Anti-gay bullying led two 11-year-old boys, one in Massachusetts and one in Georgia, to commit suicide last week. Both boys hung themselves after enduring anti-gay taunting from their peers that their parents had tried for months to motivate school officials to stop.

Such negligence on the part of school administrators is not uncommon – even in California, where we like to think we’re more progressive. The fact is, however, that even in this state, our efforts to elicit the cooperation of school officials to eradicate anti-gay bullying aren’t working; Lawrence King, the eighth-grade, Ventura County student who was shot last year by his schoolmate is but one case in point. So it’s time for a new approach: Law enforcement and the juvenile court system need to get involved.

This is not a special-interest issue. Bullying is endemic in American schools, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has identified it as a “serious public health issue” with effects that can last into adulthood.

More than a third of middle and high school students report that bullying, name-calling or harassment is a somewhat or very serious problem at their school, according to “From Teasing to Torment: School Climate in America,” a 2005 report by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and Harris Interactive. And bullying is even more severe in middle school, where more than two-thirds of students report having been assaulted or harassed, and only 41 percent say they feel safe.

Further, bullying occurs regardless of sexual orientation. Neither of the boys who committed suicide last week identified as gay. Possibly, they weren’t old enough to have even known their sexual orientation. But whatever it was is irrelevant; they’re dead because of anti-gay bullying.

“Anti-LGBT bullying affects all students, gay and straight alike,” GLSEN reports. “Bullies learn from an early age that anti-LGBT language is one of the most effective ways to torment their peers.”

For the last two decades, GLBT leaders have pressed for laws against bullying in our schools. California has led the country in promoting diversity programs that include GLBT tolerance. There’s a “Day of Silence;” there have been civil suits against school officials who show deliberate indifference to victims’ pleas of abuse, and abused students have recovered huge awards against school officials.

But, even in progressive California, anti-gay bullying continues, teaching us that passing laws promoting tolerance of gays doesn’t necessarily reduce hate crimes and harassment based upon sexual orientation. Especially now in the aftermath of Proposition 8, there are many who feel justified in propagating not just anti-gay rhetoric, but much worse. Too often, schools do too little too late about students who act out such prejudice on their peers. Consequently, students and their parents need to start taking complaints about anti-gay conduct directly to law enforcement.

In San Diego, harassed students and their parents have no better friend than District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. School officials will take phone calls from Dumanis, because if they don’t, and if they ignore claims of child suffering, she can inflict severe criminal penalties.

Further, police need to arrest school bullies and charge them with the crimes they have committed, such as battery, assault, or child abuse. (Yes, children can commit child abuse with verbal torment.) It’s time to start treating perpetrators as the juvenile delinquents they are and place them in the juvenile system.

It’s juvenile court judges, not school officials, who should deal with minors who abuse other minors. Many school officials believe there is nothing they can do to protect a child from torment anyway; they should feel relieved to have another authority take on the problem. (School districts should, however, be held accountable for paying for private schooling at a facility that can provide asylum from abuse.)

Once bullies are in the judicial system, judges can refer them to juvenile probation officers, who can fashion guidelines for them to follow, including restraints on their freedom to do just about anything, such as leaving home or using the Internet. (One court last week even approved of placing a GPS device on a minor.)

Minors who fail to follow such probationary orders are referred to Juvenile Court, which can then rule on any charges and fashion an appropriate sentence. In severe cases, a minor can be made a ward of the state, subject to an out-of-home placement in a juvenile facility.

If Dumanis and her deputies get involved, minors and their parents will have to take anti-gay bullying seriously: Juvenile court judges can sever parental rights, order parents into counseling and/or incarcerate minors in juvenile facilities.