Barbara Coloroso - Bully, the Bullied, and the Not-So Innocent Bystander: From Pre-School to High School and Beyond: Breaking the Cycle of Violence and Creating More Deeply Caring Communities

I think we cant go around measuring our goodness by what we dont do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think weve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.

Pre Henri,
in the movie Chocolat

I shall remember forever and will never forget

Monday: my money was taken.

Tuesday: names called.

Wednesday: my uniform torn.

Thursday: my body pouring with blood.

Friday: its ended.

Saturday: freedom.

The final diary pages of thirteen-year-old Vijay Singh. He was found hanging from the banister rail at home on Sunday.

Neil Marr and Tim Field,
Bullycide, Death at Playtime:
An Expos of Child Suicide
Caused by Bullying

Bullying is a life-and-death issue that we ignore at our childrens peril. It can no longer be minimized and trivialized by adults, taken lightly, brushed off, or denied. Thousands of children go to school every day filled with fear and trepidation; others feign illness to avoid being taunted or attacked on the way to school or in the school yard, hallways, and bathrooms; still others manage to make themselves sick at school so as to avoid harassment in the locker room. Children who are bullied spend a lot of time thinking up ways to avoid the trauma and have little energy left for learning, or getting involved in constructive activities, or maintaining healthy relationships with their peers.

It is not only the bullied child who suffers the consequences of bullying. Some children who use physical bullying when they are young diversify and magnify their cruelty in their teen years to include dating violence, or vicious racist attacks on their peers. Many children who bully continue these learned behaviors into adulthood and are at increased risk of bullying their own children, failing at interpersonal relationships, losing jobs, and, for some, ending up in jail.

Bystanders are also affected by bullying. These onlookers may observe the bullying and turn a blind eye, walk away, jump in as accomplices, or actively intervene and help the targeted child. All of these options come at a price.

Breaking the cycle of violence involves more than merely identifying and stopping the bully or offering counseling to the targeted child. It requires that we examine why and how a child becomes a bully or the target of a bully (and sometimes both) as well as the role bystanders play in perpetuating the cycle. We must look at the cultural climate of the home, school, and community that may be cultivating the bully, reinforcing the corrupting behavior of the not-so-innocent bystanders, undermining the target of the bully, and making it difficult for brave-hearted witnesses, resisters, and defenders to stand up for the targeted child, step in, and speak out against the injustice.

A deadly combination is a bully who gets what he wants from his target; a bullied child who is afraid to tell; not-so-innocent bystanders who either watch, participate in the bullying, or look away; and adults who discount bullying as teasing, not tormenting; as a necessary part of growing up, not an impediment along the way; as boys will be boys, not the predatory aggression that it is.

If this triad of relationships is not radically transformed, we have enough incidents in our recent past to convince us that it is not only the bully who may terrorize and haunt our community. Some victims whose cries went unheard, whose pain was ignored, whose oppression went unabated and unrelieved, have struck back with a vengeance and a rage that have racked our communities with incomprehensible horror and sorrow. Others, like Vijay Singh, who reached what they felt was an utterly hopeless and irretrievable point, have turned the violence inward and killed themselves. Feeling they had no other way out of the pain and torture heaped on them by their tormentors, no one to turn to, no way to tell, they made a tragic and final exit:

January 1999; Manchester, England: Eight-year-old Marie Bentham hanged herself in her bedroom with her jump rope because she felt she could no longer face the bullies at school. Marie is thought to be Britains youngest bullycide.

January 1995; Belfast, Ireland: Maria McGovern overdosed after being bullied. The diary she left behind recorded a life of daily terror at the hands of her schoolmates.

April 1997; Nanaimo, British Columbia: A grade four student pulled a knife on another student who was taunting him. According to his mother, the knife-wielding boy had been tormented by his peers for over a year. He gave up all forms of sport, wouldnt do his homework, and would just end up leaving schoolhe was angry all the time. He was picked on, period. Home was the only place he could go where he wouldnt get picked on.

The Bully, the Bullied, and the Not-So-Innocent Bystander

After the knife incident, the boy and his family were required to take an anger management course. The school took no immediate disciplinary steps against the children who had bullied him.

August 1997; Invercargill, New Zealand: Fifteen-year-old Matt Ruddenklau committed suicide. The coroners report stated, Bullying and victimization were a significant factor in the boys life in the months leading up to his suicide.

November 14, 1997; Victoria, British Columbia: Fourteen-year-old Reena Virk died after being lured by schoolmates, attacked, and beaten unconscious. Reenas arm, neck, and back were deliberately broken before she was dumped in the Gorge Inlet. She had tried to fit in and had wanted desperately to belong to their group, but she was regularly mocked and taunted about her brown skin and her weight. Particularly startling was the fact that hundreds of students knew about the relentless taunting and even of her death before someone tipped off the police.

Two of the girls who lured Reena to the waterway where she was mobbed and killed were sentenced to a year in custody and another year of probation. The fourteen-year-old said she was angry with Reena because she believed Reena had been spreading rumors about her. The sixteen-year-old was mad at Reena because she believed Reena had been involved with her boyfriend.

April 20, 1999; Littleton, Colorado: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold used assault weapons and homemade bombs to lay siege to their high school. The two boys killed twelve classmates and a teacher, injured eighteen other teenagers, and then killed themselves.

Their friends said the two boys were constantly ridiculed and taunted at school. An anonymous classmate made an unfounded accusation that Eric and Dylan had brought marijuana to school, prompting a search of their property. Then there was another incident, even more humiliating than the search. People surrounded them in the commons and squirted ketchup packets all over them, laughing at them, calling them faggots. That happened while teachers watched. They couldnt fight back. They wore the ketchup all day and went home covered with it.