Parents of bullied girl, 10, who took own life to sue “negligent” school
The parents of a bullied ten-year-old girl who took her own life are planning to sue her school for alleged “negligence.”
Autumn Brooke Bushman, 10, of Roanoke, Virginia, died on March 21, devastating her parents, Mark and Summer Bushman, and two older siblings.
And following a memorial over the weekend, the parents have accused Mountain View Elementary School of failing to act upon their daughter’s bullying complaints.
The Bushman’s revealed they have since discovered Autumn kept a newspaper clipping about Aubreigh Wyatt – a 13-year-old girl from Mississippi who took her own life in 2023 – in her desk at home.
They say Autumn was initially bullied over her teeth, but this escalated this school year to physical threats.
And they claim nothing was done by the school when they complained – and they were never informed about visits Autumn made to the school counselor.
“We can’t stop voicing our concerns,” Mark, 36, a senior logistics analyst, said of parents raising bullied children.
“We have to come together and figure out a plan. We can’t keep fighting the same battle. The school must take accountability.”
At around 9:30 p.m. on March 21, Autumn told her mother goodnight before going to her room.
“I went to my bedroom and went to sleep,” Summer, 36, a payables specialist, recalled.
The next morning, she discovered the unimaginable.
“Her bedroom light was on, which was odd because she never slept with it on,” she explained. “The door was locked, and I couldn’t get in.
“My 17-year-old son came out of his bedroom, and I told him she wasn’t responding. I broke down the door, and that’s when we saw her.”
Summer, who hasn’t publicly discussed the cause of Autumn’s death, would only say that her daughter kept a newspaper clipping about Aubreigh Wyatt in her desk — something discovered after the fact.
Aubreigh Wyatt — the 13-year-old girl from Mississippi who made headlines in 2023 after committing suicide — was, like Autumn, a victim of bullying.
“I don’t want many details released,” Summer said. “I don’t want any girls to repeat this.”
Paramedics arrived, but it was too late.
“They came right back down and said she was deceased. There was nothing they could do.
“I was in complete shock and denial. All I could do was scream. It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen.”
Mark recalls changes in Autumn’s demeanor before her death.
“She wore bright, vibrant colors growing up, but then shifted to earthy tones, blue and black. In hindsight, maybe she wanted to fly under the radar.”
Her energy levels also declined.
“She wasn’t as excited about things she used to love. In the last two or three days, she took naps, which was really unusual for her.”
Still, Autumn maintained connections with friends.
“She still had a close friend next door, a girl around her age,” Mark said. “They were playing together and laughing a lot and doing the normal things.
“She did have moments where she was happy and bubbly.”
But those moments contrasted sharply with what she endured at school. Autumn, a fourth grader at Mountain View Elementary School, was frequently teased.
She had enamel hypoplasia – a developmental defect causing thin, weak, or missing enamel – and Mark said she was “made fun of for her teeth.”
“She came home crying to me,” he said.
During this school year, however, the bullying cast a darker shadow over her life, escalating beyond cruel words to threats of physical confrontation.
“One girl told her on the bus, ‘Meet me in the bathroom when we get to school.’
“When we addressed it, all we got was, ‘We’ve handled it.’ That’s why it continued. There were no real consequences.”
He added: “It got very cruel. It wasn’t just about her appearance but anything that was low-hanging fruit.”
Autumn frequently complained about bullying — even visiting the school counselor — but her parents say they never received a call.
“Nobody ever called us,” Mark said. “When we suggested contacting the school, Autumn didn’t like that idea.
“It came from previous times when she went to the counselor. It only made things worse. The aggressors found out and faced no repercussions.”
Now, the Bushmans are determined to fight for change.
“We do plan on taking legal action against the school,” Summer said. “Those are conversations we’re having.”
Along with their 17-year-old son, Summer has a 12-year-old daughter who she describes as “Autumn’s best friend.”
The family is left mourning their beloved daughter and sister but remains committed to making a difference.
“We want something good to come of this,” Mark said. “I know our daughter would want that. She passed the torch to us, and we want to run with it.”
Summer remembers her daughter’s vibrant personality.
“Autumn was a very, very special little girl. She loved so hard and wanted to be loved by so many. She just lit up a room. She smiled with her eyes.”
Mark added: “In just 10 years, it feels like she fit an entire lifetime of joy, laughter, and love.”
Mountain View Elementary School did not immediately respond to request for comment.
www.gofundme.com/f/vgeysg-help-a-family-heal-after-tragic-loss
British gran finds US father after 37 years thanks to 23andMe DNA test
A gran found her birth dad after a 37-year search thanks to a 23andMe DNA test.
Anna Sharp, now 52, learned aged 14 she had a different biological dad to her seven older siblings – but she had no idea who her birth dad was.
All she had was an old photo she found in her mum’s belongings and a love note signed ‘Carlos’.
Her children gave her a 23andMe kit for her birthday in February 2024 – a saliva-based DNA service which provides family history and can connect people with relatives.
In July she got a message from fellow user Jasmin Andrews from L.A – a DNA match.
It turned out the pair were second cousins which allowed Anna to track down her birth dad, Charles W Sharp Junior, now 79, an ex-soldier who lives in Dallas, Texas, in October last year.
Now Anna and Charles speak every day and she’s jetting out to see him in April.
Anna, a student nurse from Milton Keynes, said: “Finding him has been amazing!
“It’s easily the best experience in my life.
“I’m so excited to be going to meet him.
“We’re going to revel and live in the moment to make up lost time.
“We’re very similar – we both love to talk, and we have the same sense of humour.
“We even hold our hands up by our faces in the same way.
“I felt so lost not knowing who my biological dad was, like I didn’t really know who I was.
“I felt a real void when I looked in the mirror and didn’t know about the person looking back.
“It’s lovely to feel whole now.”
Anna said she had different skin tone and hair texture from the siblings she grew up with in Wolverhampton, and aunts and uncles made odd comments, so she always had an inkling she had a different dad.
Her mum, Shirley Johnson, a dancer who died in 2021 aged 76, told her she had a different dad but wouldn’t give any more information.
Anna said: “It was a real shock but a lot of things started to make sense.”
Anna asked for information when she was 18, and again aged 25, but relatives just said she needed to speak to her mum.
She said: “My mum just wouldn’t tell me anything.
“I guess she was protecting the life she had built up.”
Since speaking to Charles she has discovered the pair met in Germany, in 1971, where Shirley was working for a year, and Charles, a US soldier, was recovering from a bullet to the head he sustained while fighting in Vietnam.
Charles later visited Shirley in the UK – and while both were married, they had a short affair before he was posted back to the US before Anna was born in February 1973.
Shirley never told him about their child, and separated from her husband before Anna was one.
Anna chanced upon a picture with a love letter from ‘Carlos’ on the back in one of her mum’s albums when she, Anna, was 36.
She learned he was a soldier and the note said how he always loved her mum, but despite online searches, Anna was no closer to tracking him down.
Anna found she had two DNA matches in April 2024 – and reached out to two cousins but got no reply.
Later she connected with Jasmin who revealed she had an “uncle Charles” – her grandad’s sisters son – and they compared photos, to discover he was Anna’s dad.
“I started crying’, Anna said, “I’d found my dad.”
Anna reached out to Charles via Facebook Messenger, and they exchanged photos before a phone call on October 3 last year.
She said: “I was shaking like a leaf.
“When he answered we both just kept saying ‘hello’.”
Gran-of-four Anna discovered her dad has been awarded two purple hearts for being hit in action.
He’s worked as a policeman, an accountant, and an engineer.
Anna changed her surname to match her dad’s, in January – from Johnson, her mum’s ex-husband’s name.
She’s the third-born of Charles’s six children, but he knew nothing about her until she contacted him.
Anna and her son Thierry will meet her half sisters Martina and Kei and half-brother Richard: they fly out on April 22.
She said: “It’s amazing and we have so much still to do together.
“We’re still at the beginning, which is very exciting, but I do wish we had both been spared the pain of separation and not knowing.
“We have to make up for lost time and lost memories. My mum had her reasons and I love her.
“But I think it’s really important to know the two people who have given you life.
“I have a new sense of belonging now and it’s a huge relief.”
Charles said: “It was a shock but a lovely one, and a lovely early 79th birthday present.
“I wish I had known earlier because I would have wanted to be involved all her life.
“I’m so glad Anna didn’t give up on her search.
“I can’t wait to give her a big hug.”
“My $11k nose job gave me clarity to ask for a divorce – now I’m glowing”
A woman underwent a post break-up “glow up” and says her $11k nose job helped her get “clarity” to ask for a divorce.
Devyn Aiken, 30, “grew apart” from her husband of seven years and the pair separated two years ago.
But it was after Devyn underwent a nose job that she says it finally gave her the “clarity” to ask for a divorce – after putting herself first.
Now she feels “reborn” and has realised she is “strong” and doesn’t want to “settle”.
It comes after singer Lily Allen revealed during an episode of her ‘Miss Me?’ podcast that she had a boob job after splitting from her actor husband, David Harbour.
Devyn, who works at a drug addiction company, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, said: “I was re-born in a way [after the nose job].
“I thought ‘I’m choosing myself’.
“I feel so happy.
“You can start over whenever.
“I know what I want now.
“I don’t have to settle.
“Life doesn’t end when you go through divorce.”
Devyn got married at aged 23 and says she felt “stuck” in the marriage but felt she needed to stay in it to “prove” something to society.
She said: “I stayed in a stagnant, unhappy marriage.
“It was wrong just to stay together because of all the time we’d had.
“The last few years we grew apart.
“Everything didn’t align anymore.”
The couple separated two years ago which helped give Devyn the push to do something she had always wanted to do – get a nose job.
Her nose had always been her “biggest insecurity” but she had never found the right doctor to make her “pull the trigger” on surgery.
Devyn said: “Middle school was rough with bullying.
“I was called a witch, toucan, Pinocchio.
“It’s something I couldn’t control.”
After finding Dr Ginsburg on social media she booked in her consultation and underwent the five-and-a-half hour surgery in November 2024 – using her own savings to pay for it.
She spent three to four weeks recovering – and the swelling can take a year to go down fully.
Devyn said: “Having so much down time with my nose job it gave me the time and clarity to think about divorce.
“It made me think ‘I can do this – I’m strong enough’.”
She filed for divorce in December 2024.
She said: “I feel a sense of happiness.
“This is my me era.
“I’m not settling.
“I’m OK to be alone. I’m a strong independent woman.”
Devyn has been sharing her “glow up” on @doseofdevy and has been flooded with comments – and helped inspire others to leave their relationships.
She said: “Someone commented ‘I’m not married but I need a divorce so I can have this glow up’.
“It’s an internal glow – I radiate that externally.
“People have said I look like Bella Hadid, Celine Dion – all sorts.”
Devyn now feels “optimistic” for the future.
She said: “I have my own apartment – I can decorate it like I want it.
“I can have pink bedsheets.
“I’m going out more with my friends.
“I’m going to enjoy life – do some travelling, dating – I’m excited for that.
“I’m optimistic.
“It has been life changing.
“I’m embracing and welcoming the change.”
Girl’s Rare Syndrome Leaves Her Feeling “Trapped in Her Body”
A little girl who would fall over up to 40 times a day was diagnosed with a rare syndrome – which leaves her feeling “trapped in her body”.
Matilda Monerawela, 10, was born with a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by mutations in the CTNNB1 gene – which provides the body with instructions for making a protein for cell development.
Her parents Amy, 40, and Cian, 34, noticed Matilda was behind on her development as a baby – but Amy initially “blamed herself” as a first time mum.
After going back and forth to the doctors since Matilda was around aged one a full exome test revealed her gene mutation when Matilda was aged three.
Now Matilda requires 24-hour care, struggles to communicate, uses a wheelchair because it is so painful for her to walk and has “dangerously violent” outbursts.
The family are fundraising to help a lifechanging drug get to clinical trials. The gene therapy – if it works – could help Matilda walk and talk.
Matilda is just one of 430 known to have CTNNB1 syndrome.
Amy, a speech and language therapist, from Torbay, Devon, said: “A lot of what she does is really held back by her body.
“She is trapped in her body.
“She wants to be like everybody else.
“We want her to be able to go out in the world and do what she wants to do without being reliant on other people.
“And if it works, even if she can regain 50% of her functioning. That could mean that she could have a normal life.”
Amy had a normal pregnancy until the midway point when they noticed Matilda’s head was very small.
Matilda was born on January 6, 2015 after Amy was induced when her Matilda’s heart rate slowed to “dangerous rates”.
Amy said: “We were always certain in the beginning when her development wasn’t quite right, that she had cerebral palsy and that it was birth damage, because when she was born, she was quite lethargic and she didn’t cry.
“In hindsight, things were wrong from the day she was born.”
As a first time mum, Amy said she had “no frame of reference” and “blamed herself” when Matilda was not hitting normal milestones like lifting her head and sitting up.
She said: “She didn’t smile at me, she didn’t look at me. It was really difficult to form a bond with her because it felt like it one way.
“As parents, you feel like you’re doing something wrong, so you blame yourself.
“You go to the parent groups and the baby groups and all the babies are doing these lovely things like rolling and crawling and sitting up and your baby’s not doing any of it. It was very, very isolating, very lonely and very scary.”
Amy said they were not taken seriously by doctors until Matilda was two years old when she started having lots of tests.
Her condition remained a “mystery” after an MRI of the brain showed no sign of injury and her parents assumed Matilda had cerebral palsy.
Amy said: “This was when the fight began. The fight is ongoing, a daily struggle.”
Amy decided to quit her job in human relations and took a course to become a speech and language therapist so she could understand more about how to help her daughter and others.
She said: “You have to become a medical expert.
“You have to learn everything about paediatrics. You become one of those people that doctors dread, but you have to.”
Matilda only took her first steps aged three and a half but due to spasticity in her legs she used to fall 30 to 40 times a day and would often injure herself.
Amy and Cian, a maintenance manager, would cover the lounge with massive fluffy rugs to break her fall.
After years of searching for answers for Matilda’s health a neurologist at Bristol Children’s Hospital suggested a full exome test which was their “final shot” in 2018.
Amy said: “We put her through so much testing and we didn’t want to do it to her anymore. So we said, right, this is the last thing.”
The test revealed her diagnosis which was “lifechanging” but the parents have continued to struggle – as well as Edith, eight, who is a young carer for her sister.
Matilda’s diagnosis helped Amy connect with other parents and get in touch with Spela Mirosevic, a Slovenian researcher who has brought together scientists across Europe and America to create a new drug.
The drug is a type of gene therapy which has already been developed, and it has been recognised by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a promising therapy.
If they can refine the technology they drug can potentially target any genetic condition.
But the CTNNB1 foundation – who have developed the drug – need £1m to move the treatment into clinical trials.
Amy has set up a GoFundMe to raise £45,000 to fund the “final step” in this gene replacement therapy and hopes that, if the new drug is successful, Matilda may not have to move into a residential school and can stay living with her family.
If the drug works, even at Matilda’s age, her parents say there is a good chance she could walk and talk and that “she wouldn’t have these terrible outbursts or anger” and “could have some independence”.
She said it would also allow for little sister Edith “to have a little bit of her life back.”
By the time the drug gets the funding it needs to help the children, it may be too late for Matilda to make a full recovery but her parents hope the drug will help the next child.
Amy said: “It will help future children. And if a child is born and they’re not really sure why they’re not developing properly, if you give this to a baby and it works to fix the faulty gene, you would be looking at a full recovery.
“It is not just for Matilda, it is for so many other children. They deserve a life that is free of pain and full of opportunity.”
You can donate here – https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-future-of-gene-therapy-starts-here-fund-the-final-step
