High court: Bullying caused teen's depression, suicide

The Asahi Shimbun
March 29, 2007
Source: http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200703280386.html

A landmark court ruling Wednesday sent a clear warning to school authorities not to be negligent if bullying occurs.

The ruling by the Tokyo High Court clearly recognized a link between bullying and depression-induced suicide.

The court, handing down its judgment in the suicide of 15-year-old Takehito Usui in 1999, awarded the boy's parents 11 million yen in compensation.

Presiding Judge Hiromu Emi said Takehito "increasingly felt isolated due to bullying, which led him to take his own life."

The ruling sets a legal precedent by clearly stating that bullied children can suffer from severe depression leading to suicide in the same way that overworked salaried workers can, observers say.

They said school authorities should take the ruling to mean that schools will be held accountable if future bullying-suicide cases occur.

Takehito, a third-year student at a junior high school in Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture, hanged himself at his home on Nov. 26, 1999.

The sum awarded in compensation was up from 2.4 million yen ordered by the Utsunomiya District Court in its 2005 ruling.

Wednesday's total includes 2.4 million yen already paid by the parents of two student bullies under an out-of-court settlement reached last July.

The high court ordered the prefecture and Kanuma city to pay the rest in compensation for the bullied boy's suffering.

But the court denied his school was responsible for failing to prevent Takehito's death.

Takehito's parents, who said the school should have been held accountable, indicated they would appeal the ruling.

"They are educators, so it is a matter of course for them to pay careful attention to their students," said Takehito's father Katsuji Usui, 55.

According to the ruling, Takehito became a target of intense bullying at the city-run Kita-Inukai Junior High School in the first school term of 1999.

Classmates pulled down his underwear in front of others and painted his face with markers.

During the second term, the tormented boy often sat with his face down on his desk in class--an action observers say was an obvious cry for help.

He quit going to school in October that year after he was made fun of during a school trip.

He killed himself the next month.

The district court ruling in 2005 admitted the school had failed to stop the incessant bullying.

However, it ruled out bullying as a key cause for Takehito's suicide, noting that a few months had passed between the extreme bullying and his suicide.

The high court ruling, on the other hand, found that the boy had become seriously depressed by around November and said the illness was because of long-time bullying.

The court said his depression led to his death.

It also recognized that the school did not fulfill its responsibility of ensuring the student's safety in the first term of 1999.

But in legal terms, it said that failure cannot be connected to the boy's depression and suicide.

"Bullying triggering depression that leads to suicide is not a sequence of events that happens often," the ruling said. "It would have been difficult for the teachers to foresee his depression."(IHT/Asahi: March 29,2007)

Court: Classmates' bullying was cause of student's suicide

The Yomiuri Shimbun
March 29, 2007
Source: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070329TDY01002.htm

The Tokyo High Court ruled Wednesday that a third-year student at a middle school in Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture, committed suicide in November 1999 because he was bullied by classmates.

The court overturned a ruling by the Utsunomiya District Court in September 2005 that denied a link between the bullying of 15-year-old Takehito Usui and his suicide. The high court ruled that the parents are entitled to receive a total of 11 million yen in damages, including consolation money, and ordered the prefecture and the city governments to pay 8.6 million yen of that amount. The differential in the amounts is equivalent to the sum of the money earlier paid to the boy's parents in an out-of-court settlement reached with the parents of two bullying students.

Usui's parents had filed a claim for 110 million yen in damages from the prefecture and the city, asserting that their son's suicide was caused by bullying at school.

Usui's parents had reached a court-mediated settlement with two of his classmates and their parents, and the defendants had paid 2.4 million yen during the appeal trial.

According to the plaintiffs' lawyers, Wednesday's ruling was the first in the nation to recognize that a suicide occurred because the victim became depressed as a result of bullying.

The ruling at the district court denied the link between bullying and suicide because more than five months had passed since the last time Usui was bullied and the time he killed himself.

But presiding Judge Hiromu Emi at the high court said long-term bullying triggered depression that resulted in Usui's suicide five months later.

The ruling, however, did not recognize the school's liability for compensation, and the plaintiffs plan to appeal to the Supreme Court on that point.

According to the ruling, Usui was assaulted at Kita-Inukai Middle School in the city by two male classmates, who pretended to be wrestling with him. They also removed his trousers and underwear in a classroom.

Usui stopped going to school in November 1999 and hanged himself at his home on Nov. 26.

(Mar. 29, 2007)

2 local governments ordered to pay damages over student's bullying suicide

The Mainichi Shimbun
March 28, 2007
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070328p2a00m0na018000c.html

Takehito Usui's bereaved parents, center, walk side by side with his father displaying a photograph of the teen ahead of the ruling at the Tokyo High Court on Wednesday.

A high court on Wednesday ordered two local governments to pay 8.6 million yen in compensation to the parents of a junior high school student who committed suicide after his classmates bullied him.

The parents of municipal school student Takehito Usui demanded in their lawsuit that the Kanuma municipal and Tochigi prefectural government pay them some 110 million yen in compensation, claiming that bullying at school caused their boy to commit suicide in 1999.

In September 2005, the Utsunomiya District Court ruled that two former classmates of the boy bullied him and that teachers failed to protect the student. The court ordered the classmates and the municipal and prefectural governments that supervised the school to pay 2.4 million yen in compensation to the parents.

But the district court denied any direct causal relationship between the bullying and the suicide, saying, "He was absent from school and lost the will to live."

But on appeal, the Tokyo High Court acknowledged that bullying was one of the reasons that triggered Usui's suicide. Presiding Judge Hiromu Emi at the high court said other former classmates were also responsible for the bullying.

"The mean attitudes of his former classmates who didn't try to stop the bullying led to him feeling isolated," the judge said.

During the high court's hearings, the boy's parents produced a psychiatric report that said he suffered from depression because of bullying, and this led to him committing suicide. Wednesday's ruling recognized this report.

The two former classmates and their parents have already admitted that the youths bullied the boy and reached an out of court settlement with Usui's parents of some 2.4 million yen. (Mainichi)

March 28, 2007