As a teenager, Jamie Nabozny tried to kill himself just so he wouldn't have to go to school.
From seventh to eleventh grade at Ashland Middle and Ashland High Schools in Wisconsin, Nabozny was: harassed, spit on, mock-raped while other students laughed, urinated on, called a "fag" by a teacher and kicked repeatedly in the stomach by his fellow students. He eventually dropped out of school.
"My life will never be the same because of the things that have happened to me," Nabozny said.
The middle school principal told Nabozny and his parents that "boys will be boys," regarding the assaults, and that if Nabozny "was going to be so openly gay, that he had to expect this kind of stuff to happen."
Nabozny, now 20 and living in Minneapolis, is the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against his former school, its administrators and principals for not protecting Nabozny from the constant abuse. It is an appeal of a judge's previous ruling in favor of the school.
"This isn't going to happen to anybody else," Nabozny says. "People need to realize that this is happening and that they can't do it. A lot of times it's unfortunate, but in this country people will do things that aren't right until they are told they can't. Another school, another teacher is going to realize if I do this I can get sued. It's unfortunate, but it happens."
Nabozny's suit seeks punitive damages from the school, as well as other concessions which would allow him to attend a graduation ceremony at the school.
'I knew I was gay ... I basically dealt with it.'
Nabozny says he was always a shy, quiet kid and a good student. He first dealt with his sexuality when he was 11 years old.
"In sixth grade, I realized I was gay and came out to my parents. It wasn't a total acceptance on my part, or my parents' for that matter. But I realized I was gay and that it wasn't going to change," he says. "I basically dealt with it and accepted it."
Nabozny's parents noticed he was depressed. After repeatedly asking what was bothering, he finally told them. "My mom said she probably knew before the meeting and she just needed to hear it from me," he says.
The name-calling began at school after people realized Nabozny had been the victim of sexual abuse. "It started out as people found out about a sexual abuse case that ended up in the media that involved me," he says. "I had been abused by my youth minister at my church. When that became public, my name wasn't in the paper or anything, but it's a small enough town, people figured it out. And then people started calling me names. I didn't acknowledge it, nor did I deny it until I was 15."
The name-calling led to the harassment and assaults, which made Nabozny's parents deal with his sexuality quicker than they would have preferred. "After telling my parents, they went into denial, but then all this stuff started happening at school and they couldn't deny it anymore or pretend it didn't exist," he says. "They had to deal with the fact that I was gay because they had to deal with the fact that I was being harassed because of it. With their acceptance, I came to accept it more."
'I was gay and it didn't matter. This shouldn't have been happening to me.'
When Nabozny was physically and verbally harassed in school, he didn't keep quiet or hide. He went to the school officials, told them he was gay, and demanded the abuse stop. Sometimes officials would meet with the abusive students and it would settle down for a while, but it would always start up again. Nabozny never told any of the students he was gay at that point.
"I got tired of this happening, and people always saying 'Why don't you just tell them you're not gay? Why don't you just tell them you're not gay? They'll leave you alone,'" he says. "But at that point, it wasn't about that. I was gay and it didn't matter. This shouldn't have been happening to me. So, confirming it, I thought, may actually lead to them leaving me alone. Because it wouldn't be that they were guessing I'm gay and harassing me because of it."
Nabozny was 15 when he came out to his fellow students. He didn't know any other gay students at his school, and even if other gay students were there, they wouldn't have talked to Nabozny.
"Everybody was too afraid to talk to me, because people would think they were gay," he says. "I did have two ... and I wouldn't even call them friends, we were so different. We were only together because we were the social outcasts of the school. It was a Jehovah's Witness girl and a schizophrenic girl, who wasn't there half the time. We wouldn't hang out after school, we'd sit together at lunch time or whatever, but that was it.
"I did start a gay youth group when I was going to school there, because I wanted a place where I could just go and talk," he says. "I thought maybe there would be other kids who would end up going because they wouldn't have to worry about talking to me in school, but that didn't happen."
Growing up, Nabozny did have a gay best friend whom he had met when he was eleven. "We grew up together in Ashland. He moved there and then we started hanging out," he says. "But he didn't go to school ever."
'I want to have a normal life .. if that's possible.'
Nabozny credits his parents with his being alive today. "Without them, I don't think I would have made it. I would get really depressed and very suicidal," he says. "A lot of times, the only thing that would prevent me from killing myself is the fact that I didn't want to hurt my mom."
It was his parents who usually prompted any action against the abusive students. "I would go to the principal, explain what happened, and she (the principal) wouldn't do anything," he says. "I'd go home and tell my parents and my parents would call and demanded a meeting. They wanted to confront the youths and the parents themselves. My parents were very angry and upset. They let the principal know that this wouldn't continue and they wanted something done."
In eleventh grade, Nabozny, with his parents' blessing and on the advice of his guidance counselor, dropped out of school. He has since gotten his GED.
"In December of my eleventh grade year, we had a meeting with my parents and guidance counselor at school, and we decided the best thing for me to do was to leave," he says. "She (the guidance counselor) said 'I've tried to help you through this whole thing and nobody's willing to do anything.' My parents had a really hard time letting me go. So, I left and I moved down here (to Minneapolis).
But finding a new school wasn't easy. "The high school I tried to go to decided it was going to be too difficult to have an openly gay student in their school, so they sent me to college," he says. "In Minnesota, they have something called post-secondary options. If you test out of high school, you can go to college."
Nabozny had to put college on hold because of his lawsuit. "After the lawsuit started going, I started doing depositions and a lot was going on with it, so I postponed it (college)," he says. "In the fall, I will definitely be going back no matter what. I realize I have put my life on hold for the last two years. Even if I win (the lawsuit), I'm two years behind where I have been."
[...]
Nabozny thinks another Ashland student also had trouble accepting his sexuality, but was unable to pull through his trouble. That boy killed himself after Nabozny was out of school for a couple of months.
"I didn't know he was gay, but when I was little, we used to mess around together. He ended up killing himself and leaving a note. The note was kept private," he says. "The family didn't want anyone to know what it had said, and I really believe that's what it had said. He actually did call me while I was in high school and he couldn't say anything.
[...]
Nabozny says the way Wisconsin's laws are written, "they don't protect youth, they protect adults. Minnesota has very specific laws that schools are to be safe for everyone. The Minneapolis schools have curriculum-wide stuff on gay and lesbian youth," he says. "Every school has a support group when it's needed. Minneapolis is very progressive on these issues.
[...]
But no matter how far away Nabozny is from Ashland, a small Wisconsin town with about 8,000 residents, the memories remain.
"I was sick all the time. I would get up in the morning and say 'I can't go to school, I can't go to school,' and my mother would say 'You have to.' She'd always know what was the matter, but I don't think they realized the extent to which it was affecting me," he says. "They'd go to school, and they'd feel like something was going to be done when they left there, and first, I guess. And I wouldn't tell them a lot of times what was going on. If I came home and told them every single day what had happened ... I didn't want to deal with it every day I came home. I just wanted to forget about it.
"Every day I had stomachaches. I lived in fear every day I got on that bus. I started walking to school because after a while, I wouldn't even take the bus anymore, it was just like my stomach was in knots," he says. "I had to live every day trying to avoid being harassed. I was very used to dealing with the name calling.
"I'd go to school and get there early so that I could get to the library before the other kids got there. The librarian was always the first person to get there, so I was always safe in there," he says. "I had to live every day like that. I had to use bathrooms usually used by teachers to avoid the kids in the bathroom. I had to think about these things every day."
His appeal cites three instances where Nabozny couldn't take it anymore, and tried to end his life.
"I tried to kill myself more than that," he says. "Those were the three attempts that were quite serious and I ended up in the hospital for."
[...]
Nabozny can be reached online at The author, Jeff Walsh, may be contacted at