was posted. It must have gotten hacked, but it's not true.
The 12-year-old showed a little bit more remorse in her interview, but the 14-year-old was stone cold. The 14-year-old's mother was actually arrested on child abuse charges after a video surfaced of her punching two young boys. What the heck? So I think as young kids whose brains are still forming, they do what they see. So she probably didn't feel remorse for bullying Rebecca because she was also being bullied as well. Yeah, and I don't know how much...
I guess we can talk about them, right? Because of just their underage. Well, their names are out in public. I'm choosing not to say their names. But it's probably, yeah. Yeah. So that just seems like psychopathic behavior at such a young age to know...
You were probably the reason someone killed themselves, but to not give an F. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not defending anyone's behavior here. I'm just simply stating that there is a lot of psychological stuff that goes in to these stories that we discuss on this podcast. And I do remember one time Garrett has little siblings and his little, your little brother got called a name or something at a practice he was at. And, um,
We were like, you know, well, we don't know what he's going through at home. You know, he could be going through some stuff at home. So let's remember that. So I'm
No one should ever be bullied. People should be held accountable. This kind of stuff should not be happening. But the mother's behavior from this 14-year-old is what makes me not surprised that she posted that on Facebook, which is what I'm trying to say, that the psychological thing just goes down. Apparently, the 14-year-old had convinced the 12-year-old to bully Rebecca, and then it just spread like wildfire after that. The police decided to arrest the girls for fear of who they would target next.
That's how not sorry the 14 year old was.
The 14 year old's attorney was actually the same attorney that Casey Anthony had. And I know that means nothing to you, but that means something crazy to our listeners. He saw this case, obviously it was pretty high profile and he jumped right up for the job. And we'll, I'll tell you about Casey Anthony another time. But for our listeners who do know who Casey Anthony is, this is a big deal. This case was pretty controversial because a lot of people disagreed on whether or not these girls should be charged for Rebecca's suicide. Okay.
It only took another month, but then charges were dropped. There was not enough evidence to show that these girls' actions and their actions alone were the sole cause of Rebecca's suicide. Okay. So nothing happened to them. Mm-mm.
According to, which is why I'm not naming them. Yeah. According to CNN, when we take a look inside Rebecca's file, we find that more than a year before her death, Rebecca had been suffering from depression due to her relationship with her father and her mother. In November of 2012, she accused her mother of abusing her, but then took it back. The mother said she didn't abuse her, but she had slapped her once in the face when they were arguing.
According to CBS News, problems at home could have been weighing on Rebecca's psyche. Apparently, Rebecca slept on a recliner at home, not a bed. And her and her sister's clothes were kept in grocery sacks in the living room. So is all this true or do we not know? I mean, I think it's, I mean, the source said it's true. They said they got this out of the police file. Oh, okay. Yeah.
And that the, it was the sheriff who said that, that she slept in a recliner and all of this. Her mother's attorney says that she was just doing her best. And her mother says that no other factors contributed to Rebecca's suicide other than the bullying from the girls.
As the story unfolded, many other students came forward claiming that they had seen with their own eyes the bullying of Rebecca at school. Oh, my gosh. So who is to blame? The school for turning a blind eye when this was obviously a pretty big problem? The family life? The bullying from these girls? I don't think we can say.
What I do know is that we need to look at this story and love those around us. You never know what somebody is battling on the inside. Parents, get involved in your kid's life, care enough to know, and it's not just Facebook and Instagram. Learn about the new apps, talk to your kids, love them.
Kids, if you are listening, just know me and Garrett love you. And believe me when I say I know what's going on in your life seems enormous and like it'll never end. But as soon as you can see that there is more out there, there is opportunity waiting for you. And all of it doesn't matter as much as you think it does. I swear it'll get easier. Be kind and be friends to those who don't have any. Nancy Willard, director of Embrace Civility in the Digital Age, says...
that Rebecca was fighting with herself over whether to commit suicide. Willard hopes that Rebecca's case raises awareness not just on how bullying is never the whole cause of suicide, but that the whole theory that bullying causes suicide can end up actually endangering children who are suffering.
For instance, she points to a case in Illinois where a student who was bullied killed himself a day after watching a movie in school about bullying. There's absolutely zero evidence that that's going to stop kids from bullying, but there's major concern that it's going to give kids who are being bullied the idea that that's something they should consider. If you or someone you know is struggling, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. And that's the story of Rebecca Sedwick.
Yeah, that's a hard one because it wasn't obviously as true crimey as our other ones, but I mean, it's still super important, right? Yeah. I mean, I think it's important that we have the conversation and
Kind of what Nancy was saying at the end is like suicide can't be a trend. We can't, we, you know, we have to talk about it with our kids. We have to talk about their feelings. If we address it now and don't give it a stigma before they can learn that it's stigmatized it, you know, we can then have the open conversations about it. Yeah.
I think it's important that we do have these conversations and that we do, you know, address Rebecca's story and talk about how words really can hurt and words really can kill. And I don't know who's to blame. I don't know whether this case did the right thing or the wrong thing in prosecuting or not prosecuting. I don't know. I just think it's important to open and have this conversation. Yeah.
So I'll be posting all of the images for this story on social media. So go ahead and follow us at Murder With My Husband on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. And I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.