LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Seven Bridges was 10 years old when he took his own life in 2019.
A few months before that day, he talked to WHAS11 about what his mother, Tami Charles, called a bullying incident on his school bus. Charles blames that incident - and others - for Seven's death by suicide.
"What do we do about the victims," she asked. "Everybody has everything in place for some consequence for the perpetrator - there's nothing about the victim."
Seven was a student at Kerrick Elementary - one of more than 150 schools within the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) district.
Throughout WHAS11's FOCUS investigation into Seven's death, we found 20,941 reports of bullying in the last five and a half school years at the district. More than 8,000 of those reports led to out-of-school suspensions.
In the first 71 days of the 2021-22 school year [August to early December], 1,722 bullying incidents were already reported.
The data shows that most cases came out of middle and high schools and a handful of middle schools, including Thomas Jefferson Middle, Carrithers Middle, Crosby Middle and Westport Middle saw more than 100 reports each year between 2016 and 2020.
Brenda High lives in Washington state and helped start the national organization Bully Police USA after her son Jared took his own life in 1998, just days before his 13th birthday.
"From the moment I lost my son, I didn't want to see it happen to anyone else," said High. "No parent wants to see this happen."
The mission of Bully Police USA is to strengthen bullying laws across the country by going state-to-state and advocating for change. High was an advocate for the Golden Rule Act, which was passed in Kentucky in 2008. The act addresses student harassment, intimidating and bullying - including cyberbullying.
According to stopbullying.gov, Kentucky's anti-bullying laws cover cyberbullying that happens off-campus and require school districts to train teachers and other staff on how to respond to bullying incidents. However, they do not include protections for specific groups including race and disability.
Kentucky anti-bullying laws also do not require districts to implement bullying prevention programs or provide mental health support for students involved with bullying.
High said there's always room for improvement. She said lawmakers and update the language of current laws to include things like requirements for antibullying policies and procedures.
"Have a plan for not just parents and teachers or administration, but the kids. A major part of it should be the kids," she said.
After Seven's death by suicide, JCPS held a bullying and suicide prevention summit and made changes to its website to make it easier to report bullying. School officials also said they've added mental health practitioners to just about every school in the district.
Contact reporter Heather Fountaine at hfountaine@whas11.com and follow her on Twitter (@WHAS11Heather) and Facebook.
A full chart of the incident report data can be seen at this link.
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