A Los Angeles teacher was arrested and charged with taking bondage-style photographs of students. In news reports of the event, what was held to be most shocking was that in some of the photos large cockroaches had been placed on students' faces. 

There was no suggestion that the teacher had coerced the students. But there is no question about the cockroaches: they were physically forced to endure the humiliation not only of sitting on a teen's face, but of having the act eternalized in photographs that could reach roaches all over the world. 

How many innocent roaches took their own lives? That was not deemed worthy of print. What is certain is the trauma the roaches suffered the rest of their days, the haunting fear of finding themselves swimming in the oil of a teen's face, legs stuck in the green hell of his zits–and the burning shame of being seen. 

This was not a crime a lifetime of therapy could erase. 

(Courtesy of Numbers the roach.)