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'No, not with my daughter!'

Sonia Chopra

Rekha Bakshi was at home after working two jobs and was washing away the dinner dishes when she heard her daughter's voice, emotional and tense as she talked to her friend. Startled, Bakshi stopped washing and turned the tap off, and then she heard two words of the conversation, "...Kill Leena," that chilled her.

Wiping her hands, Bakshi, 50 and mother of two, confronted her daughter Leena, 13. The girl reluctantly confessed that a classmate who was harassing her for the past year had carried his anger and rage far enough to create a web site called "Kill Leena" -- and many in school were logging on.

"My mother was terrified. I knew this was going to be her reaction. So I didn't tell her," said Leena, quietly in a phone interview from her home in San Dimas last week recalling the conversation she had with her mother in early May.

Leena told her mother that the classmate, Christian Posaidas, also 13, had downloaded a picture of Leena's from her yearbook and had a gun pointed at her head on the Internet.

Rekha Bakshi wasted no time in contacting the authorities. And as she did so, not only did she hope that her own daughter but other school students will also be kept safe from the likes of Posaidas.

"It was supposed to be a game but it seemed to be to be a certain aberration about it. He went into a lot of trouble for it to be a game. And the surrounding literature was vicious. It showed his rage. I found it very sick," said Rekha Bakshi. She added that 70,000 students on the Net -- most of them students -- responded to Posaidas' request to "play the game".

She said that though she acted fast, she thought about her options.

"I knew this was a teenager's spat but it had gone way out of hand and I knew I had to nip this in the bud and stop it before my daughter was hurt any more.

"I knew what the school authorities would say -- 'It didn't happen on school grounds,' said Bakshi, a teacher in the Fontana school district, well-versed in the ways of school administrators. That was exactly what the school did tell her after she filed her report with the police and visited the school.

But the assistant superintendent of the school district did come to the school because of the media coverage.

"I was also worried that I was going to get pooh-poohed by the police but that wasn't the case. They took me very, very seriously," said Bakshi, adding that as the deputy sheriff read the web site page, "his eyes became rounder and rounder, almost like saucers."

The sheriff 's office acted quickly. "We obtained a search warrant and looked through his things. The web site was up and running. We arrested him. We knew these things have a potential for getting out of hand," said Lt George Sennatt, who heads the detective bureau in the sheriff's office.

The next morning after she filed the police report, Bakshi switched on CNN with her morning tea. And the newscasts began with the school shooting in Columbine, Colorado. About a dozen were people killed when two teenagers broke into the crowded parts of the school and began shooting.

"Now you can imagine what went through my mind. I was absolutely horrified. I just couldn't believe it. What if someone in school had taken his game seriously and had suited the thought to action. It is frightening to a mother," Bakshi said.

Bakshi suspects that her daughter's case was propelled to court by the heightened awareness in the awake of the gruesome Columbine killing. "It may have become more urgent. I wasn't thinking that clearly. I relied on my mother's instinct to protect and shield my child," she said.

According to Senatt, there are "a lot of quarrels and tiffs between teens in the neighborhood," but, in his experience, he has "never seen anything like this." He, of course, knows, that the Internet is being abused in many instances, especially by teenagers who imitate highly publicized crimes.

Posaidas, who was charged with two counts of felony -- for harassment and for making terrorist threats -- is forbidden Internet access for a year and must go for counseling every week. He is also on probation till the age of 21 and must do 100 hours of community service. Apart from a fine of $ 100, he will be schooled at home. He is not allowed, under any circumstances, to communicate with Leena and neither will his friends, the judge ordered.

The judge also lectured Posaidas sternly on the First Amendment and the freedom of expression guaranteed there, pointing out that duties and responsibilities go hand in hand.

Sennat said he hoped the punishment Posaidas received might have a sobering effect on any teenager. Posaidas was jailed for 19 days in a juvenile detention center under very strict conditions.

But things got worse before they got better. Within a week of the arrest, friends of Posaidas would walk up to Leena and curse her. One even followed her from school and pelted her with rocks as she ran and hid in the bushes. Her mother called the police, the boy was given a warning and the court date was moved up from May 11 to May 7.

Leena is bewildered by Posaidas's behavior. "We were friends, that's all. Then, for some reason, he began to hate me. He needed someone to really hate, I guess, and I became it," said Leena, who has a 4.0 GPA. She added that she had, on one occasion, complained to America Online because Posaidas had "knocked" her off the system.

Bakshi said Posaidas's parents begged her to drop the charges, but she "felt that she was doing the boy a favor. It should shake him up enough to never pursue this kind of thinking. And he would never take his freedom for granted."

It rankled her to read over the Internet Posaidas's boasts. He wrote: "I can never get arrested because I am protected by my First Amendment rights."

In court, the ordeal was stressful and emotionally draining for the Bakshis.

"It was awful , very scary. It has been an awful experience," said Leena, who described her harasser as seeming "a little repentant."

Rekha Bakshi said Leena "was the strong one, the one with composure, and she was very proud and she did not expect her to say anything when the judge asked her to but she did."

Leena, who insisted her mother was the strong one, told the judge," she felt powerless in the face of so much hatred and sometimes she felt the whole world hated her too and so she should also go and kill herself on the site."

In response to Leena's request for a simple apology, Posaidas did it in open court, while Leena tried hard not to cry openly.

Leena says she is "doing just fine." Her friends are supportive and life is "peaceful."

Her advice to any other teenagers in her situation. "Don't let this stuff get you down. Be strong and focus on the positive." And to others wanting to step into Posaidas's shoes, "Don't do it. You could lose your whole life. Your freedom will be taken away from you and juvenile detention is no picnic," she said, adding that Posaidas had recounted his experiences in open court.

Leena, who is planning to be an orthopaedic surgeon to help "babies with birth defects and elderly patients with osteoporosis," will be changing to the school district in which her mother teaches.

"I think my mom would feel a lot better if I was closer to her and I'll be making a fresh start in a new environment," Leena said.

Bakshi said that although they have attempted in every way to recover from these past few weeks, she can't stop thinking about everything.

"It was very hard for me to look at him in court but when I finally did give him a long look, I couldn't believe he had taken away my sense of security and peace of mind. I wanted to reach out and grab him and shake him up," she said.

Bakshi said she still thinks back to her conversation with Posaidas's parents who implored her to forgive their son. "I don't think I ever can. He caused us so much pain and anguish."

By speaking out publicly, Bakshi hopes to enlighten other parents.

"This has been a real eye-opener for me. I'm a professional but I'm still intimidated by the computer. And all the parents out there who are so proud of their children being so proficient on the computer, they ought to take a peek and see what their children may be up out - it can be dangerous in cyberspace."

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