Holly Gingerella loves her 13-year-old daughter, Alicia, very,
very much.
And she knows that Alicia loves her.
And it's that love that makes Gingerella fight every day to
save the life of her daughter, who was purportedly beaten by four classmates
last year in Woonsocket in a video that ended up on YouTube.
"She went back to school. She probably lasted maybe two
weeks. The other girls were still in the school, so I didn't feel like she was
safe and the school was doing enough to keep her safe," Gingerella said.
Gingerella left her job and moves to Westerly, where she
hoped Alicia would be safe. She enrolled her in school, but the trauma of her
daughter being bullied started to come to light.
"Alicia had been cutting herself, had been telling some
friends that she was going to hurt herself, had attempted to commit suicide,
and her friends brought it to the school, and the school called me,"
Gingerella said.
She immediately took Alicia to Westerly Hospital for
evaluation.
"The mental health people that were brought in decided
she needed hospitalization," Gingerella said.
The hospital didn't have the facilities to properly care for
Alicia that doctors thought had a severe mental illness. So she was transferred
to Butler Hospital in Providence.
"Butler was good because it kept her safe. It was there
when she was diagnosed with BDD," Gingerella said.
BDD, or body dysmorphic disorder, was causing Alicia's
skewed perception of herself, and in this case, cutting and self-mutilation.
