Mentor High School buzzed with activity Friday morning.
The band practiced outside. Maintenance men spread mulch around trees on the front lawn. Students came and went.
Another school year, full of hope and promise, about to begin.
But for the parents of Sladjana Vidovic, Mentor High will always be the place that failed their daughter, who after months of torment took her own life Oct. 2, 2008.
Dragan and Celija Vidovic filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court in Cleveland claiming their 16-year-old daughter was mercilessly bullied by other Mentor High students and that school officials chose to ignore their actions.
It’s similar to another lawsuit attorney Ken Myers filed last year against the Mentor school system on behalf of William and Janis Mohat, the parents of Eric Mohat. Eric committed suicide in 2007 after enduring incessant harassment, including taunts of “fag” and “queer.”
All together, five Mentor High students, the last being Sladjana, committed suicide over a 2 1/2-year period, Myers said, and bullying played a part in each one.
At an outdoor news conference adjacent to the school Friday morning, Myers described how other students made fun of Sladjana’s accent and called her “slut” and “whore” because they didn’t like the boy she dated. Somebody even pushed her down the stairs, he said.
The Vidovics left their native Bosnia in 2001 with their three children and settled in Lake County, first in Willoughby then later Mentor.
Croation by ethnicity, the parents speak very little English. Their daughter Suzana, 22, spoke for the family at the news conference attended by her parents and 15-year-old brother Goran.
She described her sister as a beautiful girl who was always smiling and loved to dance and cook.
“Even the last day she made us all lunch and dinner,” she said, sobbing almost uncontrollably.
The bullying extended beyond school, Suzana said. Her sister would get calls on her cell phone, like, “Your family needs to go back to Croatia,” she said.
At first, Sladjana would yell back at her tormenters, Suzana said, but then it all became so overwhelming.
Then Suzana began to describe the night she went to Sludjana’s room to kiss her good night. She thought her sister was curled up in her bed, but then Suzana’s feet got tangled up in the rope.
Retelling that moment became too much for Suzana and Myers called a halt to the press conference. The whole family retreated to the shade of a nearby tree. Janis Mohat, who was among about two dozen others at the press conference for support, walked over and put her arm around Sladjana’s mother.
Myers later explained that Sladjana had tied a rope around a bed post, and around her neck, then jumped out her bedroom window. She left a note.
Suzana said she also was bullied while attending Mentor High. So did Jelena Jandric, 20, who knew Sladjana through church. Jandric said kids harassed her for being quiet and Croation.
“I just told myself I’ll get out of there one day and I won’t have to worry about it,” Jandric said.
Adrian Beganovic, a 2009 Mentor High graduate, said he would try and stand up for Sladjana but that security guards in the school would threaten him with suspension.
“I even got the same treatment,” he said, “but I was big and strong.”
Sladjana was fine while attending elementary school in Willoughby, Suzana said, but things turned bad at Ridge Middle School in Mentor and then followed her into 10th grade at Mentor High school. Some students would make fun of two moles on Sladjana’s face, Suzana said. But even after she had them removed, the harassment continued.
The lawsuit claims Mentor High Principal Joseph Spiccia and Mentor School District Superintendent Jacqueline Hoynes knew what Sludjana was going through but failed to intervene. The Vidovics complained numerous times, the lawsuit said, warning school officials that Sladjana had become depressed and telling them that bullying had lead to emotional problems that caused her to be hospitalized.
The Vidovics were in the process of taking Sladjana out of Mentor High and enrolling her in a private school when she killed herself, Myers said.
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Article courtesy cleveland.com
