Grant Haney, a 15-year-old, soon-to-be sophomore at Claymont High School in Tuscarawas County, was described by his family as a passionate, caring individual with a big heart and a love for inclusivity. He loved to golf, do art, shoot trap with his dad and raise his quail for FFA.
“He was so funny and nice,” his mother Missy told Jordan Miller News (JMN). “One of his teachers said ‘he’s the bright spot in my day’.”
But behind his warm demeanor, Grant was struggling with more than just the challenges of adolescence—he was a victim of bullying, a reality that ultimately led to his tragic death by suicide on Sunday, July 8.
On that Sunday, Grant and his family had spent the day together, enjoying simple pleasures: mowing the lawn, trap shooting, sharing a family dinner, and watching a movie before heading to bed. The Haneys, Clint and Missy, went to bed unaware that their lives were about to change forever. Around 11:30 p.m., the family heard a loud noise. What they discovered was every parent’s nightmare—Grant had taken his own life.
In the days that followed, it became clear that Grant had been the target of bullying. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) as an infant, Grant’s parents shared that he often felt like a misfit. Despite not being active on social media, a hurtful Snapchat, shared with Grant by one of his closest friends, had been circulating. The message contained mean and untrue things about him. Grant, devastated upon learning about it, believed that everyone in his school would eventually see it. In his mind, the weight of that belief was too much for him to bear.
His parents have since spoken out about the devastating impact of bullying, particularly cyberbullying, which can spread rapidly and widely with the use of social media. “Everything’s taught at home and trickles down, but if you take away the access to some of that stuff, it doesn’t matter if you have bad parents or good parents, it won’t be out there, you know, the bad comments,” Clint said, emphasizing the need for greater control over children’s access to social media.
Missy echoed this sentiment, urging other parents to monitor their children’s online activity closely. “We always checked Grant’s phone, never found anything,” she said. “People need to check their kids’ phones to make sure that they’re not being the bullies, too.”
Grant’s grandmother, Linda Shaw, added a sobering perspective on the issue of bullying: “The only people that care about this are the parents of children who are being bullied. The people whose kids are the bullies—they don’t care.”
You and I may have grown up in a time when the saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” was said all the time. But Grant’s dad begs to differ.
“Word’s matter,” he emotionally said. “They can be used for the good and they can be used for the bad.”
The Haneys believe that limiting social media access for children under 18 could prevent similar tragedies from occurring. They’d like to see a law enacted to punish those who use social media for bullying.
“If they do get on there and bully people, there should be better punishment,” Missy said. “There’s very little [the people who said the mean things about Grant] can get charged with.”
“If you can hold the tech companies responsible for letting young kids on these platforms, you won’t have kids that are putting the bad stuff on there,” Clint said. “You can’t buy guns until the age of 18, but we’re doing this with social media? It’s killing more people than guns, in my eyes, whether the facts are there to back it up, I’m not sure. But it’s creating more mental illness.”
But more than anything, they wish they could have had just one more conversation with their son. “We’d tell him that we could have fixed it. Nothing is worth taking your own life,” Missy said. “He had a whole life ahead of him, and we would have helped him… we would have protected him.”
Clint added, “Life’s value is a lot more valuable than a few words. That’s what I would try to explain to him.”
As Claymont and surrounding communities come to terms with this heartbreaking loss, the Haneys hope that their story will serve as a wake-up call about the devastating effects of bullying and the importance of mental health awareness, especially in young people.
