Bullied, But Not Broken

Curly blonde hair, blue eyes, freckles and a smile. That’s what Spirit looked like on the second Sunday in July. That’s what winning looked like.

Well, technically, 14-year-old Kimmey Worth of Austell was First Runner Up in the Miss Spirit category of the 2011 National American Miss Junior Teen Georgia competition, but spirit isn’t about technicalities.

It’s about being unbroken.

While many of the girls in the pageant had spent weeks preparing to walk confidently, smile brightly and hold their heads high while competing, Kimmey unknowingly had nearly a year and a half of preparation.

A Spirit of Tenacity

When Kimmey lifted her girl’s size 13 shoes to walk through the hallways, they felt like blocks of concrete. She focused on keeping steady, though sometimes she trembled. Lift, plant. Lift, plant. One in front of the other. Head down.

She willed her legs to keep moving even as she was hit with flying objects, which bounced off her, or with derogatory nicknames, which seeped into her.

She kept moving until it became too much for her 12-year-old spirit to handle, and she begged her mother not to make her go back to school.

Bullying: An Epidemic

Kimmey’s story of bullying is one that is all too common in schools across the nation and even throughout the world. Bullying and its tragic consequences have become front-page news in the last few years as the schoolyard bully has become even more vicious with the help of social networking sites and cell phones.

A cyber-bully now has almost unlimited access to his or her target and can send nasty text messages, social media messages and even create groups or fan pages about how much they “hate” a targeted peer. In one of the most infamous cases of cyberbullying, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince killed herself in 2010 after allegedly being physically and virtually bullied by a group of nine peers. The U.S. government has begun initiatives to combat bullying, with a focus on cyberbullying as well.

Locally, began the , a suicide prevention strategy that consists of an all-day listening forum for students, in 2010 after a former student and a current student both took their lives.

Kimmey’s Story

For Kimmey, the bullying began her second semester of seventh grade, four girls and one boy made it their mission to make sure Kimmey knew they didn’t like her.

They didn’t like when she wore lipgloss.

They didn’t like that she was white.

They didn’t like her glasses, so they tore them off her face, breaking them and leaving a large mark across her face.

They bumped her in the halls, ripped her homework when the teacher’s back was turned, slapped her across the back of the head or sometimes in her face and called her names, all kinds of names.

“I was terrified to even go to school,” Kimmey said.

 “They would say, ‘I’m going to get you in the bathroom.’”

She suffered from bladder infections because she wouldn’t use the restroom at school. She had crippling migraines and couldn’t hold her head up high. She spent a good bit of her day looking down at her feet.

Kimmey never said anything to her close-knit family. She didn’t want their image of her to change.

She had always been a caretaker. At 9 years old, she began caring for her ailing great grandmother, Me-Maw, by changing her diaper and sleeping with her on summer nights.

“You can’t ask for a little girl that’s 14 years old and helps out her family and loves them so much,” said Joy Wall, Kimmey's grandmother who picked her up from school each day. “Most kids her age are more interested in boys.”

Kimmey, an active Girl Scout, has volunteered with United Way and helped blind individuals by participating in the Confederation of the Blind’s Barking for the Blind programs. She has packed lunches and dinners for Meals on Wheels and stuffed backpacks for the Atlanta Union Mission Women Shelter.

During the first semester of seventh grade, she helped victims of the Austell flood rebuild their homes carrying building materials to various sites.

Surely, she could ignore these bullies, she thought at first. But soon the constant attacks were too much.

 She held back tears at school, but woke up at night sobbing. She stood in the mirror, desperately searching for ways to change the way she looked in an effort to stop the names.

Her mother, Lena, would scold her for her grades, which had slipped like her self-esteem.

Kimmey kept what was happening to herself and seriously considered taking the bullies’ advice, the advice they’d whisper in passing or send to her in Facebook messages.

“I got several notes and messages on IM that I should just kill myself, that I should leave and never come back,” Kimmey said. IM is an abbreviation for instant messaging, a form of chatting online done on social networking sites and email services.

When she couldn’t take it any longer, she reported the children, whose names she didn’t know at first. Several times in the principal’s office, hiccupping from sobbing so hard, she filed reports of the incidents.
She told her parents who met several times with school officials.

“They felt like if they didn’t see it, it didn’t happen,” Lena said of the faculty and staff at Garrett.

Dr. Harris, principal of Garrett, said bullying is an important issue and was the topic of the school's second quarterly school-wide assembly this year.

"When it comes to bullying, we try to partner with the parents," Harris told South Cobb Patch.

"Usually, we try to create an environment where the student would be comfortable to tell," Harris continued.

In Kimmey's case, Harris said the school expended all its resources from teachers, counselors, grade-level administrators, school resource officers and himself to address the bullying.

"We took statements, but nothing could ever be substantiated...We pretty much do everything that we can on every level to make sure we address the issue," Harris said.

Lena and Kimmey’s father, Jack, met with some of the bullies’ parents, but it seemed to have no effect.

Eventually, Lena removed her daughter from school, and the headaches stopped. It ached to see her daughter in so much pain. The bullying affected Kimmey’s entire family.

“We are required to send our children to school, but they’re not being protected in the school system,” said Joy Wall, Kimmey’s grandmother who picked her up from school each day.

Kimmey enrolled in Cyber Academy for Homeschoolers and began working with a counselor the school had suggested. It was hard for Lena, a working-class woman who loves her children very much, to remove her daughter from school and to have someone else counseling her.

However, it’s helped.

Kimmey went back to school for the second semester of her eighth grade year.

It wasn’t easy.

She couldn’t help anticipating the bumps, the names, the slaps, but they never came.

From Bullied to Junior Miss

During that time, members of the Meals on Wheels program recommended her for the National American Miss pageant.

Her excitement was only rivaled by that of her family.

“I am so excited, and I love her so much,” Lena told South Cobb Patch before the pageant. “She’s been through some hard times in her little life.”

With the pageant, she had something to look forward to at the end of her eighth grade year.

“Kimmey found a way to like herself,” Joy said. “This pageant is building up her confidence and letting her know that she’s not a piece of trash to be thrown away. She’s a human to be liked and to be loved.”

On the first day of the two-day competition, the 183 girls from all over the state attended workshops together and got to know one another.

Kimmey was nominated by the girls as the First Runner Up for Miss Spirit, the girl who was the kindest, the most congenial, the friendliest.

Lena said before the pageant that she took Kimmey out of school because “it just got too hard,” but in doing so,  “Kimmey found out who she liked, and she liked herself.”

Turns out so do plenty of girls from all over the state of Georgia.

Kimmey didn’t need a title to show that she’s filled with spirit, and she takes it wherever she goes.

She technically wasn’t Miss Spirit, though. But spirit isn’t about technicalities. It’s about being unbroken, and for the last two years, Kimmey, with support of her family, picked up the pieces to find that she was whole.