Help us afford a lawyer to keep our daughter safe

Hello, my name is Liz Finnegan, and my 13-year-old daughter has been the target of death threats by some of her classmates and their families in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Despite years of harassment and my daughter recently being put on a “hit list,” her school and the police have deemed the threat to her life not “direct” enough to take the situation seriously. We can not sit by while our child becomes the next victim, so we have retained attorney Karin Sweigart of Dhillon Law Group to advocate on our behalf.

The backstory:

Our daughter has been the victim of repeated bullying in the Penn Delco School District in Pennsylvania. This bullying has escalated to outright threats, and neither the school nor the police are helping her.

On Friday, March 24, we were notified that our daughter, M, was added to a "hit list" that was created by 4 girls from the local high school and middle school in Delaware County. It's even labeled "public hit list." You can view this list (with the names of the children redacted) here.

They also had a channel dedicated to monitoring our daughter's actions and coordinated the creation of fake social media accounts that were dedicated to posting videos of our daughter with the goal of not only harassing her but also encouraging others to do the same. I was able to get these TikTok accounts banned for harassment of a minor.

One of the girls in the Discord server where the hit list was created was so uncomfortable with what was happening there, she sent screenshots of the channels to our daughter.

I notified the police immediately upon seeing the hit list. The police determined that putting a child on a “hit list” was not a “direct” enough threat to warrant their notice. Instead, they passed the buck to her school to do something about it.

The middle school's solution was to have my child walk a different route to her classes so she doesn't walk past the child who put her on a hit list. After I made the situation public and named the school district, the school changed its tune, offering us a 1-on-1 aid for our daughter, someone to follow her around and potentially intervene if something happens. In short, rather than doing something to punish the bullies and protect an innocent child, they offered a bandaid solution to protect one of the victims on this list. This grossly inadequate response puts not only my daughter but the entire school community at risk. The school’s solution has been to sweep these threats to my child under the rug to keep up appearances of safety. Instead of acting to investigate and punish these threats, as required under the law, the only “solution” they have offered will further ostracize my daughter and embolden the bullies who continue to threaten her and others without any repercussions.

Speaking with the parents and guardians of these bullies will not work, as the aunt of one of them called my child, leaving a threatening voicemail. In her voicemail (which she left in the middle of the night after repeatedly calling my child’s phone number, this adult stated, "I'm going to get you, you think you're safe but you're really not, you don't know who you're really messing with." You can listen to the voicemail here.

Since learning about the list, my daughter has had nightmares and a constant sense of dread, wondering when these students and their families are going to act to make good on their threats. She has struggled with hopelessness as the adults in authority who are supposed to stand up for her and supposed to protect her act like she isn’t worth it to them. We hope that taking these steps will allow her to get the protection she deserves and feel some peace and safety.

We are just one family trying to protect our daughter, but this situation is indicative of a much larger problem. How does a threat get more “direct” than a hit list? What is it going to take for authorities to take someone at their word when they threaten violence against a child?

How the funds will be used:

All funds raised will go towards paying for the various legal actions we need to take to try and protect our daughter. With our lawyer's guidance, we are estimating the cost to be around $7,500 (and in the interest of transparency she has permission to confirm this if asked). We hope it will not be more than this.

In the event the total cost is less than $7,500, we will donate the remainder of the funds raised to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Philadelphia.