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Alex Hernandez, 12, says he has been bullied repeatedly at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Springfield since coming out as transgender.

(Dan Glaun)

SPRINGFIELD -- Earlier this school year, John F. Kennedy Middle School student Alex Hernandez took four tablets of his antidepressant medication fluoxetine, in an attempt to end his life.

Hernandez, a transgender boy who lives with his mother in the third story of a multi-family home in Springfield's Bay neighborhood, was taken to Providence Behavioral Health Hospital in Holyoke, according to medical records his mother shared with MassLive. Clinicians wrote he had reported suicidal thoughts and nightmares.

In an interview earlier this month, both Hernandez and his mother Vanessa pointed to a chief trigger: Relentless, often physical bullying by other students because of Hernandez' gender identity.

"I have to watch my back all the time," said Hernandez, a slight 12-year-old with cropped black hair, while sitting in his family's kitchen.

Vanessa Hernandez said the harassment had persisted through multiple meetings with two principals, and that she had decided to go public out of fear for losing her child.

"I'm not going to be one of those parents that because of the bullying, he's going to take his life," she said.

Hernandez described taunting from both male and female students, that had gone on for years but spiked in intensity when he cut his hair. Other kids challenge him to fights and shove him, he said, leading to violence when he refuses to back down. Confrontations happen several times per week, according to Hernandez.

"I got in a couple of fights because kids were calling me transgender and saying how about you [fight me,]" Hernandez said. "I fought back and I won. I kind of felt bad because I didn't want to hurt nobody."

JFK Middle School, whose operations were turned over to the Springfield Empowerment Zone in 2015 after years of dismal academic performance, did not make any administrators available for an interview.

Matthew Matera, the program director of the empowerment zone, said the school could not comment on individual student cases, but that the administration was dedicated to preventing bullying.

"We take every allegation of bullying very seriously and complete a full investigation," Matera said in a statement. "There is no excuse for bullying for any reason, including gender identity. We will continue to work to provide a safe and positive environment for all of our students."

Hernandez' account is not the first link between bullying and suicide in Springfield's schools. Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old student at the now-defunct New Leadership Charter School, hanged himself in 2009 after repeated anti-gay taunting by fellow students, according to his mother Sirdeaner L. Walker. That story gained national attention, and Walker is now on the board of an anti-bullying foundation established in his memory.

Vanessa Hernandez knew Alex, then named Ashanti, was transgender when he was a toddler, she said. They lived in Far Rockaway, Queens, before moving to Springfield three years ago due to the high cost of living in New York City.

Alex enrolled at Rebecca Johnson Elementary School and faced bullying there, but the harassment intensified when he cut his hair and changed his name amid a new group of classmates at John F. Kennedy Middle School, Alex said.

'They said, oh that's weird. You're nasty and weird," he said.

Children who had accepted him turned their backs when others started rumors about him engaging in sexual activities with girls in his class, Hernandez said. He said he has been punched in the face at school, and that he has been suspended for fighting when he fought back after other kids taunted and shoved him.

Alex's grades have declined sharply, and meetings with school administrators led to sympathetic conversations but little change in the day-to-day bullying, his mother Vanessa said.

One girl who harassed and shoved him stopped after Vanessa met with administrators and threatened to press charges, she said. But the overall pattern of bullying has continued, according to Alex and his mother.

The school and the Empowerment Zone refused to discuss Hernandez' individual case, and MassLive could not independently verify Vanessa Hernandez' accounts of her meetings with school administrators, or the discipline handed out to offending students.

"He cried to me a couple of times that he didn't want to go to school," she said.

Annette Arocho, a family friend and roommate in the Hernandez' walkup apartment, said she had also noticed changes in Alex's attitude.

"My concern is he was a straight A student," Arocho said. "It's been hard."

The problems reached a peak this school year, when Alex tried to kill himself. He took four pills from his prescription of the anti-depression drug fluoxetine -- better known as the generic form of Prozac -- and ended up at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital in Holyoke.

Fortunately, flouxetine does not typically cause fatal overdoses. But doctors at the hospital recorded that he had suicidal ideation -- an impulse that Hernandez said was directly linked to anti-transgender bullying at school.

"It's a trigger that I have," Hernandez said. "Someone talks about me being different. Since I'm in the gay community, it kind of hurts."