News stories about children being driven to suicide by bullies are too common nowadays. But it's not common to see kids turn on their elders. This week, a 10-minute video which shows a 68-year-old bus monitor being bullied by school children went viral. It has created quite the stir among media and the internet, but some lighter hearted people have banned together to raise money and send the woman on a well-deserved vacation.
For a total of 10-minutes, students of Athena Middle School in upstate New York torture and taunt senior citizen Karen Klein. One of the students posted the video on Facebook and it was then placed on the video site Youtube by an uninvolved person on Monday.
In the video, a group of 12-13 year olds repeatedly call Klein fat, poor, old and ugly. They also poke her and ask for her address, saying that they want to urinate and defecate on her property. They accuse her of having herpes. One student even tells Klein that if he were to stab her, the knife would go through like butter because "it's all f---n' lard."
However, one of the worst hits is when a student remarks that Klein's family all killed themselves because they didn't want to be near her. This comment hit close to home as Klein told ABC News Affiliate Wham that her eldest son committed suicide a decade ago.
The comments brought the widow of 17-years, mother of four, and grandmother of eight to tears. Klein told the bus driver and school officials about the incident, but she didn't expect much to come from it. However, over one million people have seen the Youtube video and several thousand have come to Klein's aid.
Max Sidorov, a recent college graduate from Toronto saw the video on Reddit and decided to do something for Klein.
"I saw the video and I had the idea of helping her," he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "The best thing that came to mind was starting a fundraiser to send her on vacation."
On Wednesday, Sidorov started a fundraising campaign on the site Indiegogo to try to raise money to send Klein on a much needed vacation.
In a note on the campaign site, Sidorov wrote "I'm not sure why these kids would want to bully a senior citizen to tears, but I feel we should do something, or at least try. Let's give her something she will never forget -- the vacation of a lifetime!"
Over 7,000 people have donated to the site and have raised close to $150k at this time, passing the goal of $5k by thousands. The site claimed that Klein only makes $15,506 to be a bus monitor for the Greece School District, which she has been a part of for 23 years, working as a bus driver and monitor.
Sidorov's goal was to send Klein on a vacation, but with the amount of money already raised, and with its continuous rate of increase Klein could start planning her retirement.
ABC News asked Klein if she plans to leave her job, "That's not like me. I'm not a real vindictive person. I just know I want something to happen to make them [the students] realize what they did." However, Klein has no plans to monitor the kids involved in the incident in the future.
There is no word on whether or not the kids involved will be charged. However police have interviewed four of the students and the Greece school district said they are investigating, and the students will be disciplined, ABC News reports.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Sidorov has been communicating with Klein's daughter, who said that she is working with her mom to decide on the perfect dream vacation.
Watch the video here. Warning, the video contains explicit language and may be upsetting.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
