[M.D. Holloway]

part II

Aftab points to the case of a girl named Nafeesa Onque from Newark. Several years ago, when Nafeesa was 13, another girl went online and created a fake Facebook account in Nafeesa’s name.
“She set her up for sexual attacks, posted nude photos of herself from the neck down and started communicating with members of local gangs as Nafeesa,” Aftab says. Why’d she do it? They liked the same boy. “That shows how, in so many cases, what happens online can go offline very quickly,” Aftab says.
In that case, it took law enforcement nearly two years to track down Nafeesa’s tormentor; meanwhile, Nafeesa refused to be bullied. She maintained her own original Facebook page, and her mother kept reporting the abuse to site administrators and the police.
Aftab and Hinduja say that in the majority of cases, victims of cyber bullying don’t know what to do — or that there’s anything they can do. Aftab’s 20-year-old organization, WiredSafety, offers free help to anyone in need but says that after all this time, not enough people are aware. “I’m on TV all the time, but clearly I’m not getting the word out,” she says. “Curt could’ve come to us, but he didn’t know we existed.”
Ultimately, Curt Schilling didn’t need outside help — and that’s what he wants everyone to take away from this experience. “You don’t have to be famous, and you don’t have to have money,” he says. “You just have to be really, really loud.”
It could be argued that Gabby’s online humiliation would never have become a national story had her father done what she wanted — ignored it. For her generation, the ingrained response to online targeting is “haters gonna hate” and “don’t feed the trolls.”
Yet Schilling didn’t just engage in flame wars: He publicly identified the pseudonymous online posters and asked how their schools could possibly abide such behavior. Whether public shaming is a healthier response, or a more just one, is something we as a society are still unsure of — as are the experts.
“I go back and forth,” Hinduja says. “I don’t want people to feel like they can always take justice into their own hands. But if law enforcement isn’t going to do anything about it, maybe this is something that will deter people.”
Modal Trigger
Gabby pitches to Curt during softball practice.Photo: Getty Images
For Curt Schilling, a man who’s been famous for the bulk of his life, publicly shaming those two individuals may have felt like a proportional response. But none of us is immune from that lone tweet destroying reputations.
“Are we now going to have a society that pauses for a moment before posting something hateful?” Hinduja asks. “I don’t think it works that way.”
Without directly engaging, there are simple steps anyone can take to stop a cyber bully. Aftab’s and Hinduja’s organizations both work with service providers to get content removed swiftly, and Aftab works with law enforcement all over North America. Individuals can contact sites on their own and get action.
“You can block, you can report, you can set up protective mechanisms,” Hinduja says. “And targets need to know — when you click on ‘report,’ or report abuse, the person you’re reporting never finds out it’s you.”
Schilling, however, is gratified that his daughter’s bullies felt his wrath personally, that as a 48-year-old suburban dad of four, he could level some consequence.
He says that most of the aggressive tweets aimed at Gabby came from young athletes and feels that “all of those had to do with how people felt about me.”
Schilling got in touch with their coaches and parents, and many were made to write letters of apology.: “One of the anonymous tweeters is being recruited to play football.”
But one more digital misstep, Schilling says, and “he’s going to ruin that.”
At Gabby’s request, Schilling has stopped naming names.
“She’s already started to move on, and I need that to happen,” he says. “But I want young girls and women to know: You don’t have to take this.”