After one father found out about the bullying his daughter had endured on social media, he filmed the bullying and posted his response to YouTube.
The video quickly took off.
Brad Knudson, who is white, adopted an African-American daughter 11 years ago. Until recently, they had only had a few, as-expected, problems. “We’ve dealt with a little bit of racism, you know, stares, things like that when she calls us mom or dad, but she didn’t notice so we just blew it off because it was directed towards us,” Knudson said.
But things took a turn for the worse on New Year’s Eve when Knudson’s daughter was Snapchatting her friends and two twin boys began to bully her, calling her “sl**,” “n*****” and “fat a** b****.”
Shocked and worried that his daughter might be driven to suicide, as other teens recently in the news had done, Knudson contacted the police, who spoke with the twins’ family. But when Knudson contacted Deron Puro, their father, the response was apalling.
“He told me I was crazy, that that’s what he did when he was a kid. Him and his family make jokes at the house using this word all the time so what was the big deal?” Knudson said.
Puro sent Knudson several voice messages, including one that said, “I guess you’re a n***** lover.”
Knudson told Puro he intended to post the messages to social media, and Puro said he didn’t care and that Knudson could even use his name.
Since then, Puro’s name (and ugly comments) has been watched on YouTube more than 1.5 million times.
Puro has since been fired from his job.
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