A NATIONAL forum on cyber-bullying, to help prevent people from being harassed online, is set to be held in Limerick at the end of September.
As part of Ireland South MEP Sean Kelly’s push to introduce an international campaign against cyber-bullying, the forum on September 27, in Kilmurry Lodge Hotel will be the second of its kind in Ireland.
“It [cyber-bullying] is a very serious challenge for parents, teachers, mental health and youth/community workers. It has fuelled a national and Europe-wide debate on how to best to tackle the issue,” he said.
Mr Kelly said in order to tackle the problem, which affects 1,700 young European citizens annually according to Beat Bullying UK, a variety of organisations from all over the EU should get involved.
“We need to change the behaviour, the attitude and the belief systems that allow bullying to persist in our schools, in our communities and in workplaces in some cases. We cannot allow any more young people to be tortured and negatively impacted in this way anymore.”
As well as constant anti-bullying programmes in schools, the Fine Gael MEP said he wishes to see a day dedicated to raising awareness about the issue.
“I am also strongly advocating for the establishment of an EU Anti-Bullying Day to raise awareness of the issue,”
Politicians have called for a new body to help stamp out cyber bullying among teenagers.
Facebook revenues have soared
As a new cross-party report revealed that 95% of 11 to 16-year-olds use Facebook, Fine Gael TD John O’Mahony said an organisation along the lines of the Road Safety Authority should be set up to regulate social media sites.
“A number of years ago there was a problem with road safety, with 400 people being killed a year on the roads,” he said.
“The Road Safety Authority came in and there was a whole lot of campaigns, some legislation and all of that, and resulted in that issue being never eliminated, but dealt with and heading in the right direction.
“We’re in the top five for road safety in Europe.
“The analogy I would use for a regulatory body that would deal in some way with cyber bullying would be the way to go here to avoid the difficulties and the tragedies involved with cyber bullying.”
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications criticised the Office for Internet Safety for not doing enough to tackle cyber bullying on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, and video upload You Tube.
With around 10% of teens admitting to having been bullied online, the committee recommended that a single body be given responsibility to regulate content, saying state funding would be agreed upon between Government and the industry.
Cyber bullying came under the spotlight following a number of suicides last year, including the death of 15-year-old Ciara Pugsley from Co Leitrim and 13-year-old Erin Gallagher from Co Donegal.
Erin’s sister Shannon, 15, took her own life two months later.
A COMPLAINT has been made to gardai after children were allegedly handcuffed and beaten by fellow pupils on a school trip.
Parents have complained that children from Griffeen Valley Educate Together School in Dublin were seriously bullied by classmates on a trip to a Gaelteacht in Co Donegal.
They have claimed that their children were handcuffed before being punched and kicked by other pupils during a visit to the Annagary Irish-speaking area.
According to one parent, the teachers slept in one house during the five-night trip in May, while the children were housed in a nearby property.
Several parents staged a sit-in at the school in Lucan after the trip to force the board of management to hold an emergency meeting on the matter.
It is understood that the school’s anti-bullying procedures have been implemented, including suspensions and mediation and counselling for pupils.
Principal Tomas O Dulaing did not respond to Irish Independent attempts to contact him last night.
He is a member of the United Left Alliance and is vocal on issues relating to cuts in funding for education, was involved in a very public row with local FG TD Derek Keating last month.
CYNICAL
He accused the TD of “gross cynical opportunism” for sending a leaflet to constituents highlighting his involvement in securing a school extension for Griffeen Educate Together.
The controversy deepened after Mr Keating’s aide, Tommy Morris, was caught on CCTV removing copies of a local newspaper which was reporting on the row.
Gardai are investigating the disappearance of hundreds of copies of the ‘Lucan Gazette’ bearing the headline, ‘Principal Blasts Keating’s Leaflet’.
Complaints about the alleged bullying on the school trip are understood to have been made to gardai. Mr Keating has called for an independent investigation into what he called “a very serious issue and not a school yard bullying incident”, saying he was raising the issue because some of the parents had approached him for help.
He said he has “never had to support parents who are so distressed” in his 14 years as a public representative.
He said he intended to raise the incident by special notice in the Dail this week and would ask why parents allegedly had to hold a sit in protest in the school staff room to ensure the board of management discussed the bullying claims.
Ask.fm is a dangerous place for cyber bullying. Photo / Thinkstock
I became aware of the social networking site ask.fm in April when a mother of a girl in my daughter’s class copied me in on a letter she’d sent to the school principal.Highlighting the issue of cyber-bullying, this mother asked the school to become even more proactive in addressing this problem.
She identified ask.fm – which she described as “a website where users are able to ask anonymous questions of other users and are able to post anonymous comments” – as being especially popular and potentially very damaging to users who are sitting ducks if a bully wants to target them. Further, she wrote: “the website has an insidious undertone, as it gives the more furtive bully the opportunity to post negative comments about people they would normally never … address that way in real life.”
This mother raised a couple of interesting points that are potential barriers to solving the problem of cyber-bullying. Firstly, she suggested that some parents suffer from my-child-would-never-do-something-like-that syndrome which is obviously unhelpful because, let’s face it, all bullying is perpetrated by someone’s little darling. Secondly, she alluded to instances in which cyber-bullying (if it is at the milder end of the spectrum) is easy for some people to shrug off as just a bit of teasing rather than psychologically damaging to vulnerable children.
To underscore the seriousness of her message she noted the case of Joshua Unsworth, a 15-year-old English boy found hanged in the wake of cyber-bullying. According to the Daily Mail, he “had endured months of abusive messages on his profile on ask.fm, which has been described by child safety experts as a ‘stalker’s paradise’.” The death of Stephanie Garrett, a 15-year-old Palmerston North girl, has also been associated with bullying via the same website.
On my first visit to ask.fm, which is billed as a “simple conversational Q&A service”, the first page I clicked on belonged to a New Zealand girl who was being bullied. I emailed the woman who had drawn my attention to it: “OMG I looked earlier at some ask.fm pages. The questions and abuse were terrible. All anonymous. The poor 16-year-old girl asking ‘who is this?’ and being told she’s fat, ugly, needs to get over [a personal loss I won’t reveal] … and has she lost her virginity. That would have to be the most screwed up site I’ve seen.”
Two months later I returned to the site and again the first page I opened belonged to a local girl. The most recent comment on her page was: “Your a ugly slut and i hate you.” I was appalled. I hadn’t even gone looking for toxic messages yet this was the first thing that turned up.
Young people are initiating this sort of cyber-bullying every single day with no accountability. And that’s the root of the problem. The ability to place anonymous questions/comments enables users to be as nasty as they like because they face no consequences. Ask.fm is a dangerous little cyber-world that provides the perfect conditions in which bullying can flourish.
Based in Latvia and with 40-million users, this website is a global phenomenon which can be accessed in any one of 28 languages. Ostensibly its purpose is to simply allow young people to communicate with each other. But for every harmless question – such as “Favourite item of clothing and why?”, “How was your day” and “Good looking guys in year 11?” – there’s something irretrievably nasty such as “You are not popular stop thinking you are” and “send this bitch hate, she cuts herself”.
In response to concerns about ask.fm, Netsafe offers advice to users: “We recommend that all young people prevent anonymous questions being posted. This can be done by pressing ‘Settings’ – ‘Privacy’ and choosing ‘Do not allow anonymous questions’.” Netsafe says that it’s also possible to block any user who is harassing you.
But evidence would suggest that ask.fm is potentially so harmful that surely parents should consider stopping their youngsters from accessing the site altogether. That certainly seems to be the view of the NZ Police who “urged extreme caution” and the police national media manager who said, “The prime message is don’t use it.”
Bullying in childhood pushes some teens to self-harm, and parents and teachers may be unaware.
After studying nearly 5,000 children and teens, researchers from the United Kingdom found that being bullied during childhood increases the risk of self-harm later in life, not just because bullying victims are prone to depression, but also because bullying exacerbates already risky situations.
“A common perception is that those who self-harm do this because they are depressed or mentally ill. We found that being bullied, in particular chronically in primary school, directly increases the risk of self-harm,” said study author Dieter Wolke, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Warwick in England.
The difference is that self-harm caused by bullying is different from, and not necessarily reliant upon, feelings of depression, though being bullied also increases a child’s risk of developing depression, the study authors wrote.
This means that children who don’t show overt signs of depression but may be self-harming can be missed by parents, teachers, and doctors.
In the United States, 14 to 17 percent of adolescents and young adults self-harm, according to a study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Self-harm behaviors include cutting or burning the skin and swallowing pills, and they are often used to release tension or communicate stress.
“Self-harm is used to release stress and to feel relief, at least for a short while,” Wolke told Healthline.
What Is Bullying?
In this study, bullying was classified as repeated aggression—at least once a week—that was conducted with the intention of harming another and was sustained over a six-month period, either online or in person.
“Bullying is not normal conflict,” Wolke says. It’s more than an independent fight or a single instance of abuse. “All children exposed to bullying had increased risk, but those bullied over years had the highest risk of using self-harm.”
“If there’s one goal of this conference, it’s to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up,” President Obama said at a 2011 White House conference. “It’s not.”
In Wolke’s study, 4,810 children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) in the United Kingdom answered a self-harm questionnaire at the age of 16 or 17. Researchers compared those answers with childhood bullying reports from children, parents, and teachers collected at ages 8 and 10.
Nearly 19 percent of participants reported self-harming at any point, and 16.5 percent reported repeatedly self-harming. Sixty-six percent of those who self-harmed reported being the victims of bullying. Wolke and his team theorize that if bullying hadn’t occurred, 20 percent of the self-harm cases could have been prevented.
“We show that [bullying] has serious consequences years later and should not further be belittled or ignored,” Wolke said.
Bullying often goes unnoticed, and as many as 40 percent of children believe neither their teachers nor their parents can do anything to help.
“It is also shameful or seen as a failure by the children—disclosing makes them feel even more worthless,” Wolke said. “Disclosure is the first step to help and children need an atmosphere at school, home, or towards others to be able to talk about it. Talking through potential ways of dealing and coping is a first step toward avoid long-term adverse effects.”
In January, Nadin Khoury, a 13-year-old from Pennsylvania, suffered a beat-down at the hands and feet of a group of bullies who intended to post the video on YouTube. Social media sites, such as Facebook and YouTube, have been under fire as attack sites used by teens to bully and harass their peers, but Nadin was able to use this video to help catch six of his attackers.
Khoury, whose family recently immigrated to the United States from Liberia, endured 30 minutes of brutality, in which his bullies repeatedly kicked and punched him. They hung him, by his clothing, upside down from a tree and from a six-foot fence. The attack didn’t stop until a woman passing by came back and was able to chase the boys away form their victim.
The six attackers caught, ages 13 to 17, face charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment and reckless endangerment.
Other Teen Attackers Caught on Video
There are previous instances of other attacks on teenagers being caught on video. One such incident is the 2008 attack on 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay. The teen had to seek hospital treatment for injuries. Victoria was lured to a friend’s house for the purpose of catching the attack on tape, to post to MySpace and YouTube.
Police learned of the video and were able to use it to identify the female suspects involved in the plot. Eight girls, ages 14 to 18, were charged with false imprisonment and battery.
Phoebe Prince’s Bullies Caught on Facebook
Phoebe Prince is another teen immigrant, from Ireland, who was also relentlessly bullied by her classmates. The vicious assault came in part through text messages and via Facebook. In January 2010, the 15-year-old committed suicide in her family’s Massachusetts home as a result. On the day of her death, one of her alleged attackers posted “accomplished” on Phoebe’s Facebook page. Six teens were arrested in the case, on charges of relentless bullying, identified in part by Facebook postings.
Prince’s case is another example of how bullies can be caught through the social media they use to harass their targets. Such bulling would not have had as much proof in the past, with most of the evidence being hearsay, leaving little evidence to charge bullies for their crimes.
Anti-bulling advocates are using the social media platforms used to harass teens to spread the message against bullying. They are turning these social platforms into a means to prevent the crimes from ever happening, not just as a means to catch attackers. The It Gets Better Project is a YouTube channel geared toward telling LBGT teenagers that their lives will improve and not to give up hope. The videos also spread the message that bullying teens who are perceived as different is not okay.
The channel is a response to an outbreak of suicides of LGBT teenagers, such as 15-year-old Billy Lucas, who hung himself in his grandmother’s barn. Lucas was called a “f–” by bulling classmates and told to go kill himself.
Incidences of cyberbullying among teenagers in Ireland are among the highest in Europe, according to a new report.
A quarter of nine- to 16-year-olds experienced some form of bullying, both online and offline. Levels of bullying in Ireland are above average compared with the 25 other countries surveyed as part of Safer Internet Day, a global initiative to promote a safer internet for all users, especially young people.
Irish teenagers recorded four times the level of lasting damage from bullying than the European average, with 8 per cent reporting lasting trauma. The European average is 2 per cent.
More than two-thirds of the parents (68 per cent) did not know their children were bullied, while just 29 per cent did know.
Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan and Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn both turned up at this morning’s launch of two initiatives – the Watch your Space public awareness campaign on cyber-bullying, and a new Garda primary schools programme module, Connect with Respect, which deals with online bullying.
Mr Callinan said young people are “extremely vulnerable”, and that gardaí intend to go around to schools to raise awareness of cyberbullying and to offer support to students who are feeling bullied.
Mr Quinn said the level of awareness of cyberbullying was much higher than had been the case, partially as a result of a number of high-profile tragedies involving teenagers targeted in such a fashion.
He said he was “absolutely committed” to addressing all forms of bullying and was providing a budget of €500,000 to fund an action plan on the issue.
As if having food allergies isn’t hard enough on a child, new research finds at least one-third of kids with food allergies said they are targets of bullying.
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City surveyed about 250 children with food allergies and their parents and found 31.5 percent said they are subjected to taunts and threats that frequently involve the allergy-inducing food.
Bullying not only caused higher levels of stress for these children and their parents, but could potentially risk a child’s life if they have a history of severe allergic reactions to the food they’re being taunted with.
“Our results should raise awareness for parents, school personnel, and physicians to proactively identify and address bullying in this population,” study author Dr. Scott H. Sicherer, chief of the pediatric allergy division at Mount Sinai, said in a statement.
Children who reported bullying and their parents were more likely to report a lower quality of life on the survey. About half of surveyed parents said they were “aware” of bullying, and children of parents who said they were aware were more likely to report less stress and a higher quality of life than parents who were unaware of a problem.
“Parents and pediatricians should routinely ask children with food allergy about bullying,” said study author Dr. Eyal Shemesh, chief of the division of behavioral and developmental health in the department of pediatrics at The Mount Sinai Medical Center. “Finding out about the child’s experience might allow targeted interventions, and would be expected to reduce additional stress and improve quality of life for these children trying to manage their food allergies.”
Bullying at school or on the Internet — known as cyberbullying — has made headlines in recent years as stories emerge of suicides and the severe emotional toll the mean-spirited teasing can have on children.
“There has been a shift and people are more and more recognizing that bullying has real consequences, it’s not just something to be making jokes about,” Dr. Mark Schuster, chief of general pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. who wrote am accompanying commentary with the new study, told Reuters.
Schuster also told HealthDay that parents themselves could be more understanding of their classmates’ food allergies, because they may unknowingly be encouraging bullying. He noted some parents may “roll their eyes” or complain they can’t send cookies and other foods to schools because classmates have food allergies, and kids can pick up on this negativity.
Approximately 8 percent of U.S. children have food allergies, according to estimates from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI). Nearly 40 percent of these children have a history of severe allergic reactions like anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening.
Being a victim of childhood bullying alters the structure which surrounds a gene that controls mood, which in turn, makes victims more susceptible to developing mental health issues as they grow older.
The finding was published in the journal Psychological Medicine and came from Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, a scientist at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) at the Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine and professor at the Université de Montréal.
The current study was set out to closely examine the mechanisms that explain how people’s responses to stressful situations become altered due to tough events they experienced.
Ouellet-Morin explained:
“Many people think that our genes are immutable; however this study suggests that environment, even the social environment, can affect their functioning. This is particularly the case for victimization experiences in childhood, which change not only our stress response but also the functioning of genes involved in mood regulation.”
Prior research, conducted by the same author at the Institute of Psychiatry in London (UK), demonstrated that kids who are bullied produce less of the stress hormone, cortisol. However, they behaved more aggressively and had trouble interacting with others.
Ouellet-Morin’s current research shows that when a victim is 10 years old, the structure surrounding a gene called SERT, responsible for controlling serotonin – a neurotransmitter which plays a part in adjusting mood and depression, may be the reason why the child experiences a decrease of cortisol at about age 12.
The researcher made this discovery after evaluating 28 pairs of identical twins who were 10 years old on average. One twin was a victim of bullying at school and the other twin was not bullied by peers.
Ouellet-Morin concluded:
“Since they were identical twins living in the same conditions, changes in the chemical structure surrounding the gene cannot be explained by genetics or family environment. Our results suggest that victimization experiences are the source of these changes.”
The author suggests that experts should now look into the possibility of helping bullied kids change the psychological impact, potentially through interventions at school and by providing comfort and support to victims.
THE father of a beautiful teenage schoolgirl who took her own life after being bullied online today warns other parents of the dangers of social media.
Ciara Pugsley (15) who committed suicide 12 days ago. Her father Jonathan has spoken out about how she suffered online bullying and he wants to bring the dangers of social networking sites to light
Ciara Pugsley (15), who successfully represented her local GAA team, took her own life 12 days ago in a tragedy of appalling proportions.
Detectives are investigating claims she was bullied on the ask.fm website.
Her dad Jonathan spoke to this newspaper in order to alert other parents of the dangers to their children online.
“I’m reminded of Ciara every single minute of the day, I’m always doing something that reminds me of her,” said the 46-year-old engineer.
“Ciara was a special girl. She was outgoing and involved in so many clubs. She loved horse-riding, GAA and everything else that was going on.
“She wasn’t the girl who sat in the corner and was quiet. She was at the centre of everything and that’s why the local community in Leitrim is so upset because so many people knew her,” said Mr Pugsley.
Ciara Pugsley (15), who successfully represented her local GAA team, took her own life 12 days ago in a tragedy of appalling proportions.
Detectives are investigating claims she was bullied on the ask.fm website.
Her dad Jonathan spoke to this newspaper in order to alert other parents of the dangers to their children online.
“I’m reminded of Ciara every single minute of the day, I’m always doing something that reminds me of her,” said the 46-year-old engineer.
“Ciara was a special girl. She was outgoing and involved in so many clubs. She loved horse-riding, GAA and everything else that was going on.
“She wasn’t the girl who sat in the corner and was quiet. She was at the centre of everything and that’s why the local community in Leitrim is so upset because so many people knew her,” said Mr Pugsley.
Ciara’s father, Jonathan Pugsley, at the Herbert Park hotel in Ballsbridge,Dublin last night
Mr Pugsley, from Somerset, moved with his Irish-born wife Aggie and their three children to Dromahair, Co Leitrim, 12 years ago. “My wife is Irish and wanted to come home and Leitrim was perfect. The country living and the country schools and all the activities — you couldn’t have asked for a better place.
She was a popular student at St Clare’s Comprehensive and had represented Leitrim Ladies
Gaelic football team at under-14 level, reaching the junior all-Ireland final last year.
“I had no idea until 12 days ago that Ciara was being bullied. There were no signs of it,” said Mr Pugsley.
“Of course when I was at school we didn’t have the internet and any arguments there were settled there. But nowadays it continues online and on into the evening and right through until 2 o’clock at night.
“I have heard of Bebo and Facebook like every other parent but I had never heard of this site ask.fm, where bullies can be completely anonymous,” he said.
Mr Pugsley described the site — based in Latvia — as “extremely sinister”. He said he didn’t expect to be able to campaign for its closure because “another would just pop up anyway”.
Ciara Pugsley
“If I can, I want to help educate people about what these sites are and what they can do to young people.”
The grieving father said he had been taken aback by some of the comments he had read about his daughter online before and after her death.
“It is very scary,” he said, “and very sinister and you wonder about these people (making comments). But if I can help to educate people about being safe online then I will.”
Last night he appeared on RTE’s ‘Frontline’ TV programme to help that process.
He said his other daughter Abigail (20) and son Daniel (18) were “utterly devastated” by Ciara’s death.
“Daniel has taken it badly because he had just started to take Ciara out to underage discos and introduce her to his friends,” said Jonathan. “He was particularly close to her.”
Meanwhile, the rate of male suicide has dropped slightly but it remains relatively constant for women, a new report revealed yesterday.
Prevention
However, suicide is still significantly more likely among males than females, the report of the HSE’s National Office for Suicide Prevention said.
Male suicide steadily increased from 8.4 per 100,000 in 1980, to 23.5 in 1998, falling to 20.0 in 2009.
The suicide rate is highest for young males aged between 20 and 24 and for females aged between 50 and 54.
There were 552 deaths by suicide in 2009, representing a rate of 12.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
Compared to other European standards, Ireland has the sixth lowest rate of death by suicide, with a reported rate of 10.3 per 100,000, compared with the lowest rate of 3.9 in Greece and the highest of 34 in Lithuania.
