Few answers for close-knit family after 12-year-old commits suicide
Montana Delorey was tall and pretty, a star at her local dance studio, the only daughter in a family full of sons.
The vibrant 12-year-old had a mischievous streak, too. With a cat or some other critter in her arms, she’d sidle up to Lacey Urbanski, basking in her aunt’s growing discomfort. “I don’t have nothing,” she’d protest.
Then she would fling the feline right at Urbanski, laughing hysterically at her aunt’s screams.
Questions arise when a child as young as Montana ends her life. It’s especially true in a town as small as Gibbons, a community of 3,000 about 40 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. But reasons for a suicide aren’t always easy to find.
Montana was laughing on the bus ride home Feb. 4, her classmates said. The Grade 7 student had had a good day at school and to her mom, seemed in good spirits. Just weeks earlier, she had written on one social media site that if she had only one day to live, it would be “hanging out with my family.”
In the weeks since, Montana’s family has discovered that online bullying may have played a role in her death. Along with the inexplicable loss and shock, they have to deal with the misconceptions and whispers about what happened.
Urbanski wants that to change.
Like regular bullying, most victims don’t talk about cyberbullying, said Shelagh Dunn, a clinical psychologist whose doctorate work explored bullying. They also begin to internalize the words.
“A lot of the same dynamics are there,” Dunn said. “What happens when it’s online is that it’s more pervasive. You have access to your phone or hand-held device pretty much anywhere, any time, so it’s not just limited to school.”
The high-profile suicides of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons thrust cyberbullying into the national spotlight.
Parsons, 17, killed herself last April months after an explicit photo was circulated, prompting sexual harassment from strangers. Todd ended her life in late 2012 after she recorded a video describing hows he was black mailed and harassed after flashing her breasts during a video chat when she was in Grade 7.
Montana left no note. Her only relationship had been an innocent first boyfriend, her family said. Her only video on YouTube, posted a month before her death, was a joyous and rambling instruction on “how to do a bow and arrow.” In the video, Montana nimbly pulls her right leg over her head in an arc, using her arm as an arrow. She promises to post many more videos.
There hadn’t been any cyberbullying incidents the week of Montana’s death, but Urbanski says a couple of classmates had been taunting her, using words like “whore” or “slut.” Messages were posted on Facebook and Ask.fm, a Q & A site that allows anonymous questions. Montana sometimes told bullies to leave her alone.
Gibbons School is involved in WITS, an anti-bullying program which encourages students to walk away, ignore, talk and seek support. On one bad day, Montana left school and went to a friend’s house.
Montana’s mom talked about it with a school counsellor, then talked to her daughter. Montana reassured her mother she was fine.
After her death, family found that troubling online posts had been deleted, Urbanski said.
An RCMP investigation into the online harassment fizzled, though the family wasn’t eager to push the case. The kids who teased Montana are kids, too, Urbanski said, even if they only realized how damaging their words were once it was too late.
“It wasn’t years and years of being bullied, it wasn’t tons of people calling her names,” Urbanski said. “Maybe it hit her on a bad day or the wrong thing was said.”
Montana’s final decision isn’t easy to understand. She was popular. She had all the right clothes. She had a closeknit family that loved her dearly, four younger brothers and a baby sister on the way.
Suicide by girls as young as Montana is rare, but it’s becoming more common, said Dunn, whose research explored “upstanders,” students who stand up to bullies. Many have been bullied themselves and take on bullies because they don’t care what people think of them.
Dunn encourages parents to ask questions about what’s happening online. She encourages students to talk. And she encourages students to push back.
“If you hear it over and over again, you start to believe it’s true, something is wrong with you,” said Dunn, who often counsels adults still grappling with the names they heard in their youth.
“Having other people say, ‘No, this is not true, this is not you’ is really, really helpful.”
Since Montana’s death, family and friends have been selling anti-bullying T-shirts and bracelets. More than $20,000 has been raised for a memorial fund in Montana’s honour.
Montana was an avid dancer before her first birthday, Urbanski said, when she would “raise the roof” and rap “it’s your birthday.”
At the time of her death, she was in two classes — tap and musical theatre — at Dance Works 2, a local studio, said Jessica Spiridakis, her teacher and owner of the studio. After Montana’s death, her classmates talked about what to do to remember her.
At three festivals next month, Montana’s tap shoes will be centre stage, along with her picture, Spiridakis said.
Half the money raised will go to Kids Help Phone. The other half of the money will go to scholarships at Spiridakis’ studios in Fort Saskatchewan and Gibbons. Over the next six years, two students at each studio will receive a year-long scholarship.
The family has already talked about feeding that fund so it goes beyond that, so that other children can keep dancing, can keep bringing joy to their families and friends.
Hopefully, the memory of Montana will help spark conversations.
“Always be there for your kids,” Urbanski said. “Even if you think that they’re happy. Even if you think they’re well adjusted, just make sure you’re there for them, because you never know.”