“Was there any physical contact between the two of you?”
Dinah’s answer was shrilclass="underline" “Of course not! All he did was try and help me. See, I was right. I knew you’d make it look like he did something wrong.”
“It seems to me he would have helped you a lot more by reporting the bullying to the school administration.”
“He wanted to, but I convinced him not to.”
“I need his name, Dinah.”
“He never gave it to me. The help lines are anonymous.”
Her voice tailed off. Even she knew her lie sounded lame. “You know, with one phone call I can get his name, but do you want me to do that? It would mean involving other people, including your family.”
“Can’t you understand that I don’t want to betray a confidence?”
“If you call him now and explain the situation, he’ll understand you don’t have a choice. And after you do that I want you to have him call me back at this number.”
Dinah sighed and then clicked off.
Two minutes later my phone rang. A male voice asked me if he was speaking with Detective Gideon, and when I told him he was, the man said, “This is Dave Miller. Dinah Hakimi said you wanted to talk with me.”
“You’re her counselor?”
“I am not a licensed counselor. I am a volunteer at the Community Crisis Line.”
“How long have you been advising Dinah?”
“We first started talking about a year ago.”
“Dinah didn’t want to give me your name. She was afraid of getting you into trouble.”
“I’ve already reassured her about that. I told her that I brought any trouble on myself by breaking the rules.”
“So why is it that you thought you were above the rules?”
“That’s not what I thought or think. I understand the reasoning behind the rules. I know counselors need to maintain boundaries between themselves and those they are trying to help. And in the eighteen months I’ve worked at the Community Crisis Line, I never violated those rules. In Dinah’s case, though, I felt the need to intervene. I tried to refer her to specialists, but she refused to talk to anyone but me. When she threatened to kill herself, I agreed to meet with her in person.”
“Was she crying wolf?”
“I don’t think so. But I still should have found a better way to help her other than by meeting with her.”
“I’d like a face-to-face with you-today, if possible.”
“Since today is my volunteer day, I am going to be in the LA area anyway. I can talk with you in the early afternoon, but I am scheduled to be on the phones beginning at three.”
“Where are the offices of the Community Crisis Line?”
“Culver City.”
“And where are you driving from?”
“I live just above Temecula.”
Temecula is in the south of Riverside County and nowhere near Culver City. “That’s a long commute.”
“I only do it one or two days a week. When I first started volunteering at the Community Crisis Line, I lived in West LA and then last year moved to De Luz. It’s a bit of a drive, but I didn’t want to quit the help line.”
“Let’s meet in Culver City at two then. Do you know a good spot to talk?”
He thought a moment and then said, “Are you familiar with the lobby bar in the Culver Hotel?”
I almost said something about following the yellow brick road but refrained. I had frequented the Tiny Town retreat a few times and told him I would be there at two.
Over a cup of coffee and a piece of burned toast, I googled “bullying causes teen suicide.” I was sorry to see there were so many hits and so many sad stories. According to what I gleaned, there are about five thousand teen suicides in the United States every year, but in some ways that’s only the tip of the iceberg; for every successful suicide, there are many, many attempts. There is even a word for a suicide caused by bullying: “bullycide.”
Among teens, suicide is the third leading cause of death, and sensitive children are especially vulnerable to bullies. I wondered if the bullying pack sensed that, and if they targeted the vulnerable just like animals of prey did. Even the mental health professionals aren’t sure of which comes first: the depression that worsens from the teasing, or the teasing that causes depression. What isn’t in question is that the bullying makes it worse for the suffering victim. Even someone strong like Dinah Hakimi had been beaten down by her tormentors.
Unfortunately, home is no longer a place to be safe from the bullies. Cyberbullying can be just as bad, if not worse, than being physically bullied. Electronic character assassinations are all too commonplace. Young people don’t have the coping mechanisms that come with age, and I read about suicides that had resulted from poison-pen websites and devastating instant messages and anonymous posts. One mother had gotten involved in her daughter’s fight and posed as a sixteen-year-old boy to lure in her daughter’s rival. After pretending friendship, the mother had written devastating comments about the girl, who ultimately committed suicide.
Those stories and others dominated my thoughts during my drive to the Police Administration Building. Gump and Martinez were holed up on the fifth floor, the home for Robbery-Homicide. We met in a conference room and went over where we were with the case.
I found a spare desk and used my laptop to continue delving into the world of cyberbullying. I wondered if Klein and company had gone that route, and added it to my list of things to check out.
Of course Klein hadn’t been averse to the old-fashioned kind of bullying either. I made a call to Troy Vincent, the lacrosse player Klein had allegedly coldcocked. When I identified myself and the purpose for my call, Vincent sounded distinctly uncomfortable.
“You’re not supposed to say bad things about dead people, are you?” he said.
“That’s a saying,” I said, “but not a reality.”
Reluctantly, Vincent agreed to meet with me the following morning at his high school.
I thought about the need for people to speak ill of the dead. If not for Dinah Hakimi’s card, I might not have gotten a lead on Paul Klein’s bullying. These days, when people die their obituaries are available online, and friends and acquaintances are encouraged to leave testimonials. I had this feeling that sometimes it’s not only friends that feel the urge to write something. I looked up Paul Klein’s obit online and then went to the guest book where I could read the entries that had been left. Almost eight hundred people had written notes for Paul, the kind of figure that’s usually only generated by professional athletes and actors. Klein’s unusual death had struck a nerve not only in LA but also in the country.
After looking through a few hundred entries, I began to suspect something wasn’t right. Each of the notes expressed sorrow. As far as I could determine, there were no undercurrents and not even a hint of discord. That didn’t seem possible to me. Even saints have their detractors. I was certain a censor’s hand was at work.
My suspicions were confirmed when I contacted the Dearly Departed website and was able to talk to its obituary editor, Mary Ann Wiggins. “About a third of our staff spends its days vetting comments on the guest book,” she said. “Nothing gets posted until we have checked through it carefully.”
Cyberbullying apparently didn’t only extend to the living. “People like to speak ill of the dead?”
“You wouldn’t believe what comes through here. It’s nastier than you could imagine.”
“I’m a cop.”
That meant I had seen and heard everything, but that didn’t stop Wiggins from telling me a few stories. I heard about sons and daughters trying to “set the record straight.” It was Mommie Dearest multiplied tenfold. She also told me about outsiders with axes to grind who weren’t placated by death; people wanted to expose supposed pillars of the community as drunks, pedophiles, adulterers, and whoremongers.
“Of course our readers don’t get to see those comments,” Wiggins said.