Ryan Halligan

**Ryan Halligan** (December 18, 1989 – October 7, 2003) was an American boy.

## Early life

Halligan was born on December 18, 1989, in Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of John P. and Kelly Halligan. His family moved to Essex Junction, Vermont, where Halligan attended Hiawatha Elementary School and, later, Albert D. Lawton Middle School.

He was described by his father as a "gentle, very sensitive soul," who experienced some developmental delays affecting speech and physical coordination in his early school years. Although he overcame those difficulties by the fourth grade, "He still struggled; school was never easy to him, but he always showed up with a smile on his face, eager to do his best," said his father.

## Bullying

#### 2000–2001

When Halligan was in 5th grade, he started to suffer bullying at the hands of a group of students at his school because of his learning disorder, his passion for music (drums and guitar), and his love for drama. His father said that when Halligan told him he was being picked on, his initial response was to ignore the boys, as they were just bullying him with words. The family later said in a short documentary that Halligan enrolled in counseling, with little success. After that he moved up to middle school, where the bullying continued when Halligan was in 7th grade.

#### 2002–2003

In December 2002, Halligan told his father that the bullying had started again. He asked for a Taebo Kick Boxing set for Christmas in order to learn how to defend himself. At first, his father wanted to go to the school principal and sort things out, but Halligan insisted that he wanted to learn how to fight, believing that complaining to the school about the boys would make things worse. After Christmas, Halligan and his father developed a routine of practicing downstairs in the basement for 2 hours every night. After he had learned to defend himself, his father told him not to pick fights at school, but said that if any student ever touched him aggressively, Halligan had his father's permission to defend himself.

In February 2003, Halligan had a fight with a bully, which was broken up by the assistant principal; after that, the bully stopped bothering him. Halligan's father said that he was proud of his son for sticking up for himself. Toward the end of 7th grade, Halligan told his father that he and the bully had become friends. His parents warned him to be careful about the friendship, because the bully had been harassing him for a long time. The two boys were friends for a short amount of time. After Halligan told the bully about an embarrassing examination required after he had stomach pains, he learned that the bully misused the story to spread a rumor that Halligan was gay.

#### Summer 2003

According to his father and news reports, during the summer of 2003, Halligan spent much of his time online, particularly on AIM and other instant messaging services. Halligan did not tell his parents about this. During the summer, he was cyber-bullied by schoolmates who taunted him, thinking he was gay. Halligan was also bullied at school about this; his father later learned that on one occasion, Halligan ran out of the classroom in tears. As Halligan had unintentionally archived these online conversations on his hard drive when he installed DeadAIM, his father was able to read these discussions. Halligan had deliberately saved transcripts of online exchanges in which Ashley, a popular girl whom Halligan had a crush on, pretended to like him. Later at school, Ashley told him that she was only kidding and that he was a "loser". According to an ABC *Primetime* report, she had once been his friend and defended him when the bullying first started, but as she became more popular, she left him behind. He found out she only pretended to like him to gain personal information about him. She copied and pasted their private exchanges into other IMs among his schoolmates to embarrass and humiliate him.

After Ashley had called him a "loser", Halligan said, "It's girls like you who make me want to kill myself." His father found out about this later because it was a matter of record with the local police. Halligan's father also discovered some disturbing conversations between Halligan and a boy with a screen name he did not recognize. Halligan began communicating online with a pen-pal about suicide and death, and told him he was thinking about suicide. They had been exchanging information they had found on sites relating to death and suicide, including sites that taught them how to painlessly kill themselves. The pen-pal answered "Phew. It's about fucking time," shortly after Halligan told him he was thinking about suicide, two weeks before he killed himself. This was the last conversation he had with the pen-pal. As Halligan's father found out, contrary to popular belief, Halligan's pen-pal was a boy he knew up until third grade, when the boy and his parents moved away. When they found each other online, they reconnected.

The pen-pal had, according to Halligan's father, turned into a very negative person with a bleak outlook on life. Online, the boys discussed how much they hated their popular classmates and how they made them feel. The pen-pal suggested suicide as a way out, writing, "If you killed yourself you would really make them feel bad." Halligan's father said that the boy was the worst possible friend that Halligan could have had at that time.

The parents acknowledged that Halligan had discussed some of his worries and brought up suicide. He had told them his report card would be bad, and worried that his parents would be disappointed in him. One night he asked his dad if he had ever thought of suicide, who responded that he had, but also said, "Ryan, imagine if I did do that. Look at all the things we would have missed out on as a family."

## Death

On October 7, 2003, Halligan's father was away on a business trip. Early in the morning, when the other family members were still sleeping, Halligan hanged himself with a bathrobe tie that belonged to his older sister, who later found his body.

Although Halligan left no suicide note, his father learned of the cyberbullying when he accessed his son's computer. He checked his son's yearbook first and found the faces of the bullying group scribbled out. Halligan had scribbled over the face of the ringleader (the same boy who bullied Halligan, befriended him, and then started the gay rumor) so aggressively he had torn the paper. Halligan accessed his son's computer and first learned of the cyber-bullying when his son's friends told him.