13 yr old S.I., NYC Bullied Boy Buried, The Alleged Bully Suspended 2 Days
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| One of the last pictures taken of 13 yr old Victim of Suicide Danny Fitzpatrick |
The funeral service for the 13-year-old Staten Island boy who committed suicide after being bullied in school will be held this week, according to the funeral home.
A wake for Daniel Fitzpatrick will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at the Harmon Funeral Home, 571 Forest Ave., in West Brighton.
The funeral Mass for Fitzpatrick will be held at 11 a.m. at the Sacred Heart R.C. Church, at 981 Castleton Ave., on Wednesday, according to the funeral home.
Fitzpatrick, a student at Holy Angels Catholic Academy in Bay Ridge, committed suicide after he was bullied by fellow students, according to a letter he wrote before he died.
His father claims in a video posted online that school staff did nothing to stop the abuse.
"He and I went to the school, went to the principal," his father, Daniel Fitzpatrick, said in a video posted to Facebook on Saturday.
"All I got was, and all he got was, 'You'll be fine. Is he in counseling? You have to try harder, Danny.'"
A GoFundMe campaign started by Fitzpatrick’s sister to help cover the funeral costs had raised more than $100,000 as of Monday afternoon and the excess funds will be donated to anti-bullying and suicide awareness groups, according to the fundraising page.
A spokeswoman for the diocese told DNAinfo New York over the weekend that the school tried to address the family's concerns, including giving counseling to Fitzpatrick.
One of the students accused of bullying was suspended for two days and the school's principal, Rosemarie McGoldrick, met with all of Fitzpatrick's classmates to discuss bullying, the spokeswoman said.
In his video posted to Facebook, Fitzpatrick's father called the boy a "kind, gentle soul" and his tormentors "monsters."
"To the parents of the boys that tormented my son, all I have to say is, I hope you never, never have to feel what my family is going through right now," said Daniel Fitzpatrick.
"You get to hold your children every night and day for the rest of your lives, and their natural lives. I don't get that anymore. Your little monsters took that from me and my wife and his sisters."
Background to this story
A 13-year-old boy from Staten Island was found hanging in the attic of his family home after writing a letter about being relentlessly bullied at school, the New York Post reported.
In his note, Danny Fitzpatrick detailed the bullying he had experienced at the hands of five other children who attended Holy Angels Catholic Academy with him in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
"They did it constantly," Danny wrote, adding that he had asked his teachers for help, but had received none in return.
Danny leaves behind a distraught family, including parents Maureen Mahoney Fitzpatrick and Daniel Fitzpatrick, who said that instead of helping their son at school, officials at Holy Angels Catholic dispatched child welfare investigators to their home.
"They called [the Administration for Children's Services] on us," Maureen Fitzpatrick told the Post.
"Danny told us they [administrators] were asking questions: 'Do Mom and Dad drink? Do they feed you? Do they have clothes in the house? 'Next thing you know, 7:30 at night, I have an ACS officer at my door, and my son told him, 'I just want a friend.'"
Danny's letter explains that he had "lots of friends" at one point in time, but eventually, things changed.
"At first it was good lots of friends, good grades, great life," he wrote. "I moved and went back but it was different. My old friends changed they didn't talk to me they didn't even like me."
Although Danny's letter does mention one teacher who was kind to him, the Fitzpatricks maintain that school officials badly missed any opportunities they had to help their struggling son — like the time he wound up in the principal's office with a fractured pinkie after some classmates tried to fight him on the playground.
Maureen Fitzpatrick said that instead of supporting the boy, they put him in a room with the children who had attacked him and questioned them all on what had happened.
"How do you conduct an interview with the victim and his attacker in the same room?" she asked. "If he said what happened, it would come back to him tenfold."
Maureen Fitzpatrick added that at the end of his life, there was no one that her son fully trusted.
“I’ll never have my baby back," she said.
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