It is time for the deadly bullying in this country to end

He started college, likely met his roommate on an early day of the semester. Little did he know that the fates that brought them together would lead to his leaping to his death from a bridge a mere few weeks later. Why? Because that roommate that entered his life decided to intrude on his most private moments, unbeknownst to him, filming and live streaming his intimacy with another person for all the world to see.

He was, by all accounts, gentle, quiet, a virtuoso violinist. Now, he is dead. And he's not alone in the factors that drove him to that direst, most irreversible of decisions. There is the Irish girl who hanged herself, bullied literally to death by her peers, who targeted her via text message and Facebook, in addition to torturing her in person. There is 13-year-old Asher Brown, who just this week shot himself after merciless and endless bullying from his peers. A boy whose parents find themselves in that age-old "We said, they said" with the district--the parents stating that they repeatedly complained, the district claiming utter ignorance. And there is Seth Walsh, another 13-year-old, who hanged himself in anguish over being bullied with taunts that he was homosexual and died nine days later.

These accounts have much in common. Quiet children. Sweet children. Sometimes homosexual children or children who are being taunted for presumed homosexuality. Parents who complain and whose complaints fall on deaf ears. And when parents do take matters into their own hands, they are arrested, assured that had they only complained to the proper authorities, those authorities would've done something. Right.

Who is raising these mean, vicious children? What kind of parent, for example, gets upset to the point of tears on learning that her child has been threatened by a father for bullying his daughter with cerebral palsy? For mercilessly bullying her? The parent, rather than expressing anguish that her child would do such a thing, is near tears because someone yelled at her son for doing it.

Who are these adults in the school districts who ignore parental complaints of bullying? Maybe I'd be skeptical of such stories if (a) we hadn't experienced exactly that with our own son, and (b) I hadn't just heard from many other parents stories strikingly and heartbreakingly similar to our own.

This has got to stop. At the very least, school districts should be required to address the bullies, to ensure that bullying at school or on the bus gets stopped cold. There should be a zero tolerance policy, and not a flimsy one that no one enforces, but a real one. Even for children who don't take the ultimate way out, the effects of bullying can last a lifetime.

Ah, you say. No one's going to make a school district do that. Parents have always made these complaints, and districts have always ignored them. True. Let's change that, shall we? After all, we are the special needs parents, are we not? We're the ones who really understand the importance of documentation. Of getting it in writing. Of time stamps and date stamps. Of even documenting radio silence.

It might surprise you to learn that the United States does not have an advocacy group for children who are bullied or an ombudsman-type service for families to turn to when districts are ignoring them. I am processing the concept in my mind and on paper right now, but I would like to establish such a service. It doesn't have to be big. It just needs to be there, for families who need it, who don't know how to document or get a district's attention. I think what we have here, dearest readers, is a group of people who know how to do exactly that.

I'd be interested in your input, your ideas, offers of help, avenues of exploration, formats, interfaces. Let's do this thing before more mean people unleash their hell on a sweet child who sees no way out but death.