FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA 21) – A Fort Wayne high schooler who had joined her dad and other motorcyclists to support a bullied studentt in Auburn at the beginning of the school year found that she now needs support of her own.
It can be difficult for teens to know where to turn for help when they’re being bullied.
But she didn’t have to look very far.

“Seeing all of them pull up one by one it fills my heart with joy knowing that I have support,” Madilyn Quinn says.

Quinn is a freshman at Snider High School who got a lot of support Friday morning from motorcycle enthusiasts who wanted to show her she wasn’t alone.
Madilyn says she tried to be nice to a new kid in school who’s now harassing her and threatening to beat her up.
She says complaints to school administrators have been ignored.

“I just feel like the school doesn’t really care the fact that people are getting bullied every day and they just throw it away. Some kids just commit suicide because they don’t think that they have support,” she says.
Her dad backs her up her claim.

“Matter of fact, I called Wednesday to get a follow up. I got a voicemail, no one’s returned my calls yet. So we’re just going to make a statement for the kids,” James Letner says.
An avid biker himself, he posted something online about Madilyn’s troubles on Monday.
Friday morning, about 60 riders gathered to escort Madilyn to school.
They take this so seriously that some of them took time off of work to do it.

“We’re there for you. Bullying isn’t cool but we’re there for all of you, even the bullies, because if you change a bully you save so many other kids, too,” says Brent Warfield from United Motorcycle Enthusiasts Against Bullying.
It was quite a sight — a loud one — as they rode the short distance to Snider.
But Madilyn’s dad says their support can’t be measured.
“It means the world to us,” Letner says.
Madilyn says she knows word would spread that she arrived at school with a bike brigade, which she hopes drives the message home.
“It’s just going to be the one thing going around school and it’ll probably get to the kid that’s bullying me. And he’ll get the point that he needs to stop,” she says.

The bikers say they won’t stop as long as bullied kids need them.

A Fort Wayne Community Schools spokesman could not comment on Madilyn’s case, but tells us the district takes bullying seriously and has procedures in place to investigate any allegations.

A special kind of community came together Friday to rally around a freshman at Snider High School.

Madilyn Quinn says she’s being bullied by a fellow student who harasses and threatens her. After she told her dad, he called on his local motorcycle community to show Madilyn that she’s not alone, that they care, and they’re there for her.

Dozens of bikers, more than 50, met up Friday morning and escorted Madilyn to school, roaring into the parking lot at Snider and dropping her off. One of the organizers says they do the “Bikers Against Bullying” escorts to show kids that they’re loved, because they know the effects of bullying can be damaging.

“Bullying isn’t cool, not at all,” Brent Warfield said. “So, a lot of times it tears the kids up. We lose a lot of kids to suicide to bullying and we don’t wanna see that.”

In in the Fall, Madilyn and her father accompanied the Bikers Against Bullying group on a similar escort for a student at DeKalb Middle School who was being bullied too.