The teasing began when Gregory Spring had to repeat the second grade. By high school, the taunting turned cruel, with some students mocking and mimicking his facial tics, frequent eye blinking and vocal outbursts, among his other Tourette’s syndrome symptoms, his mother said.
“Gregory felt like he could never get away from the bullies,” Keri Spring said in a courtroom last week.
Not even his death by suicide spared him.
Someone wrote on the online condolence page for the 17-year-old’s obituary, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HE DIED!!!!!! I HOPE HE IS IN HELLLLLLLL.”
Some students called her son “retard” and “idiot” and mocked and mimicked his tics nearly every day through middle and high school, his mother said. Yet, she says the Allegany-Limestone Central School District’s staff, including the former high school principal, minimized, dismissed or ignored requests from her and Gregory for help. In a case now being tried in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, Gregory’s parents and sister have accused the school district of failing to protect him from bullying and discrimination because of his disabilities. The family says the district’s negligence and deliberate indifference led to his “severe emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment and self-loathing causing and/or contributing to his suicide on June 17, 2013.”
“They never listened to him,” his mother said of school officials. “They never believed him. All they did was punish him.”
Lawyers representing the family see the tragic case as shining a light on discrimination on the basis of someone’s…
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