Family suspects cyberbullying led teen to commit suicide

Before she died, 14-year-old Kacie Palm told her mother about the nasty online exchanges coming from some teenagers — cyberbullies aiming to hurt teenage girls on social media sites, the Enterprise reported.
“She said, ‘Mom, they make up a fake account and they write all kinds of stuff — how fat they are and how ugly they are,’” her mother, Kerry Palm, recalled Tuesday. “That’s when I said, ‘Just get off of it. Shut it off, stay off of it.’ I said, ‘People don’t care. That’s the problem. They don’t care.’”
Three days later, on Thursday, Kacie, a beautiful, vivacious, 14-year-old about to enter her freshman year at Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School in September, took her own life.
Her parents are searching for answers -- not only as to why their young daughter died so unexpectedly, but also why Kacie’s friends -- many of whom have posted comments on Twitter using the hashtag #justiceforkacie -- won’t talk to them about the circumstances that led to their daughter’s death.
“The couple of friends that she hung with, not one of them has come to me,” Kerry Palm, 44, said in the kitchen of her East Taunton home Tuesday afternoon. “I absolutely believe they know something.”
Taunton police are investigating. Several Facebook posts on Tuesday indicated that Kacie may have been a victim of cyberbullying.
Police have spoken with school officials as part of the investigation, Taunton Police Chief Edward Walsh said Tuesday.
“We’re looking into it, but no one has actually come forward directly to us,” Walsh said. “There have been some conversations with the school department, (to see) if they’ve got any information.”
Anyone with information is urged to contact Taunton police at 508-824-7522.
On Tuesday, some account holders tweeting with #justiceforkacie wouldn’t talk when contacted by a reporter on Twitter.
“We can’t talk about it,” wrote one. “Ummm no, I can’t speak about what happened sorry bye,” wrote another. “I can’t let information out,” wrote yet another.
But online, there’s a flurry of comments and speculation — by teenagers and adults — about what may have led Kacie to end her life, her parents said.
“What they’re saying (is) that there was a page about her that someone bashed her,” Kerry Palm said, while crying.
Another theory?
“They said she took a nude picture and texted it to this kid,” her mother said. “She wrote a (suicide) note and it basically said it was to do with him.”
Kacie died on Thursday, amid news reports across the country of online “Purges” on Facebook and Twitter — where forms of online abuse are encouraged and have led to nude photos of women, including underage women, being posted on social media.
The Palms said they haven’t seen anything online to support claims of cyberbullying. They didn’t know the passwords to Kacie’s social media accounts. She would log in and log out, said her parents, who were shut out from the online world their daughter lived in.
“There’s so many questions and so much hearsay,” her father, Steve Palm, 45, said. “We don’t know what’s true and what’s not true.”
On her Twitter page, Kacie had retweeted several dark tweets from @AGirlsLifeTwitt, which has 133,000 followers, in the days before her suicide.
“I want to sleep forever,” one retweet said. “I’m tired of pretending to be okay,” another retweet said. On July 10, a week before her death, Kacie retweeted “I will never be good enough for anyone.”
Kacie — with long, brown hair and big, blue eyes — told her parents she loved them daily, they said. She had some moody days, but nothing that her parents saw to be out of the ordinary for their teenage daughter.
“The thing is, she told us everything,” Kerry Palm said.
The Palms said they saw no warning signs in their daughter — and they’re speaking publicly about her suicide with the hope that it will help save another life.
They’re also speaking out to warn other parents about the dangers of social media.
“I just think all these sites, Facebook, I think it should all be gone, because it’s cruel,” Kerry Palm said, crying. “Just shut them all down. You don’t need it.”
On Thursday night, after spending a few hours with friends near her neighborhood, Kacie came home with her mother about 7 p.m. and went to take a shower, her mother said.
Less than an hour later, her father went to check in on her. Kacie had hanged herself in her bedroom, he said. She left her family a short note and told them she loved them. “This is goodbye. Sorry you have to find me this way,” the note said. “I love you all.”
The note also instructed her family to go on Facebook to message a specific teenage boy.
Steve Palm burst out crying while holding the note in their kitchen.
“This is so impersonal. This is what really pisses me off,” he said. “It’s not her. That’s her writing. But that’s not her.”
By 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, four separate Facebook pages titled “R.I.P. Kacie Palm” had a total of 4,600 ‘Likes.’
“It’s disgusting, disgusting,” Kerry Palm said of social media, tears streaming down her face. “I feel helpless. As a parent, I feel I didn’t protect her enough from this stuff.”