Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is taking his anti-bullying message to Washington, D.C., today.

Shurtleff, along with Charlotte, N.C., Police Chief Darrel Stephens, will unveil a national poll of school-age children showing one-third of teens and one-sixth of younger children have been victims of a new-millennium brand of harassment: cyber-bullying. That's where youngsters use e-mail, chat rooms, instant messages, cell phones and even Web sites to send embarrassing, threatening or hurtful messages to or about peers.

In one case, angry, computer-savvy "friends" superimposed a girl's face onto a nude photograph and e-mailed it to classmates — from the victim's own e-mail account, Shurtleff said. In another, boys used an Internet site to rate female classmates' looks. And closer to home, a family member of Shurtleff found her private e-mail address had been spread to the wrong classmates, who sent cruel messages.

"It's a big problem here as well as anywhere," Shurtleff told the Deseret Morning News Wednesday. "It's a lot different than picking on a person. . . . Kids don't realize once something's out there on the Internet, it's out there forever. You can never take it back."

Today at the National Press Club, Shurtleff and Stephens, who represent the 3,000 police chiefs, prosecutors and sheriffs who belong to the group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, will offer family tips to combat cyber-bullying. They'll also call on Congress to act on an anti-bullying bill, and for schools to have proven bullying-prevention programs.

Utah schools already are acting. The Legislature this year passed an anti-bullying resolution, and the State Board of Education approved a rule requiring districts to address, in detail, bullying in school discipline plans if they want federal Safe and Drug Free Schools funding.

Some 160,000 American students avoid school every day for fear of being bullied, according to the National Association of School Psychologists. And in Utah, 93 percent of fourth- through ninth-graders surveyed by the Utah Behavioral Initiative said bullying was the biggest problem facing schools.

Jordan's Crescent View Middle School last year aimed to hit the problem head on.

Last year, ninth-graders wrote about their experiences as a victim, a bully or a witness to bullying, English and theater teacher Lanny Sorenson said. The papers became anonymous, and students read and acted out peers' experiences in class. Experiences were woven into a play, "Afraid to Be Me," which students performed for peers and parents.

"Even as I was working on the project, my awareness went up," Sorenson said. "When in the halls, I would recognize, 'Oh, that is bullying.' Even I had tuned myself out."

The school's suspension rates for bullying and fights dropped by two-thirds that year, principal Greg Leavitt said.

Project leaders will present their experience Friday at Jordan District's middle schools conference, with hopes others might duplicate it.

"This is poignant because it starts from the students, their own experiences . . . and it comes to life for them," Sorenson said. "It makes sense to them in real terms because it's not just someone telling them about the issue and what to do, it's them dealing with the issue."

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E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com