Charlie Schnell

If you are lucky, you will never have to defend yourself or your words alone will protect you or at least someone who can make a difference will listen. It shouldn’t take luck to survive.

When you are bullied, people think something is wrong with you. 

And when bullying ends your life, people say something is wrong with you. 

But anyone can be bullied; the new kid, the kid that tries something new, or the kid simply chosen today. 

And anyone can be destroyed by bullying.

Charlie Schnell was an ordinary boy very loved by his family and friends. A happy kid who loved to laugh and tell a joke, he fill the room with his smile. Unbelievably Charlie only lived to be 16 years old. That is when his world was torn apart by bullying.

If this can happen to Charlie.

This can happen to anyone.

Every school must commit to be a place where every student is valued, protected, supported and shepherded into adulthood.

Charlie’s school wasn’t that place. It didn’t consider, act on, or share with his parents the suicide risk signs they saw .

The school proclaims expertise in understanding and supporting the development of boys and that teachers and administrators are dedicated to have all boys thrive.

Instead, his school didn’t share and/or take action on a very traumatic suicide in the school community; a very traumatic threat to shoot up the school from a classmate; increasing stress from missing school due to Covid, mono and strep; the effects of a significant concussion; and the physical threats made against Charlie for an unfounded allegation made without the opportunity for Charlie to rebut.

Charlie’s parents were beside him every step of the way except while he was at school - a place which promised a dedicated and supportive place for boys but instead failed to warm him that he was in a zone of danger from his classmates