Adam Lanza bullied as student at Sandy Hook, his mother considered suing
Adam Lanza was apparently bullied and beaten when he was enrolled at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., where he shot and killed 20 students and six staffers, the New York Daily News reports.
The bullying was so bad that Lanza’s mother, Nancy, thought about suing Sandy Hook Elementary School after her son came home with bruises “all over his body” on multiple occasions, a family member told The News.
“Nancy felt fiercely protective of him,” the relative told The News. “She was convinced the school wasn’t doing enough to protect Adam. It made her irate.”
Lanza’s mother went so far as to attend school with him to try and witness his classmates taunting and “assaulting” him.
According to The News:
"The relative said Adam Lanza never seemed emotionally right after his time in Sandy Hook. Nancy Lanza switched him to another school after sixth grade.
'He was a sick boy,' the relative told The News."
The Christian Science Monitor’s Modern Parenthood blog has reported extensively on bullying in school:
Who bullied Lanza at Sandy Hook? The family member did not tell The News, but the Monitor’s top five myths about bullies can help to dispel any rash conclusions about the type of person Lanza’s bully or bullies were.
While Lanza never told his mother about his bullies, Modern Parenthood contributor Amy McKinnon’s son did. She heard all about the teasing and hitting and told her son he should hit back, but he said he wouldn’t. Her essay echoes how powerless a parent can feel when their child is a victim of bullying.
Contributor Deirdre Graves writes in “Bully watch: Raising a cowboy unafraid to wear blue nail polish” about raising a son to be different in a school system where the different ones seem to get bullied the most.
And Modern Parenthood blogger Stephanie Hanes this fall focused on the proliferation of anti-bullying legislation across the country — in 15 years, bullying legislation made its way into law in 49 states.
