On the last day of her life, Jocelyn Walters stared at her reflection in the mirror and snapped a haunting final selfie. The sophomore with short brown hair was known for her infectious smile and positivity. But the dark circles under her brown eyes and the vacant expression on her face laid bare the painful truth. Jocelyn, 14, had been bullied for months, according to her family. And she was struggling. A suicide attempt the previous year prompted a friend to make a desperate plea to Middletown North High School administrators, according to her father, Fred Walters: Do something to stop Jocelyn’s social torture. Instead, the soccer goalie was trapped in her own personal hell when her sophomore year began. She was assigned to the same class as a student who had humiliated her on social media, cropped her out of photos and tried pressuring her boyfriend to break up with her, according to her family. Just hours after taking that selfie in a school bathroom, Jocelyn killed herself. “She was convinced that there was something wrong with her,” Walters said. “She was thinking that maybe she was missing social cues.” Jocelyn’s family is suing the Middletown school district for negligence and wrongful death, seeking unspecified damages. It alleges school officials stood by and did nothing as she was bullied until she took her own life on Sept. 9, 2022. It is just the latest in a series of high-profile lawsuits in New Jersey tackling one of the most poignant questions in a national mental health crisis: Are schools and their top officials responsible when one of their bullied students dies by suicide? “To sum it up simply: This gets really complex, and it gets messy,” said Scott Poland, a suicide expert who has served as a witness in several bullying cases, both for plaintiffs and for schools. “I am not aware of a court in this country that found the school district liable in a bullying and suicide case.” Every parent knows filing a lawsuit can’t bring back their child. But a civil case is one of the only ways families can call attention to the missteps or even negligence that may have contributed to their son or daughter’s death. The standard of evidence in civil court is lower than in criminal cases, amounting to: Are the allegations more likely true than not? Yet about 95% of all civil lawsuits are settled, dropped or dismissed before trial, according to Sarah Swan, a professor at Rutgers Law School. Bullying-based school lawsuits are no exception. Some families might walk away with multi-million dollar settlements. But they fail to receive what often matters most to them: a formal finding of failure by the school district or a commitment to suicide prevention, according to Poland, co-director of the Suicide and Violence Prevention Office at Nova Southeastern University. Jocelyn’s family seeks that same level of accountability, they say. They have learned the state law touted as one of America’s strongest anti-bullying measures is no one-size-fits-all shield in the face of such a complex and harrowing issue. In fact, the law designed to protect kids can just as easily paralyze and inundate some school officials — while granting others the leeway to conveniently sidestep the problem, experts say. The result is a vortex of tormented students, desperate parents and beleaguered administrators. And in the case of the Walters family, another lawsuit. Another harrowing search for answers. Another father begging for change before it’s too late to save the next child. “I don’t want anyone else to have to feel this way,” said Walters, choking up. His family’s lawsuit comes on the heels of several other prominent cases in New Jersey that underscore the tragic toll of modern bullying, a world where perpetrators are online 24/7 and victims have nowhere to hide. In 2023, the Rockaway Township School District agreed to a $9.1 million settlement with the family of Mallory Grossman, a 12-year-old who died by suicide in 2017. The district did not admit wrongdoing. Classmates called Mallory a “loser,” taunted her for not having friends and wrote, “Why don’t you kill yourself” during rampant cyberbullying. Yet school officials failed to properly intervene, the suit alleged. The family of Adriana Kuch sued Central Regional High School in 2024 after the freshman killed herself the previous year. The 14-year-old’s death came days after a video of her being physically attacked by classmates spread throughout the school. And the mother of Felicia LoAlbo-Melendez is suing the Mount Holly Township School District after the 11-year-old died by suicide in 2023. Felicia, a middle school student, emailed school officials about being bullied and their lack of action a week before killing herself, according to the lawsuit. The Kuch and LoAlbo-Melendez lawsuits have yet to be resolved. In the 2021-2022 academic year, New Jersey schools received 19,138 harassment, intimidation and bullying complaints among their 1.3 million students. In 2022-23, the most recent year data is available, the number rose to 22,022 — reflecting a surge in behavioral issues after students returned to in-person learning following the COVID-19 pandemic. New Jersey schools are tasked by law to investigate each allegation, differentiate bullying from normal teen drama, respond to harassing social media activity when necessary and satisfy parents with conflicting viewpoints. “It’s basically one of those peeling the onion scenarios where you just keep looking and looking and removing layers and removing layers, hoping to get to the core of what has occurred,” said Karen Bingert, a retired principal and executive director of the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association. Jocelyn’s family had complained about bullying to school officials, showing them screenshots of abusive messages and social media posts by another student. She had written about her mental health struggles in English class, prompting a referral to the school counselor. And she once locked herself in a school bathroom, refusing to come out. Yet the Middletown Board of Education argued it investigated all complaints and found no incidents of bullying, according to legal documents. It portrayed her experience as “conflict between Jocelyn and various peers” that included “online harassment against each other.” “Our hearts are broken over the Walters family’s loss,” school board attorney Eric L. Harrison wrote in a statement to NJ Advance Media. He declined to comment further, citing the ongoing litigation. Mental health experts say no one factor is to blame for a suicide. But the Walters family hopes its lawsuit will provide a full accounting of the district’s alleged missteps, expose any school failures and help save lives. “The school did nothing but attempt to defend itself,” Walters said. It “never defended my children.” A whiplash of teen cruelty Fred Walters found his daughter’s body. It was a Friday afternoon. He had just come home from work. The searing image is burned in his memory, haunting him as he retraces her steps, agonizing over how his baby girl went from watching “Glee” and belting out show tunes to feeling so hopeless she took her own life. “She was just that person,” said Walters, his voice breaking. It often does when he speaks of Jocelyn. “You know, she was my little Mini Me.” Born on the day after Thanksgiving 2007, Jocelyn was 11 months younger than her sister Keira. The Walters girls started kindergarten together in New York — Jocelyn a full year younger than some of her classmates — before the family moved to Middletown as they were entering second grade. Jocelyn was always drawn to sports, eager to play anything. She was “the cutest little angel of a kid that you can imagine,” recalled Don Baxter, a Middletown parent whose daughter quickly became friends with both Walters girls. “Kind. Genuine. Hard working. Personable. Empathetic,” said Crystal Goncalves, who coached Jocelyn’s middle school travel soccer team. “If we were just in a huddle or in a circle, she was the light. She just really wanted to see her teammates smile.” Jocelyn became friends with a new social group in the fall of 2021 when she started high school. She began dating a boy and was nominated for freshman class homecoming queen. Then everything fell apart in a whiplash of teen cruelty. Jocelyn wasn’t invited to a party with the rest of her friends in the winter of her freshman year. She was removed from group chats. A student who Jocelyn thought was her friend told Jocelyn’s boyfriend to break up with her or else he wouldn’t have any friends, according to Jeff Youngman, the attorney for the Walters family. Private thoughts Jocelyn had shared with her new friends started popping on social media pages like “MHSN Clowns,” created to mock other students, according to the lawsuit. “I was pushed out of my friend group at the time and bullied relentlessly,” Jocelyn later wrote on social media. She was powerless, an outsider targeted by students with a higher social status, according to Youngman. In early 2022, Jocelyn went to a school counselor to report she was being bullied, her family said. It was a couple months before her first suicide attempt. The district took no action to help her, according to Walters, a mechanical engineer who shields his wife and older daughter from talking about the lawsuit. “What the hell signs did this school need to take drastic action instead of doing absolutely nothing?” Youngman said. “What else were they waiting for?” Bullying is a common contributing factor to teen mental health disorders. Failure to address allegations can leave students feeling more alone and push them deeper into hopelessness and despair, according to Judy French, a coordinator for the National Bullying Prevention Center. Bullying is also one of the most toxic words in public education. It is overused, according to advocates, yet the behavior remains chronically underreported. Its definition varies by state and is frequently misunderstood by parents. And that’s before principals and school board attorneys start parsing words, according to French. “Administrators are often very reluctant to talk about bullying at all,” she said. “I’ve been told not to use the word. And I’m like, ‘You do understand I’m from the National Bullying Prevention Center?‘” A 2011 state law defines bullying as any gesture or act — written, verbal or physical — that violates the rights of another student or disrupts the operation of the school. It can happen in school, off school grounds or online, according to the law. Yet New Jersey’s bullying crackdown has been maligned by all sides. The law, depending on who you ask, is either too strict, too lenient, too easy to circumvent or too time-consuming to follow. A single investigation can take several days and might resemble a Law & Order episode, with interviews of suspects, analysis of security footage and unexpected twists and turns as students tell their own versions of the truth. Some cases are obvious. Others are messy, with back-and-forth slights spanning weeks, if not months or years. School officials must answer what can become a dizzying question: What is the line between bullying and routine social conflict? Only about 40% of the more than 22,000 complaints filed in 2022-23 were confirmed. “No one ever wants to lose a student, and no one ever willingly chooses to take a pathway that would cause a student to make an irreversible decision,” Bingert said. But protecting the district is a paramount concern in some cases. Attorneys live in fear of a day in court and facing down a grieving family, whether they believe school administrators made a devastating mistake or not. “It’s always risky,” said David Rubin, a veteran school board attorney based in Metuchen, “when you have a high-stakes lawsuit against a school district involving horrible injuries, a sympathetic-looking plaintiff and a district who there’s even the slightest evidence might not have acted as it should have.” Hopeless & alone Jocelyn made her first suicide attempt on March 12, 2022. Keira got into a fight in the school cafeteria standing up for her sister, according to Youngman. Keira was suspended, and Jocelyn felt responsible. “My final straw was when everything got out of control, and I felt there was no one who listened to my side of the story,” she later wrote on social media. While Jocelyn was hospitalized, one of her friends went to the guidance office to complain about how Jocelyn was being treated, according to the lawsuit. Walters himself met with a vice principal and two members of the counseling staff a few days after his daughter’s attempt, he said. He provided screenshots of messages and social media posts targeting Jocelyn. “A message needed to be sent that this type of behavior would not be tolerated,” said Walters, who didn’t ask for a specific disciplinary action, but expected there would be some kind of “consequence.” Schools should consider what motivated the behavior, if there is a power imbalance between the students and whether a reasonable person would know their actions would physically or emotionally harm another student, the state advises when considering if behavior rises to bullying. The law also protects against actions motivated by race, religion, ancestry, sexual orientation or any other distinguishing characteristic. “There are schools who don’t accept that responsibility,” said Stuart Green, founder of the NJ Coalition for Bullying Awareness and Prevention. “Just throw a pebble in any direction, and you’ll find some.” But determining if a case meets the standard is only the beginning. How do schools resolve the central conflict? How do they manage the expectations of parents on both sides? And how do they stop kids from behaving badly, especially on social media, where they can post from anywhere at any time? Several of the high-profile lawsuits filed by New Jersey families allege cyberbullying. Schools are required to respond to it when it creates a hostile learning environment or substantially disrupts their “orderly operation,” according to the law. “If they’re permitted to be online and their parents aren’t supervising their online activities, it’s very hard for us to manage that,” said Mark Schwarz, superintendent of Ridgewood Public Schools. “That’s one of the hardest parts of the law.” Schools are required to levy potential consequences for bullying, ranging from a warning to expulsion. They can reprimand, discipline or offer counseling. Even if a conflict doesn’t meet the technical definition of bullying, it likely involves behavior that needs to be addressed, according to bullying experts. “You have to respond to it the same way that parents perceive it, which is it’s an emergency,” Green said. “When kids are targeted, it’s devastating … There’s a deep sense of shame and isolation and just feeling terrible.” But privacy laws prevent schools from telling parents if they have disciplined other children or how they have disciplined them, according to Betsy Ginsburg, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, a group of about 100 districts. The phrase “and the school did nothing” might not always be true, she says. In Jocelyn’s case, there was no intervention to help her or reduce tension between the students, the Walters lawsuit alleges. “She was left to feel hopeless and alone,” Walters said. “The school failed in every way to take its responsibilities seriously.” Uphill battle Jocelyn seemed to be turning a corner in the summer after her freshman year. She got a job she loved selling ice cream and cotton candy on the Keansburg boardwalk. She wanted to become a lawyer and dreamed of attending the University of Notre Dame, home to her dad’s favorite football team. The family never thought of changing schools, according to Walters. Jocelyn “wanted to stay and hold her head up,” he said. She also realized she identified as a lesbian, according to Walters, who said the bullying never seemed related to her sexuality. But as the fall approached, Jocelyn began to backslide. She started self-harming for the first time in months, she confided to a nurse practitioner at Rising Swell Mental Health, where she had been receiving therapy, according to the lawsuit. The nurse practitioner doubled the dosage of Jocelyn’s antidepressant on Aug. 26, 2022, Youngman said. (The Walters family has named Rising Swell, the nurse practitioner and the student that it says bullied her — a minor identified only by their initials — as defendants in the wrongful death case. Lawyers for all parties have denied any wrongdoing.) A few days before she died, Jocelyn posted on social media about her roller coaster mental health journey and recent spiral. Still, she concluded the post optimistically. “I have always and will always be the smiley Jocey that is there for anybody,” she wrote. “I will always be there to cheer you up on bad days and make sure you’re okay because I know that people I’m surrounded by are people who truly love me and care about me as I truly love them and care about them.” But she never saw the second week of her sophomore year. Jocelyn went to the school nurse on Thursday, Sept. 8 and Friday, Sept. 9, 2022, for reasons never explained to her family, according to the lawsuit. The school didn’t notify Jocelyn’s parents despite her known mental health concerns, Walters said. He also didn’t know she shared a class with her alleged bully. By the time Walters got home on Sept. 9, Jocelyn had already killed herself. “If I would have gotten a call that she was at the nurse, I would have come home,” he said. Pinpointing why someone died by suicide isn’t easy, according to Dr. Eric Alcera, chief medical officer and vice president of Carrier Clinic, an inpatient psychiatric treatment center in Montgomery. It only adds to the uphill battle families face in suing school districts over a bullied student’s suicide. They need proof of the bullying, documentation that the school knew about it and a convincing argument that the bullying caused the suicide while officials failed to follow policy that would have prevented it, according to Poland. Many grieving families just want an acknowledgement like The Lawrenceville School offered after one of its students died by suicide in 2022, according to Green. The elite boarding school admitted it fell “tragically short” in its responsibility to protect 17-year-old Jack Reid. It also acknowledged “bullying and unkind behavior, and actions taken or not taken by the school, likely contributed to Jack’s death.” The school pledged to draft new bullying policies as part of a negotiated settlement with the family. Many cases end in settlements, with insurance companies deciding it’s more cost effective than going to trial. But not every family gets an admission like the Reids or a near-eight-figure settlement like the Grossman family. “I feel like it gives other parents that are in the same circumstances a case to reference to say, ‘Pay attention to me. Because if you don’t pay attention to me, this is what’s going to happen,‘” said Dianne Grossman, Mallory’s mother. In the weeks that followed Jocelyn’s death, Walters became immersed in the community of grieving parents who have lost a child to suicide — including a student from another Middletown school who died less than a year earlier. “I’m looking to create change,” he said, his voice breaking every time he mentions their stories, “so that this doesn’t happen anymore.” Jocelyn would have turned 17 right before Thanksgiving. She once dreamed of getting her driver’s license and celebrating with a family party, a car waiting for her in the driveway. Instead, her family lit candles in her memory. A month and a half after Jocelyn’s death, her parents received a letter from Middletown North. The formal missive, dated Oct. 26, 2022 and signed by Principal Kevin Cullen, was printed in black ink on white paper. School officials had conducted an investigation into Jocelyn’s allegations, the typed letter read in sparse, clinical language. It found no bullying had occurred. Suicidal thoughts and behaviors can be reduced. If you are in crisis, call the National 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 9-8-8 or visiting 988lifeline.org. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Adam Clark may be reached at aclark@njadvancemedia.com.