You couldn’t pay me enough to return to high school and relive the nightmare of being a teenager again.

This week the state of Massachusetts is working on enacting a new law prohibiting bullying and harassment at the state’s schools. It is one of the last states in the union that has yet to pass a law that specifically defines what bullying consists of and parameters on how to handle such cases.

The law is before the Massachusetts Legislature as a reaction to the suicide of a 15-year-old Irish immigrant named Phoebe Prince.

Prince was a student at South Hadley High School, where she enrolled last fall. But her life there turned into a living hell that ultimately drove her to take her own life.

According to news reports, Prince briefly dated a popular football player at the school. Now, as a result of that relationship and its demise Prince is no longer alive. The actions of nine of her former fellow students are being blamed for her suicide and they all face criminal charges; seven girls face criminal harassment, civil rights violation and stalking charges. The other two students are both boys and they both face charges for statutory rape.

So reading between the lines of the news stories it appears as though Prince, a new student fresh from another country was raped by two popular kids then incessantly tormented by a group of popular, athletic girls.

The harassment didn’t end when the bell sounded at the end of the school day, either. They followed her home, throwing things at her from cars as she walked. They taunted her through her Facebook page. There was just no escaping their name-calling and abuse.

The girls even went as far as to continue the bullying in the days after Prince’s death, posting nasty messages on her Facebook page and bragging about lying to detectives about their involvement in the bullying.

It never ceases to amaze me how unbelievably cruel kids are.

Although most states have enacted laws prohibiting this kind of behavior, bullying is certainly nothing new to this day and age. Every school has that clique of students who are the “popular kids.” The ones who rule the school and no one would dare cross their path. Mine certainly did and we’re talking many years ago. But these kids went above and beyond what should be considered normal and acceptable behavior.

Thankfully I never had to live through the evident torture that Prince had to endure everyday. She not only (allegedly) had to live with the after-effects of date-rape, but then was tormented with constant reminders of that nightmare in the form of cruel name-calling and isolation, as if to say the rape she endured was somehow her fault or something she deserved. That poor kid.

I suppose it’s easiest to blame her teachers for not noticing the bullying and intervening. Or for blaming the school officials for ignoring the complaints they received from her mother. In a big way it is their responsibility to keep the students safe.

But teenagers as a general populace can be just downright cruel. How does someone decipher everyday, commonplace name-calling and pettiness from the hell Prince lived through? How can we confidently intervene and know there will be no “paying back” the student who came for help to begin with?

Yes, I agree that teachers and school officials should certainly not tolerate the abuse, even verbal, of any student. I certainly think the officials at South Hadley High should have made some sort of effort to address the situation regarding Prince before it was too late to save her life.

But when it comes right down to it, it’s the responsibility of those who tortured Prince to the point of no return. The accused students will have their day in court, and regardless of their age the accountability of their actions rests on their shoulders. The reports of what they did to Prince was awful, wrong and inhuman. No one has the right to treat anyone the way they treated her, and I applaud the prosecutors for throwing the book at them as hard as they can.

Some are saying the students are being treated unfairly, that they’re being singled-out to make an example out of them and now they may have to live with criminal records. I say too bad. Maybe those responsible should have given a second thought to the value of a human life and the effect of their actions as they singled-out one girl who never stood a chance to fight back. It’s their fault Phoebe Prince is no longer alive.

Thankfully, the state of Maine is one of the many who have an anti-bullying and harassment law in effect. Hopefully the threat of a criminal record will dissuade a few bullies from taking things way too far.

— Elizabeth Reilly can be reached at elizabethreilly1@yahoo.com.