Where have all the adults gone?
To see the video of 14-year-old Adriana Kuch being brutally assaulted in the hallway of her own high school – to see her crouch in the fetal position while being swarmed and dragged and punched by three other students while another off-camera student yells, ‘Fuck her! Fuck that bitch!’ — is to see the confidence of bullies in America today.
Once upon a time, kids like this would attack off campus, in secret, without witnesses. Now they openly attack in cafeterias and classrooms, school buses and social media, safe in the knowledge that administrators will do nothing.
After Kuch was attacked — and it took 40 seconds for an adult to intervene, these brazen kids punched away anyway — their attack was posted on social media: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram.
Two days later, Adriana committed suicide. A message sent just hours earlier mocked her for “dripping” and “gasping” blood.
This poor young girl already had a lot of stressors and risk factors — her mother, who was battling addiction, had died when she was little, and her father was worried about Adriana vaping marijuana. But it seems those beatings and the endless social media humiliation that followed broke her young spirit.
“She was so embarrassed that they jumped on her,” said her father, Michael Kuch. “She would say, ‘I don’t want to be mocked.’ It was like she was attacked twice, you used to go to school, get bullied and then leave, but now you come home and you keep being bullied – they still pick on you at home.
Immediately after the attack, the school suspended the bullies involved but did not call the police. Instead, Michael Kuch brought his daughter – beaten and bloody – to the police station himself.
After Kuch was attacked — and it took 40 seconds for an adult to intervene, these brazen kids punched away anyway — their attack was posted on social media: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram.
After Adriana’s suicide made headlines, school principal Triantafillos Parlapanides posted on social media that in this case “there are two sides to every story”.
Is this an adult entrusted with the upbringing and care of young people? That is shocking. No wonder bullies at his school beat, crush, hit, and insult with impunity. No wonder those who are being bullied feel even more helpless – the responsible adults will not stand up for the victims!
On Friday, the day of Adriana’s wake, Parlapanides sent a series of emails to in which he appeared to blame the tragedy on Adriana and her father. In response to a question about whether the school had offered any services to Adriana — as it is believed she had been bullied for quite a while before her suicide — the cowardly, blame-pointing, and cowardly deflector wrote, “After her mother’s suicide, since her father’s one affair [sic] at the end of her 6th grade. Her father married the woman he was having an affair with and moved into the house with her. Her grades and decisions went down in 7th and 8th grade. We offered her drug rehab and psychiatric treatment five times, but Father refused each time.’
Wow. As the saying goes, the fish rots from the head on. This guy should be fired immediately and never allowed to work with children again. He violated Adriana’s private health information and essentially blamed her father for her mother’s suicide.
On Thursday, the four girls allegedly involved in the attack on New Jersey’s Central Regional High School were charged; three with fourth-degree assault and one with disorderly conduct. Before that, her father said, the school had done next to nothing: no investigations. No monitoring of social media.
It’s fair to assume that Central Regional, like far too many schools across America, doesn’t have any real anti-cyberbullying policies. Why should they? There is no federal law against it, although the CDC reported in October 2022 that one in five high school students reported being bullied on campus in the previous year. More than one in six reports cyberbullying. Self-reporting is highest in middle schools at 33%, then in high schools at 30%.
Where are our educators? Our administrators? Our elected officials?
Make no mistake: Cyberbullying among children and young people is a public health crisis, as is the angry young American man, as is the school gunman, as is the post-COVID learning and socialization gap, as is the awakened orthodoxy that every boy or man questioning his gender should have access to women’s and girls’ restrooms, changing rooms, shelters, jails – regardless of whether girls and women feel safe or not – it is.
In May 2021, a 15-year-old boy raped a classmate in a trans-friendly school restroom. He attacked this young girl in a toilet stall. A teacher later testified that she saw two pairs of feet under the cubicle door but did nothing.
On Friday, the day of Adriana’s wake, Parlapanides (above) sent a series of emails to in which he appeared to blame Adriana and her father for the tragedy.
Michael Kuch brought his daughter – beaten and bloody – to the police station himself.
Haven’t done anything! Scott Smith, the girl’s father, said she was held on the ground and attacked in that booth. Why was an adult teacher afraid to tap? Screaming, “What’s going on in there?” Or ‘Go away now and let me see what you do!’?
That principal, Scott Ziegler, did nothing either. In fact, he claimed there was no record of that assault — or any similar sexual assault committed by the same boy against another teenage girl later that same year at a different Virginia school.
For standing up for justice and demanding that the school board tell the truth about sexual assault in girls’ bathrooms and what transgender policy might have to do with it, Scott Smith was arrested at a school board meeting and dragged to the ground until his Shirt rolled to his chest and ended in a bloody mouth.
humiliated.
That’s what dads get today who advocate for young female students in America – shamed as anti-trans, bigots, MAGA or MAGA supporters, idiots who can’t understand liberal nuances.
Michael Kuch, who speaks out after his daughter was bullied and committed suicide, is slandered by the school principal, who took it upon himself to air their private family affairs.
And look at the lack of coverage of whistleblower Jamie Reed in much of the liberal media. Here is a 42-year-old who identifies as a “queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders” — married to a trans man — who worked for four years at Washington University’s Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
She is the first employee at an American gender clinic to come forward and say that children are being harmed by medical gender reassignment surgery.
You’d think her explosive essay, published yesterday in the Free Press, would make headlines everywhere. Not so, despite her dire warnings.
“She was so embarrassed that they jumped on her,” said her father, Michael Kuch. “She would say, ‘I don’t want to be mocked.’
“What is happening to children,” Reed wrote, “is morally and medically appalling.” With little more than allegations of gender confusion and two visits to an in-house therapist, these children, she says, are placed on puberty blockers that can result in lifelong sterilization or a increased risk of cancer or who knows what – because we have no long-term studies. The teenagers Reed saw, most of them virgins, were admitted for surgeries many later regret. They had no idea what their minds and bodies were up to, but they trusted the adults at this facility.
Reed reprinted an email from an angry parent:
“Please note that I withdraw my consent to this medical treatment. Grades have dropped, there was an inpatient behavioral health visit, and now he’s on five different medications. . . [Redacted] is a shell of his former self, shot through with fear. Who knows if it’s the hormone blockers or the other medications. I revoke my consent.’
Reed says she expects to be shamed and unemployed for bringing this public health emergency to our attention. “I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk,” Reed wrote. “Almost everyone in my life has told me to keep my head down. But I can’t do that in good conscience.’
America’s children need more adults like Jamie Reed and Michael Kuch and Scott Smith: willing to stand up for the weakest and most vulnerable to stand up against this ultra-awake world where black and white, right and wrong are increasing archaic ideas. We can’t stand bullies, whether they’re kids in the classroom or teachers who look the other way, or school gunners whose deviant behavior sparks a slew of warnings – our youngest, a six-year-old, who purposely shot his teacher – or trans activists who equate concern and prejudice and question hate.
We let our children down. It’s about time the adults in the room grew up.