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A 10-year-old Illinois girl has committed suicide after enduring bullying that included being called a boy when she had her hair cut short.

Ashlynn Conner, who lived in the small town of Ridge Farm in eastern Illinois, was found hanged in her closet Friday night, and family members believe she took her own life due to bullying and teasing that had gone on for several years, the Associated Press reports.

“When she started cheering for youth football, we’d gotten her hair cut in a bob,” said Lory Hackney, her grandmother. “The kids started making fun of her then. They started calling her a boy.” She was subsequently called “fat,” “ugly,” and “slut,” relatives said.

Vermilion County sheriff Pat Hartshorn said investigators “are not ruling out bullying, but we don’t have any firm evidence to support bullying,” the AP reports.

However, Ashlynn’s mother, Stacy Conner, said the girl came home from school Thursday complaining about taunting by fellow students and asked if she could be home-schooled. Stacy told Ashlynn, a fifth-grade honor roll student who hoped to become a veterinarian, that she would discuss the teasing with her school principal this week. But Friday, shortly after having a phone conversation with a friend about the problem, Ashlynn was discovered hanging in the closet. Hackney, a retired nurse, tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate her granddaughter.

“I don’t know what was so bad she couldn’t wait,” Hackney told the AP.

Source: http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...ased_Taunting/

This is really disturbing, and just shows how kids can equally reflect society's bigotry. I also don't think law enforcement or her own family should be downplaying the severity of bullying for youth. "I don't know what was so bad she couldn't wait." When you're being tormented every day by your peers, "waiting for it to get better" at the age of 10 isn't something that you often feel you can do. I was bullied a lot as a kid, from about grade 1 to grade 10. I was called everything in the book by my peers, physically and verbally taunted. There was a time when I wasn't planning on making it out of my teen years.

This girl was 10 years old and being called a "slut," "fat," "ugly" and made fun of by her classmates because she had a short hair cut. People don't think it was "bad enough" that she had to find a way out on her own? Adults need to stop expecting kids to be able to deal with bullying alone. That kids need to just "wait it out." Putting up with bullying should not be a prerequisite to making it into adulthood. It's time people stop saying "it gets better," and actually fucking make it better. Stop gendering children so damned much that anyone who presents any variation is pushed to self-hatred. Stop making more and more rigid boxes for kids to be shoved into. Just let them be who they are, and then hopefully other youth will stop bullying their classmates if/when adults decide to stop normalizing bullying, sexism, transphobia and homophobia.