Disclaimer: Jacob's story is told from the perspective of his family. The details of what happened were constructed from chat logs, interviews his parents conducted with involved parties after his death, and Jacob's suicide notes.

Experts have said that bullies sometimes don't realize they're bullying, and the definition of bullying comes from how the recipient feels about the behavior. Jacob's suicide notes clearly showed that he felt he was bullied. Some readers may find the details of his story upsetting.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

Jacob's family. Jacob stands next to his mother.

It’s been three years since President Uchtdorf delivered his now-iconic address entreating Church members that, “When it comes to hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm, please apply the following: Stop it!”





But it’s only been a year since bullying at church pushed a teachers quorum member, Jacob, to the edge.

A New School

Jacob was a sweet boy of 13 when he started at a new school. He, along with several of his siblings, began attending while the family worked to find a home closer to the school. As they had planned, the Johnson family finally found a home near enough to Jacob's school that he could walk there. The house was within walking distance of their ward’s building, too.

But about the time they moved to their closer house, the trouble began.

“They were doing a project on different forms of government,” recalls Jacob's father, Greg. “My son’s group was chosen to do a kingdom. So they drew lots, and he ended up being chosen as king of the kingdom.” One of the boys was unhappy with that decision and started acting aggressively towards Jacob. Thankfully, the project was short-lived, and the Johnson hoped the problem would be, too.

It wasn't.

Because “sure enough,” Greg says, “the kid that he had a problem with at school was in our ward.”

A New Ward

At first, things weren’t so bad. “Jacob was okay initially because he was a deacon when we first moved into that ward,” Greg explains. “But as soon as he turned 14, he went to the teachers quorum.” The same boy was a teacher in that ward.

“From that point on, he was hazed,” Greg says. Jacob was given every assignment—something he was told happened because of the previous problem at school. He passed the sacrament each week, collected fast offerings, and performed other duties the quorum should have shared equally.

“I just didn’t see the seriousness of that,” Greg regretfully recalls. “I thought, well, you know, ‘It’s passing the sacrament. It’s just collecting fast offerings.’” Unfortunately, that was just the beginning, as the Johnson's later learned.

Despite the troubles he was having at church, Jacob managed to make a few non-member friends in his neighborhood. Early in his time in the teachers quorum, he took two of these friends with him to Scouts. “I remember that day, that moment so clearly,” Greg recalls. “They were laughing, driving off on their bikes together, riding to Scouts. It was a kind of a laughing moment, a joyous moment.”

As soon as they arrived, Jacob's parents learned later, the same boy started mocking not only Jacob but also the two friends with him with things like ”What, these are your friends?” It happened every time the boys attended Scouts together. The Johnson's also learned that boys from Scouts started calling one of Jacob's guests names like “gay” and “faggot” at school because he was smaller and spoke with a slight lisp. Once, Jacob informed his father when he returned home from Scouts that his friend "hid behind me when he saw some of the boys at Scouts.” It wasn’t long thereafter that Jacob was also called “gay” and “faggot” at his school, even though Jacob and his friend did not attend the same school; Scouts was the only connection.

“It got to the point where he’d gotten bullied so much because of these two boys, he didn’t want to be seen with them,” Greg explains. In an effort to stop the bullying, Jacob broke ties with the boy who’d brought more teasing on him, and Jacob was left friendless. “He started not wanting to go to Scouts anymore,” says Jacob's mother, Terry. Unaware of the depth of the problem, Greg and Terry continued to encourage Jacob to attend anyway.

But soon, he stopped wanting to go to church altogether.

“I remember watching him sit in the back in priesthood opening exercises by himself,” Greg recalls. “None of his peers wanted any part of him.”