Conspiracy of Silence

On October 6th 2010, Kate Harding had this to say (in the wake of the tragic suicide of Taylor Clementi) :
"Seriously, half the problem here is the astonishing number of adults willing to come to the defense of the kids who are tormenting their peers, day in and day out.....Can we stop making excuses for the bullies and start standing up for the kids they torment? ....  I simply can’t understand why so many adults are so eager to dismiss bullying as a childhood inevitability of no real consequence, something on a par with skinned knees, maybe a broken wrist at worst. Something that heals quickly and turns into a distant memory or even a funny story. I can only assume those people were once bullies themselves — perhaps they still are — and are thus loath to acknowledge how much serious, long-lasting damage they might have done."
(original article can be found here : http://kateharding.info/2010/10/06/)
Bullying takes so many forms, and the outcome is never good.
An 11-year old boy has died in a pool of his own blood. He was shot by his 12-year old cousin during an argument about taking a knife out hunting. Triston Papuni will not be growing up any more; he will not be standing up to any more bullies. That, you see, is what killed him. Triston called his 12-year old cousin 'an arsehole' and the cousin poked him with a hunting rifle several times before grabbing two bullets and loading the gun, asking "Are you going to get cheeky now I'm sticking bullets in it?" Triston turned his back. So his cousin shot him in the shoulder, and the bullet destroyed his windpipe.
Here is a list of the things that sicken me about this story.

• This 12-year old killer was a bully who had been reprimanded at three of his previous schools for picking on his classmates. At 12, he had attended at least three schools, where his bullying behaviour was..reprimanded.That obviously put the fear of God into him.
• Two boys get into an argument, and one of them picks up his fathers' hunting rifle WHICH IS JUST LYING AROUND and loads it with live ammunition WHICH IS ALSO JUST LYING AROUND and shoots another child in the back to prove how superior he is. You can see the source of the problem right here. What kind of arsehole teaches a 12-year old how to load and use a hunting rifle and then leaves it AND THE AMMUNITION lying around? The kind of arsehole that calls bullying harmless; that kind of arsehole.
• We know Triston's name. His killer, however, has permanent name suppression. This has been granted to allow him the opportunity to 'eventually reintegrate into society'. He is getting a choice. He has permanently deprived Triston of any choices whatsoever.

No sentence would assuage a family's grief at losing a child. This killer (I'm not calling him a bully any more) gets 20 months in a juvenile detention centre; his father gets 2 years for attempting to cover up the shooting by telling his son to lie to the police and make it look like an accident.It doesn't start to cover the damage done.
Here's the thing that really made my heart ache. These kids are part of a close community. The family of the victim had this to say :
"It has been a torment to us that those sentenced today have remained in the community since the death of Triston. It has seemed to many that their being in the community meant that there were no charges to be answered."
Too many adults willing to take part in the conspiracy of silence that prevents bullying behaviour from being treated like the social evil that it is. Right THERE is what killed Triston Papuni.