His Son Was Beaten Three Times. The System Called It Bullying. | Rick Kuehner & Katey McPherson

Rick Kuehner is a Navy veteran and single father who moved to Gilbert, Arizona, because it was rated the second safest city in America. His son Tristan was a competitive swimmer, a good-looking kid with a nice car. Starting in his freshman year, Tristan was beaten at a bus stop, attacked in a school bathroom and jumped by a group of strangers in an In-N-Out parking lot. Each time, Rick reported everything. Each time, the system treated it as kids being kids.When threats followed Tristan to a second school and a group of kids showed up at their house, Rick made the hardest decision of his life: he sent his son to Europe to live with his mother, because it was the only place he felt safe.What Rick didn’t know was that the group targeting his son was part of a loosely connected network of 40 to 90 teenagers across 16 schools in the East Valley. They called themselves the Gilbert Goons. They recorded their beatings, uploaded them to a Snapchat channel called Pound Town, and operated with near-total impunity. In October 2023, they beat a boy named Preston Lord and left him to die in the street.Katey McPherson is a former school administrator turned youth advocate who had been tracking the violence before most people knew the name. Together with Rick and hundreds of other parents, she helped organize the Upstanders, a community group that crowdsourced evidence, pressured local government and ultimately helped pass Preston’s Law, an Arizona statute that created a new felony category for swarming attacks.In this conversation, Rick and Katey talk about what the system looks like from the inside when it fails, what it took to make a community listen and what Rick’s family is still living with today.Follow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastwww.atthebrinkmedia.com | [email protected] you go:At the Brink is a premium podcast hosted by Erica Brinker featuring raw, intimate conversations about defining moments — the question at the show's core: was there a moment when your story split into a before and after?New episodes every Wednesday.Website: www.atthebrinkmedia.com Email: [email protected] Instagram: @at.the.brink.mediaExecutive producer | Sara Glassman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.