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Bullied bus monitor receives donations after video goes viral

Karen Klein, a bus monitor in New York, has received thousands of dollars in donations after video of the verbal abuse went viral on YouTube.

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Gabe Hernandez/The Monitor/AP
Here, students from Alton Memorial Jr. High School wave to teachers and staff after boarding their school bus on the last day of classes on June 6, 2012 in Mission, Texas.
  • By Associated Press

| ROCHESTER, N.Y.

More than $120,000 has been raised online for an upstate New York bus monitor who was taunted and verbally abused by students.

The incident was captured in a 10-minute video posted to YouTube showing 68-year-old Karen Klein trying her best to ignore the stream of profanity, insults and outright threats directed at her.

By early Wednesday, the video had gone viral.

Klein told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that she "was just trying to ignore them and hope they would go away."

The Greece bus monitor didn't report the incident, but school officials notified police when they learned of it. An investigation has been launched.

By Thursday morning, the international crowd funding site Indiegogo.com had raised more than $124,000 to send the grandmother on a vacation.

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