Phoebe's mother cries as accused says she is sorry

THE MOTHER and a tormentor of Phoebe Prince, the Irish girl who hanged herself in western Massachusetts in January 2010, wept yesterday, as Kayla Narey and Sean Mulveyhill, two of six teenagers charged of involvement in Prince’s death, were sentenced in Hampshire Superior Court, 160km (100 miles) west of Boston, to a year’s probation and 100 hours of community service.

Narey (18), shed tears as she apologised to Prince’s family, saying her jealousy over 15-year-old Prince’s affair with her boyfriend blinded her. Narey taunted Prince in the library and on the grounds of South Hadley High and posted insults on her Facebook page.

“I was the weak one, and that failure will always be with me,” Narey said, crying, a few feet from Prince’s mother, Anne O’Brien, who also wiped away tears. “I am immensely ashamed of myself that I allowed my emotions to spiral into acts of unkindness.”

Ms O’Brien made a victim impact statement, speaking publicly for the first time since her daughter’s death. She recounted visiting Paris with Phoebe, reading her poetry and talking at the kitchen table. All this was destroyed the day Phoebe’s younger sister Lauren discovered her body, hanging by the scarf she had given her for Christmas.

Ms O’Brien accused Mulveyhill (18), the popular football captain who briefly dated Phoebe, of being a predator. “Had I known the truth, I would have viewed his interest in my daughter as predatory and she would have been forbidden to see him,” she said.

“It is nearly impossible to measure the impact of Phoebe’s death upon our lives,” Ms O’Brien said. “There is a dead weight that now sits permanently on my chest.”

Phoebe first attempted suicide the previous autumn, after Mulveyhill slept with her and then dumped her to return to Narey. Ms O’Brien said Narey was “well aware of Phoebe’s fragility and vulnerability”.

She read her daughter’s last text message, sent to a friend on the day she was hounded out of the library and walked in tears to the house her family rented.

“I think Sean condoning this [bullying] is one of the final nails in my coffin,” Prince wrote. “I can’t take much more – it would be easier if he or any one of them handed me a noose.”

The verdict was the result of a plea bargain negotiated by Prince’s family and the defendants to spare all a painful trial. Mulveyhill pleaded guilty to a count of criminal harassment. Other charges against him, including statutory rape and violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury, were dropped.

Ashley Longe, Flannery Mullins and Sharon Velazquez are expected to reach a similar agreement today. A sixth teenager, Austin Renaud (19), has not been charged with bullying but has pleaded not guilty to a charge of statutory rape.