TIME OUT:Phoebe Prince case highlights issue once again
THE DEATH in South Hadley of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince, and the classic aftermath of denial, secrecy, institutional silence and attempts to blame the victim, draws attention to the topic of bullying and how little progress has been made in tackling school bullying here.
Despite research since the 1980s highlighting the problem and proposing solutions, the issue of bullying arises again and again at tragic and starkly inevitable intervals when one more young life has been shattered or ended because of it.
Each decade, bullying finds more insidious means of expression. It shifts from playground to sports pitch, to journey home, to every minute of every day through new technologies that provide outlets for the bullies. It is a serious attack on the sufferer including physical assault, psychological mugging, mental battering and social exclusion.
Children suffer when they are bullied. It eats into their hearts, their trust in people, their belief that adults will rescue them, and their feelings of safety and security.
In common with all people who experience abuse, young people who are bullied often secretly believe it is their fault; that they are worthless; that they may deserve what is happening to them. They absorb the names they are called, the insults, the physical bruises, the mental stabs. They come to believe they are responsible for the hatred they receive. They begin to hate themselves. Sometimes, they see no other way out of their misery than death.
Bullying is not abstract – it is being cut or bruised by “accidental” encounters on the hockey pitch, rugby pitch or at gym. It is having school lunch stolen, spat on, stamped or destroyed. It is having clothing interfered with, objects put into pockets or down trousers. It is trying to stay within sight of teachers for protection. It is being afraid to use the school’s loo or hiding there in fear after school. It is homework defaced or given to the bully to copy.
In adolescence, bullying is often about sexual attractiveness, gender or sexual orientation with insults given, ridiculing clothes, their style, label or cost. It is social exclusion, conversations ended, backs turned, tweets and texts sent, defamatory statements on social networking sites.
At the end of the school day it is being stopped from getting on a bus, being followed home at an intimidating distance, and being told that one is a waste of space.
Bullying is so shocking that we often do not want to believe it happens, deny it when we see it, blame those who complain about it and believe it will go away if we ignore it.
Those who are bullied carry the terrible trio of blame, shame and guilt. They carry this into adult life unless adults intervene swiftly and with absolute conviction that the bullying of children and adolescents by each other is an adult problem that adults, not children, must solve.
Because whenever a child is bullied, somebody’s eyes are shut: the eyes of a parent, classmates, a teacher, a worker, the lollipop person, shopkeepers, people on the street, the eyes of a community and a society, all of us who know about this and do not do enough to confront it.
Not until we have a national approach, not until every school is legally mandated to have a publicly published whole school anti-bullying policy to which parents and children must sign up, will the problem begin to be solved.
Parents whose children bully need help. Children who bully need help. Parents whose children are bullied need help. Teachers who are bullied need help. Schools need help because they are often intimidated by threats of litigation if they identify children who are bullies in their schools. Most of all, children who are bullied need help. It is not enough to know what to do unless we do what we know. So far the record is poor on that.
Clinical psychologist Marie Murray is director of psychology in the UCD Student Counselling Service. She is co-author of
The ABC of Bullying
and of
Surviving The Leaving Cert: Points for Parents
, published by Veritas