14 DAY TRIAL // One the videos to go viral most recently is nothing to smile or LOL about: it shows bus monitor Karen Klein being viciously bullied by several middle-school kids she was watching on the bus ride home. On The Today Show, the grandmother of 8 says she still can't believe how people reacted to the shameful episode.
Klein and her daughter sat down for an interview with Today, to talk about the over $650,000 (€520,083.2) raised so far through donations (the campaign won't close for another 26 days), what she plans to do with the money and what she hopes people will learn from the incident.
As we also reported over the weekend, the incident saw Klein shamed online in a lengthy video posted on YouTube by the same kids who tormented her.
They mocked her for being fat, for being an “old troll,” poked and touched her, swore at her and drove her to tears. All this time, the sexagenarian is shown trying to keep calm but, at the same time, wiping tears away.
Asked how she feels about the campaign started to raise money for her “vacation fund,” Klein admits that she's still in shock about the whole thing.
“I keep thinking, 'What have I done?' I almost feel like I don't deserve it. What I am glad about is the fact that it does come out, and everyone knows what goes on. Not all the time, not all the kids, but it does happen,” she says.
She doesn't want the kids to be pursued penally, but she would like to hear them explain to her why they acted in such a shameless way – someday.
“Actually I would like to, eventually, not right away, ask them why they did it. (I want) an apology and an explanation,” she says.
Over the weekend, Klein told Anderson Cooper she didn't believe a single word of the apologies two of the boys sent out to the media; they wrote letters to apologize to her only afterwards.
Though never before had she been humiliated like this, the bus monitor hopes her case will help prevent similar situations from happening.
“I want kids to stop bullying. Maybe they could start up a class in school to teach these kids not to do stuff like that,” she says.
As for what she plans to do with the money, Klein has a very large family. She will donate part of the sum, invest some as well and also buy cars to her kids.