TikToker goes viral for exposing anti-LGBTQ bullying, says “I’m sick of being silent about it”
“I remember being up in my room, hearing it, and I heard what he said. I immediately jumped out of bed and walked outside to see what was happening,” Jones told NBC News. “I had no sleep that night.
I was honestly really upset. I was crying.”“I have been called ‘fa***t’ countless times at school, and it literally doesn’t bother me at all,” Jones says in the TikTok video. “But the fact that they came to my house does.”Jones said that was a turning point.
On October 1, he shared the post on TikTok. The clip has received 1.4 million views and over 12,000 primarily supportive comments.“I’m sick of being silent about it, so I spoke up finally,” Jones said.He said that at least two of the young men involved in both incidents attend El Toro High School in Lake Forest, California where Jones is a senior.
His parents told NBC News that they are unaware of any action the school has taken in response to the harassment.But a spokesperson for the school district provided a statement saying that Saddleback Valley Unified School District and El Toro High School “together with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), immediately launched a comprehensive investigation to uncover the facts of the incidents.”“We can confirm that the person seen in the surveillance video of the incident that took place at a private home is not a student in SVUSD,” said Wendie Hauschild, the school district’s director of communications and administrative services.
