February 2017
By Susie CauchiCo-Founder and President Yuba-Sutter Stand for the Silent On October 17th, 2012, our daughter was assaulted at high school by a girl she barely knew. We learned she was deliberately set up by her attacker and several other girls. Students who witnessed this encouraged our daughter’s attacker to run so she didn’t get caught. No one encouraged our daughter to run so she wouldn’t get hurt. Only one student helped her to the office, and another took a bus to be by her side until I arrived. One of the other girls videotaped her assault and shared it with other students. We discovered that a former friend of our daughter’s was also involved. There was
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a barrage of bullying and cyberbullying events prior to that day, including a pizza box with obscene language being delivered to her in the cafeteria during lunch. We had no knowledge of this bullying. The first I’d heard about it was the day I picked her up from the nurse’s office at school. Our daughter kept it from us, for fear of creating more “drama”, as school officials called it, and the embarrassment
of having her parents involved. When the cyberbullying began, our daughter experienced debilitating m i g r a i n e s , i n s o m n i a , depression, anxiety, shame and suicidal thoughts. Her grades dropped, and she was in jeopardy of not graduating on time with the rest of her class. She has been hospitalized twice for cutting and attempts to take her own life. My husband and I spent sleepless
My husband and I spent sleepless nights wondering if we were going to be among those parents who had lost a child
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nights wondering if we were going to be among those parents who had lost a child. None of this was shared with many people outside our tight-knit family and close friends, until about a year after her assault. The reason? It was time to take a stand, and it took a village to do so. One of the things we did was to embrace the church and all it had to offer. We were in survival mode and it was all we could do. With the help of our Pastor and his family, we felt at home. We were able to come as we were - broken - and still treated with love and mercy. Our Pastor’s daughter was called on by us several times to mentor our daughter,
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