Sergeant targets online harassment

Clark County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike McCabe talks about the growing problem of cyberbullying in schools and ways people can combat the issue. He wants to start a curriculum in schools on the subject. (Zachary Kaufman/ The Columbian)

Clark County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike McCabe didn’t permit his 15-year-old daughter to sign up for a MySpace.com account — but she did anyway.

So he sat her down for a chat. They talked about cyber predators and the dangers of posting information on the Web. Then, they talked about cyberbullies.

The teen’s response surprised McCabe: Though she hadn’t fallen victim, she told him that virtual bullying happens more than he realized.

The talk put him on a track to combat what he calls an issue that often goes unreported and unobserved. The sergeant now wants to start a curriculum in area high schools and middle schools, informing teens of the dangers of cyberbullying and how to stop it. He already gave informational pamphlets to neighborhood associations to circulate in newsletters earlier this month. The goal was to get the topic on parents’ minds.

“I felt that if I was having this conversation, the information probably should be shared with others,” he said. “I want to start a dialogue that could be the catalyst for conversations around the dinner tables of Clark County.”

McCabe, supervisor of the county’s school resource officers, hasn’t yet made an agreement with schools to implement a program. And school officials haven’t yet hopped on board.

McCabe plans to develop a presentation that could include a PowerPoint presentation of statistics and prevention techniques to be presented by officers. He also wants to enlist students to lead discussions.

“We have to make it unacceptable, so that they’ll report it,” McCabe said.

Cyberbullying, or harassment online, takes several forms. It happens when damaging pictures or messages are posted of somebody on a MySpace.com or Facebook.com page. Or it appears in text messages, chat rooms or e-mails.

Cyberbullying usually involves an audience far more wide-reaching than age-old bullying techniques, such as a nasty note passed during class, McCabe said. It instead involves thousands of people in cyberspace.

Even though teens widely accept it as “kids being kids,” McCabe said cyberbullying can escalate to a crime. That happens when a message is intended to spark violence or degrades a person because of race, gender or religion.

Only a few cyberbullying cases have reached police. A lot of criminal cases aren’t reported, or are resolved by parents or school officials, McCabe said.

Nationally, other cases haven’t ended so peacefully. Two years ago, a Missouri 13-year-old reportedly committed suicide after receiving hurtful messages via MySpace from somebody posing as a potential love interest.

Vivian Starbuck, a Laurin Middle School eighth-grade teacher, likes the idea of a cyberbullying curriculum in school. She wrote an e-mail to McCabe a month ago, inquiring whether he had any educational tools.

Starbuck was teaching a course on bullying and wanted a closer look at cyberbullying. But her bullying curriculum book contained only a quick blurb about it.

Starbuck knew there was more to the topic, even though she hadn’t witnessed cyberbullying in her classroom.

“Lots of times, they write things on the Web and don’t realize it’s a permanent record,” Starbuck said.

The e-mail, coincidentally, nudged McCabe, who had become interested in the matter since talking with his daughter, to launch the idea.

McCabe’s daughter now has MySpace privileges, and he feels better after they chatted. The key, he said, is to make kids aware it’s a problem they should report.

“What I don’t want to happen is a kid going through four years of school with relentless harassment and feeling like there’s no one to turn to,” he said.