History of Ryan Halligan

Ryan Halligan was born on December 18, 1989 in Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of John P. and Kelly Halligan. His family moved to Essex Junction, Vermont, where Halligan attended elementary school and, later, middle school. He was described by his father as a "gentle, very sensitive soul", who experienced some developmental delays affecting speech and physical coordination in his early school years. Although he overcame those difficulties by the fourth grade, "He still struggled; school was never easy to him, but he always showed up with a smile on his face, eager to do his best", said his father.[3]
In his 1999–2000 school year, Halligan suffered bullying at the hands of a group of students at his school because of his learning disorder. The family stated in a short documentary that Ryan enrolled in counseling, with little success. In December 2002, the youngster told his father that the bullying had started again and asked for a Taebo Kick Boxing set for Christmas in order to learn how to defend himself against the bullies.[3] Following a fight in February 2003 which was broken up by the assistant principal, the bully stopped bothering Ryan. Towards the end of 7th grade, Ryan told his father that he and the bully had become friends. However, after Ryan told him something embarrassing that happened once, the bully used the information to spread a rumor that Ryan was gay.[4]
According to his father and news reports, Ryan spent much of his time online during the summer of 2003, particularly on AIM and other instant messaging services. During the summer, he was cyber-bullied by schoolmates who taunted him, thinking he was gay.[3] He unintentionally archived these conversations on his hard drive when he installed DeadAIM, a freeware program. His dad also found in this folder of archived conversations transcripts of online exchanges in which a girl whom Ryan had a crush on pretended to like him but later told him at school that he was a "loser". He found out she only pretended to like him in order to retrieve personal information about him. Their private exchanges were copied and pasted into other IMs among his schoolmates to embarrass and humiliate him. After he went up to the girl and she called him a loser, he said "It's girls like you who make me want to kill myself".[3]
On October 7, 2003, when John Halligan, Ryan's father, was away on business, and everyone else in the Halligan family was sleeping early in the morning, Ryan went into his family's bathroom and hanged himself. He was discovered by his sister who was the first one up that morning.