Other parents say their kids were bullied at Dunaire

Hours before he killed himself, 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera asked his best friend if anyone would miss him if he was no longer around.

“He told him he was his friend and he would miss him,” said Alice Brown, whose son A.J. is a fifth-grader at Dunaire Elementary School in DeKalb County, where Jaheem attended school. The two friends had a pact, Brown said.

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Curtis Compton/ccompton@ajc.com

Masika Bermudez, the mother of Jaheem Herrera, is comforted by her husband Norman Keene and her children, Yeiralis, 10, left in green shirt, and Ny’irah, 7, as they are joined by family and friends in a ‘prayer circle’ to remember her fifth-grade son outside the family’s apartment in Wesley Club Apartments.

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“He was going to protect Jaheem and Jaheem was going to protect him,” she said.

A.J. returned to school Monday, three days after Jaheem hanged himself in the bedroom of his Decatur apartment. A.J. didn’t make it through the day, calling his mother at home before science class.

“He and Jaheem were science partners,” she said, choking back tears. “I brought my baby home.”

Brown said her son, like Jaheem, has also been targeted by bullies. They called A.J. gay, she said. Jaheem’s sister Yerralis, 10, said her brother also was relentlessly derided as “gay” and “snitch.” Even after Jaheem’s suicide, the abuse persists, Brown said.

“Basically he [A.J.] was called names because he was defending Jaheem,” Brown said. “I think people need to take this issue seriously.”

Jaheem’s mother, Masika Bermudez, spoke briefly at a vigil Tuesday night held in her son’s honor.

“That was my firstborn, and now he’s gone,” she said, clutching two of her daughters — Ny’irah, 7, and Yerralis, who discovered her brother’s body last Thursday after school. “No one’s going to replace him.”

Bermudez has hired an attorney, Gerald Griggs, to address what she said was an inadequate response from school officials. She said she complained several times about the bullying Jaheem endured, including one incident when she alleged Jaheem was choked in the boy’s bathroom.

“The system failed [Jaheem],” Griggs said. He said the bullying started one month after Jaheem began attending classes at Dunaire in August. The 11-year-old had just moved with his family to Decatur from St. Croix in the Virgin Islands.

“We will exhaust every remedy the law allows.” he said.

DeKalb school officials insist they have taken the necessary steps to rid their schools of bullying, including participating in the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” program, which integrates anti-bullying and anti-harassment lessons into the curriculum.

Through the program, all Dunaire students, teachers and staff signed an anti-bullying pledge, DeKalb schools spokesman Dale Davis said.

But other parents have come forward to say their kids suffered abuse similar to what Jaheem’s mother alleges occurred at Dunaire.

Monique McMiller said she noticed something wrong when her son Tyler’s grades began to drop. He didn’t want to admit he was being picked on by other students at Dunaire, some of whom called him gay.

“They rule by intimidation and fear,” she said of the bullies. “We’re talking violence here.”

Her son came home one day with bruises on his back after being thrown into some iron bars on school property.

“They kept telling me we have a no-tolerance bullying policy, yet my son is fearful,” McMiller said.

Samantha Middaugh said she and her husband finally moved after her son Camron endured relentless taunting and one physical beating at Dunaire. Camron, a fourth-grader, is now attending Rainbow Elementary School, also located in DeKalb.

“My son was coming home punching the walls and kicking things,” said Middaugh, who alleges her son was beaten with a belt buckle by another student while at Dunaire. “That was not my son.”

Atlanta attorney Rodney Zell said he took his son out of Henderson Middle School in DeKalb after the boy suffered a concussion at the hands of bullies.

“They slammed his head against the wall in the boys bathroom,” he said. Both Zell and Middaugh said they don’t think school officials took their children’s complaints seriously enough.

DeKalb school officials said Dunaire administrators would not be commenting on specific allegations. Davis said DeKalb schools do not tolerate bullying and other forms of harassment and reserve the right to punish students after an initial incident is reported and verified.

“They are in denial that anything is going on,” said Brown, who said she began visiting the school regularly after her son complained about abuse from his peers. “Kids can be so cruel. Something they don’t even realize it.”

Her son A.J., who turns 11 on Thursday, doesn’t want to go back to school.

“He misses his friend,” Brown said.

— Megan Matteucci contributed to this article.