The 14-year-old had problems with her classmates in the same school club and was harassed by them, according to the legal complaint. - ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
TOKYO (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): The family of a junior high school student in Japan who killed herself in 2017 was awarded 330,000 yen (US$2,500) by a district court, after they filed a lawsuit against the girl’s former classmates.
The family argued that the classmates bullied and drove their daughter to suicide. They demanded about 96 million yen as compensation, reported Japan daily Mainichi Shimbun on Monday.
In a ruling last Friday, the Saitama District Court partially recognised the family’s claim, but dismissed their argument that the third-year student in a municipal junior high school in the Saitama prefecture city of Kawaguchi killed herself because of the bullying.
The girl and the school were not identified by the news outlet.
The 14-year-old had problems with her classmates in the same school club and was harassed by them, according to the legal complaint. The club was not named in the article.
The news outlet reported that the classmates would send the girl texts on popular messaging app Line, calling her “dumb” and “annoying”. The classmates also told other friends, “I’m going to kill her”.
They also reportedly threw away a notebook in which the girl jotted her troubles.
In May 2017, the girl died after falling off a pedestrian bridge on her way to school.
The city government’s third-party panel compiled a report saying that the girl was becoming increasingly isolated and that was likely one of the factors leading to her suicide.
The report also said that the school club adviser and her home room teacher knew the trouble between the girl and her classmates, and tried to advise her on the matter.
However, no solution was reached, showing the school’s organisational guidance system was not functioning adequately, according to the report.
In the ruling, the court acknowledged that some actions taken by the girl’s classmates constituted bullying that goes against the law.
However, the court’s presiding judge Tamiko Ichikawa said there is no evidence to support that the bullying against the girl continued relentlessly over a long period of time.
The girl also remained in the school club of her own free will with a positive attitude, said the judge, who denied the causal relationship between the bullying and the girl’s death.
