Suicide of Sladjana Vidovic

Sladjana Vidović (, April 4, 1992 – October 2, 2008) was a 16-year-old student at Mentor High School in Mentor, Ohio who died by suicide by hanging herself after enduring extensive bullying by several classmates over issues such as her ethnicity, accent, name, and appearance.

Vidović's parents had repeatedly contacted Mentor High School staff to complain about the abuse their daughter endured at the school and her acute state of distress following months of "merciless bullying", requesting their concerns be resolved, although staff failed to effectively address their concerns.

Early life Sladjana Vidović was the second of three children born to Dragan and Celija Vidović. Her parents were Bosnian Croats who hailed from Kiseljak, but had relocated to Croatia as refugees during the Bosnian War. The family moved to northeast Ohio in 2001, when Sladjana was nine years old. Initially, the family resided in Willoughby, Lake County, before relocating to Mentor.

Schooling According to Vidović's suicide note, although other children at McKinley Elementary School in Willoughby occasionally mocked her accent and efforts to communicate in English, she did not suffer severe bullying at Ridge Elementary School, although the school bullying she endured began at this school. McKinley Elementary staff did make efforts to include her in school functions and provide assistance with language barriers. However, her parents did attempt to transfer their daughter to another school due to harassing phone calls made to their home during a summer recess.

Bullying Ridge Junior High School While still attending Ridge Junior High School in 2005, Vidović began attending guidance counseling sessions, (Vidović would also frequently attend guidance counseling sessions while attending Mentor High School, although existing records of these sessions indicate the majority of the sessions dated between September 2007 and February 2008.) The severity of the bullying her daughter endured in junior high school led to her mother requesting her daughter be transferred to another junior high school in the district. This request was denied.

Staff at Mentor's Ridge Junior High School also noted Vidović exhibited problems with social interactions, which included her being the victim of and—in response—participant in name-calling. She also had difficulties applying herself to her studies. with classmates—some of whom had previously been her friends

In one incident dating from November 2007, a teenage boy named Jerry Markley pushed Vidović down a staircase, but remained unpunished by staff for the incident because of his elite athletic status. The incident was determined by the school to have been an accident. (On the evening of this particular incident, Vidović attempted to stab herself in the kitchen of her home.) According to subsequent legal documents, she later invited this individual to her sixteenth birthday party.

Her older sister, Suzana, also recalled that prank callers would frequently phone her sister, or send messages to her cell phone, telling her she and her family should "go back to Croatia", otherwise either she would be "dead by morning" or her tormentors would find her after school. A friend of Vidović, Jelena Jandrić, later remarked: "Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."

In her four-page suicide note—written in both English and Croatian—Vidović wrote that, for more than half her life, she had endured bullying from classmates. Her suicide note extensively detailed the abuse she had endured at the hands of her tormentors at school, listing issues such as being criticized for her accent, enduring derogatory insults such as being called a "slut" and a "whore", and enduring people throwing food and drinks at her during lunchtime, leading to her eating her lunch alone in the school bathroom. Professing her love for her parents and siblings, Vidović expressed her belief her existence only made everyone close to her sad, and that she had never made anybody happy in her life. She ended her suicide note by stating: "I cannot believe I am doing this to myself because I could not wait to grow up and become something but I know I will never become a better child."

Vidović had withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school approximately one week before she killed herself. Vidović's sister would later recollect three of her sister's tormentors—in full view of her family —approached Sladjana's open casket, then laughed, later commenting on social media sites such as Myspace that the pink dress and sandals upon Vidović's body—which she had planned on wearing to her prom—were unattractive.

Aftermath Following their daughter's suicide, Vidović's parents, siblings and many of her friends directly laid the blame for her death on the staff and pupils at both her junior and high school. In interviews, her family have emphasized they had repeatedly begged faculty members of both schools to intervene with regards to their daughter's ongoing bullying, informing staff at her high school their daughter had become extremely depressed, had both threatened and attempted suicide, and had been hospitalized as an outpatient at an adolescent mental health facility in Lake County due to her extreme emotional state.

Although a safety plan had been devised following a meeting between the Vidović family and faculty members on January 3, 2008, during which a safety plan was devised to address Vidović's bullying prior to her returning to school from the adolescent mental health facility on January 15, no affirmative action was taken, with her counselor not sending an e-mail to staff members alerting them to Sladjana's bullying and extreme mental and emotional state until September.

Documentary film The parents of Vidović and Mohat were featured in a documentary film titled Mentor, which premiered on December 9, 2014. This 79-minute documentary focuses upon the overall culture of bullying at Mentor High School; outlining the abuse both teenagers endured and the efforts made by both sets of parents to address their concerns prior to their children's suicide.

Although some locals praised the director's efforts, the documentary provoked severe criticism and threats of violence from local students and community members, who believed the school was being targeted unfairly over an issue that "occurs everywhere". Much of this criticism was directed against director Alix Lambert, whom many accused of solely interviewing the family members of Vidović and Mohat and their lawyer, but not school officials, teachers or other students. This response caused Lambert to remark that she had invited several faculty members and other Mentor students to submit to interviews, but none had agreed, adding: "When an entire student body is sending threatening tweets to a filmmaker in New York and the film isn't even out yet, that's a problem. It serves as evidence that the problem didn't go away and is an illustration of what is happening in Mentor."