Mom talks about why anti-bullying bill is importan...: Danielle Green's 14-year-old daughter killed herself on March 5, unable to endure continued bullying. Green hopes a bill advancing in Indiana's legislature will help other children.=video
INDIANAPOLIS - — Danielle Green didn’t cry Wednesday as she told lawmakers about how her teenage daughter, Angelina, killed herself on March 5 after two years of being bullied.
The tears welled, instead, when the Senate Education Committee voted 8-2 to approve an anti-bullying measure that better defines just what bullying is, and helps schools know how to identify it and react.
“My daughter’s story is now heard,” the West Lafayette mother said after the vote. “It gives my Angel wings.”
House Bill 1423 now goes to the full Senate for debate and a vote, which supporters hope sends it to Gov. Mike Pence to be signed into law.
The bill easily passed the House, 77-17, on Feb. 25 — when Angelina, 14, was still an eighth-grader at Battle Ground Middle School in West Lafayette.
The pictures Green brought with her to the Statehouse show a red-haired smiling girl. The story Green told, though, was of a child who hung herself after two years of being harassed.
Her hair. Her freckles. Her weight. All were targets of teasing by other children. And, perhaps worst of all, an assault by her father. After his arrest became public, the crime committed against her became just one more thing with which to taunt her.
Wednesday, after waiting more than four hours at the Statehouse for the Senate Education Committee to work its way to HB 1423, Green became the only one who had the chance to tell her story to the full committee.
With time growing short, and legislators beginning to leave, Chairman Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, urged supporters of the bill to cut their testimony short. While he pledged to stay and hear personally everyone who wanted to share their stories, and show their pictures, Kruse warned them that if a vote wasn’t taken soon, there would no longer be a quorum to take a vote.
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