On September 16, Jaylee Chillson – a 14-year-old girl from Kansas – ran away from home and attended a party with a 20-year-old male. Within hours, she had fatally shot herself in front of a sheriff’s deputy who was trying to convince her to return home to her family. Chillson was pronounced dead at the scene.
In a new interview with The Messenger, which was published on Saturday (September 23), Chillson’s father – Jeb Chillson – detailed some of the horrible ways her classmates had bullied her for several years. The bullying allegedly occurred both in-person and online, even after steps were taken to stop it.
According to Jeb, his daughter’s life began to take a turn for the worse in 7th grade – when she was a student at Clay Center Community Middle School. Students encouraged her to cut herself, sent mean messages to her on social media, and even dumped rubber cement in her hair while others watched.
“One girl was threatening to kill my daughter,” Jeb Chillson said of his daughter, Jaylee Chillson. He decided to contact school officials in an effort to end the bullying campaign, but he says nothing was done and the bullying continued. By the start of 8th grade, his daughter was growing more and more miserable.
That’s when Jeb and his wife, Stacie Chillson, pulled her out of the school and enrolled her in a different middle school in the area. Unfortunately, the bullying grew worse. “My daughter would come in covered in bruises and stuff like that,” Jeb said – adding that one boy went as far as sexually assaulting her.
“One of them grabbed her crotch in a sexual manner against her will. The same boy was bruising her up. He took her AirPods and stole money from her,” Jeb continued. In another effort to end the bullying, he spoke with the school’s principal and was assured that something would be done to address the bullying.
Again, nothing was done and the school ‘refused to do anything’ – leading Jeb to believe that the school had ‘completely failed’ his daughter. Jeb and Stacie then pulled her out of public school to homeschool her, but she continued to receive mean messages on Snapchat, Instagram, phone calls, and much more.