The suicide of the 14-year-old student has unraveled the rampant bullying in the New Jersey high school.
The 14-year-old, Adriana Kuch, took her own life just days after a video of her being bullied and beaten in the school hallway surfaced online. Kuch was a student at Central Regional High School in Berkeley Township.
Kuch is not the first student to have received this type of bullying from students at Central Regional High; more parents and students who were once victims of bullying are coming out.
Suicide unravels bullying in New Jersey high school
According to Fox News, a student at Central Regional High School in New Jersey reported a similar case of bullying to Adriana Kuch a year before her death.
Classmates physically assaulted this student, and the incident was recorded and uploaded to social media, resulting in a barrage of hurtful comments.
The bullied student's parents took legal action and reported the incident to the authorities on their own initiative. The family member of that student also alerted the school to act against bullying.
However, the family decided to take legal matters into their own hands and highlighted this bullying case in a lawsuit against the school in Bayville in October 2022.
According to Jonathan Ettman, one of the lawyers representing the student, these bullying incidents are planned and orchestrated by the bullies, who want to gain notoriety and further victimize the person being bullied.
He believed this lawsuit would be a turning point and force change to prevent similar incidents.
Death of Andriana Kuch blamed on family members
However, the Central Regional High School superintendent, Triantafillos Parlapanides, stated that the family situation of Kuch is likely to blame for her suicide and not the institution.
He claimed that the 14-year-old teenager's inner struggles came from using drugs, and another factor was her father's alleged affair.
According to Raw Story, when questioned about Adriana's support services before her death, superintendent Parlapanides spoke about the family's private pain and disclosed personal information about Adriana's family background.
He mentioned that they tried to help Adriana, but her mother's suicide significantly affected her poor decision-making.
Adriana's father, Michael Kuch, disputed the claim that drug counseling was offered to his daughter and stated that she was experimenting with a common teenage behavior of using a weed vape.
He criticized the school official's interview and accused the school of ignoring the bullying that took place and blaming Adriana for her own death instead of recognizing their failure to address the situation.
Michael argued that the bullying Adriana received at school was the main cause of her suicide, not the loss of her mother seven years prior.
Furthermore, according to the New York Post, the devastated boyfriend of the bullied New Jersey teenager Adriana Kuch, Jason Lopez, is struggling to come to terms with her death.
The 16-year-old is constantly in tears and has been re-watching the video of the attack that led to Adriana's suicide with his mother and Adriana's father.
The thought that he might have been able to prevent Adriana's death haunts him, and he feels guilty for not stopping the humiliation she suffered from the beating. The loss of Adriana, who was 14 years old, profoundly impacted Jason and those close to her.
