‘If I’d only … my son would still be alive today’ - VTDigger (2024)

[J]ohn Halligan figured he was plugged into technology when he worked at IBM’s former Essex Junction plant some 15 years ago. But after his teenage son Ryan took his own life to escape cyberbullying, the father realized he knew little about what lurked inside the average student’s computer and cellphone.

“I thought I was on top of this stuff,” Halligan recalls. “You think you have a pretty good handle on your kids’ circle of friends — the ones who come over to the house, the ones who get invited to the parties.”

But what about the ones you don’t see behind a screen name or who are long gone from a community but still connected online? Before his 13-year-old killed himself on Oct. 7, 2003, the father had spelled out the family’s internet rules: no contact with strangers, and no secret usernames or passwords.

In life, Halligan respected his son’s privacy. Upon the boy’s death, access to Ryan’s accounts revealed a hidden world.

“Ur finally gonna kill urself?!” a forgotten former classmate who had moved away emailed one fateful night.

“Yep,” the eighth-grader replied in just one of a torrent of messages with schoolmates.

Halligan still shudders at all he discovered he didn’t know: “This world that our children are growing up in is very different than the one we grew up in.”

And continuing to change.

“A big part of Ryan’s experience was AOL instant messaging. But now when I tell his story I ask, ‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’ We have got to pay attention and stay on top of this.”

That’s why, a decade and a half after his son’s death, the father is still talking about it. He recalls accepting an invitation in 2005 to tell his story at Mount Mansfield Union High School in Jericho.

“I thought I was going to do it just that once.”

Then he received an email from a student who wrote, “I just wanted to let you know how you affected me … I had picked on kids, after that speech I went to the few that I had and broke down apologizing to them.”

That led to speaking at another school, then another, then another. That led to interviews with television’s Diane Sawyer and Oprah Winfrey. That led to taking time off from work for more talks, then quitting altogether to tour the nation.

A dozen years later, Halligan, now based outside New York City to make travel easier, has presented some 3,000 assemblies to an estimated 1 million students in almost every state as well as Canada and Mexico.

“Stories like this one are heart-wrenching to hear, but they help kids to understand why their schools even have bullying awareness programs,” Connor Solimano, a Rutland High School junior and one of two student representatives on the Vermont Board of Education, wrote in a recent commentary. “A real story has more impact on students than a statistic or a general anti-bullying campaign.”

Last week, Halligan returned to his former home state to address a new generation of Vermonters.

“I have a yearning to come back, primarily because my son is buried here. You don’t get over losing a child. It’s just something you learn to live with,” he says.

Halligan faces occasional press questions about national officeholders turning Twitter into a new bully pulpit. But speaking this month at schools in Fairfield, St. Albans, Stowe and Williamstown, he focused exclusively on the local.

“Young people aren’t thinking about what the politicians are doing — their time is spent on interaction among themselves. This generation, enabled by smartphones, is overdosing on social media. There’s a combination here that’s very unhealthy. My message is how do you respond to it.”

‘Just words’

Halligan starts by rewinding to his son’s birth Dec. 18, 1989. Ryan Patrick Halligan had loving parents, an older sister and, later, a younger brother. But by age 2, the green-eyed, brown-haired boy struggled to move about and hadn’t spoken or seemingly understood a single word.

Diagnosed with developmental delays in speech and motor skills, Ryan received early and special education. He learned he’d always have to work harder than his classmates on assignments. Yet by fourth grade, he was back on track with his peers.

Then came fifth grade. His father noticed students starting to decipher who had better marks, more friends and wealthier families. Ryan complained of one boy in particular who picked on his academic and athletic struggles.

“My son wasn’t coming home with a bruised arm or a black eye — they were just words,” Halligan recalls. “So we gave him typical parent advice: ‘Ryan, a kid like that loves a response. Just ignore him.’”

Graduating to Essex Junction’s grade six through eight school, Ryan seemingly left the teasing behind. Then in seventh grade, the tormentor was back to bullying. The Halligans wanted to talk to the principal, but Ryan said a classmate who complained was tagged a “crybaby” and “tattletale.”

Ryan and his father instead trained in self-defense martial arts, which the boy used to stand up for himself during a fight. Soon after, Ryan surprised his parents by announcing he and the bully were friends. Stranger still, the couple watched their once avid swimmer, camper, skateboarder and cyclist sit hypnotized all summer in front of his computer.

John Halligan was away on business when he woke to a phone call from his wife on Oct. 7, 2003.

“Ryan killed himself,” she said through hysterical sobs.

The IBM engineer sat numb in disbelief. Why would his gentle, gangly boy do anything like that?

For Halligan, the specifics of his son’s suicide are too horrific to remember, let alone publicly recount. Sharing his story, he hopes people understand why he answers some questions but declines to address others.

“The day my son died,” Halligan does say, “the first thing we instinctively looked for was a suicide note.”

The family didn’t find anything in the boy’s bedroom or school locker. Then the father turned on his son’s computer, typed in Ryan’s password and saw his internet account spring to life.

Classmates couldn’t believe what popped onto their screens: Two days after his funeral, Ryan appeared to be back online.

“Who are you?” they typed one after another. “What are you doing? This isn’t funny …”

“I’m Mr. Halligan,” he replied. “Is there anything anybody is willing to share that might explain why Ryan did what he did?”

The responses came together like puzzle pieces. Ryan’s bully had never stopped his taunting. Instead, he shared it on social media, spurring others to post their own torments, many too graphic to repeat.

“I found every single chat conversation my son had,” Halligan says.

Seemingly everyone at school had been swept up in the tsunami. One girl had professed to like Ryan, only to turn around and forward his personal responses to her friends. On the last day, his father learned, Ryan had told his online crush, “It’s girls like you who make me want to kill myself.”

For John Halligan, the answers only sparked questions: What was his son thinking and feeling? And why didn’t he as a parent know and respond differently?

‘Don’t wait’

The father ultimately decided to confront the bully.

“You probably have no idea the amount of pain you brought into my son’s life,” he practically shouted at the boy, who went silent before starting to sob.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the bully said over and over.

Halligan breathed in the apology and exhaled.

“Why didn’t I do this a lot sooner?” he thought on his way home. “If I’d only … My son would still be alive today.”

Seeking to stop future tragedies, the father talked to state legislators. Seven months after Ryan’s death, they voted to require all Vermont schools to develop rules to prevent and respond to bullying. Two years later in 2006, Halligan won passage of a law supplementing health education with lessons about depression and suicide risk.

At the same time, Halligan began sharing his son’s story with students, parents and the public. He tells adult audiences that while society talks of protecting children from computer scammers and stalkers, students are hurting each other daily through unsupervised email, texts and tweets.

“It should not surprise us that if you give middle-school students access to the internet, they’re going to be socially awkward, inappropriate and mean. Every new gadget, every new application, every new whatever has created another new opportunity for a young person to hide behind a screen.”

Facebook requires users to be at least 13 years old, but many students lie about their age. Other social media sites have few if any restrictions.

“If your kids set up a public Instagram or Twitter account, any stranger can start following them.”

Likewise, children who share photos on cellphones unwittingly can send out their geographic location through the global positioning system known as GPS.

“By a picture alone, I can figure out where you live. We’re giving this generation so much access and so much latitude, it’s insane,” Halligan says.

In school presentations during the day, Halligan tells students they need to police each other.

“Don’t be a bystander, be an up-stander — could have made my son’s story a completely different one.”

In community programs at night, he encourages parents, teachers and the public to better understand social media, to give students who need phones simple models without apps, to place the same reviews and restrictions on home electronics that most workplaces do with equipment, and to make sure youth feel comfortable talking not only on Facebook but also face to face.

“Don’t wait until you have a problem. Check with your child and ask them this very simple question: ‘If something went wrong and you were afraid to come to us first, who else would you go to?’”

The answer, the father knows, could change everything.

“Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve — I still struggle with that. All I can do is let other people learn from this. Bullying is a fact of life. Silence and inaction will allow it to flourish, or you can stand up and potentially save a life.”

Vermont's newsletter

Request a correction

Submit a tip