TUESDAY, Feb. 14 (HealthDay News) — New research confirms the trend of disturbing headlines that have appeared in media reports in the past two years:
— For Many Gay Youth, Bullying Exacts a Deadly Toll
— Gay Buffalo Teen Commits Suicide on Eve of National Bullying Summit
— Tennessee Teen Commits Suicide After Years Of Anti-Gay Bullying
— Indiana Teen Commits Suicide After Anti-Gay Bullying at School
As seemingly damning as the headlines may be, the results of the study don’t prove that harassment directly causes young gay people to become suicidal or hurt themselves. Still, the research is the first to show what happens over time to teens who are bullied and victimized, said study co-author Brian Mustanski, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Department of Medical Social Sciences.
It may seem obvious that bullying and a lack of support from loved ones would make people more suicidal. But “sometimes the things that we think are important still have to get confirmed with science,” Mustanski said.
“It’s surprising how negative those effects are,” he added. “Victimization turned out to be really important. It was far and away the most important risk factor.”
Previous research has suggested that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) children are more likely to be suicidal and hurt themselves. A study released in the journal Developmental Psychology last year found that these people who were bullied as children were about 2.5 times more likely as others to be clinically depressed as young adults.
In the new study, reported in the current issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers surveyed 246 LGBT youth aged 16 to 20 and followed them over several years to see what happened to them. Fifty-seven percent of the participants were black; about half were female.
Being bullied (over the time period of the study) and a low level of support from others boosted the risk that the teens would become suicidal. Bullying also boosted the risk that they would try to harm themselves. Over the 2.5-year study, slightly more than 15 percent of the people in the survey reported trying to harm themselves.
On average, 8 percent of the participants reported hurting themselves in the prior six months, Mustanski said. Seven percent of those who didn’t report being victimized said they’d harmed themselves, compared to 11 percent of those who’d reported being victimized. Overall, a history of being bullied more than doubled the odds for self-harm, the researchers found.
However, those who had social support — “support from family and peers, meaning that the young person would say they have someone to go to when they have a tough time, someone is looking out for them” — were less likely to be suicidal, Mustanski added.
N. Eugene Walls, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Denver, said the study confirms other findings about the effects of anti-gay bullying.
“As more and more research accumulates, those who wish to ignore anti-gay bullying or dismiss it as normal adolescent behavior and teasing are going to have an increasingly difficult argument to make that bullying is not that serious,” he said.
What should parents do?
“Research indicates that they are unlikely to be able to change their child’s sexual orientation. So even though it may be difficult, sexual orientation is likely to be something about their child that will require acceptance,” said Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, a professor of psychology at the University of South Alabama.
Mustanski said young people themselves can find support through gay-straight alliances on campuses, youth programs at local gay community centers and online sites.
He recommended the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s list of warning signs of suicide.
More information
Contact the The Trevor Project to reach a 24-hour, toll-free confidential suicide hotline for gay teens and those who are questioning their sexuality.
If you’re the parent of a bullied child who’s frustrated with a lack of responsiveness from your son’s or daughter’s school, if you’ve tried everything from meeting with the counselor to talking to the principal, perhaps even contacting the superintendent, and your child is still coming home in tears every day, don’t lose hope.
I’m a bullying survivor turned activist who travels the nation’s schools working with students, faculty, and parents to help save lives. I know first-hand the anguish for both parents and administrators when there’s a child in crisis. Parents, you need to keep a cool head and be guided by reason, not emotion. The calmer you are, the more you’ll achieve with the school. Making threats or irrational demands can diminish your credibility and put everyone on the defensive. You need to approach the school ready to cooperate and focus on finding solutions that won’t benefit just your child but the student body as a whole.
Also, try and keep in mind that despite their cruel behavior, most bullies are good kids in bad circumstances acting out in a cry for help. Finding it in your heart to feel some compassion for your child’s bully (I know it’s a lot to ask) is far more likely to turn the situation around than giving in to anger. Encourage the school to find out what’s driving the bully’s behavior. Perhaps something is going on at home, and he or she is bringing that anger and fear with them to class. It makes fitting in even more important, because for some of these kids, their friends are their only support and solace. And if they’re feeling insecure, the bullying can get worse. The key to breaking the cycle is the curiosity of caring adults, and that includes you, the parents of the victims. Don’t jump to conclusions about your child’s bully. Ask questions, and encourage the school to ask questions, too. The solutions that offer the strongest long-term results are those that address the best interests of both bully and victim.
If you reach an impasse with the school or find you are being stonewalled, here are some specific steps to inspire action:
Document, document, document! Help your child keep a journal of abuses; jot down dates, times, and details. If there were witnesses, write down their names. For cyber-bullying, print out all nasty or threatening emails, blog or Facebook postings, instant messages, etc. Document threatening or demeaning cell phone texts, as well. Many cell phones allow you to snap a screen photo of the text messages. You can also email the texts to yourself and then print them out.
Ask your child the names of other kids at school who are also being bullied. Reach out to their parents, share with them what you and your child have been going through, and form a parental coalition. A school may try to ignore one concerned parent, but there’s no school that can ignore an organized constituency of determined parents.
Keep taking it up the chain of command. If the principal doesn’t give you a response, go to the superintendent. If that doesn’t work, present your case in public at the next school board meeting. Every school district is required to hold a monthly school board meeting open to the public. Air your grievances there and bring your documentation!
And if that still doesn’t yield any action on the part of the school, contact the education writer at your local newspaper. You’d be surprised how quickly a school administration will respond when reporters are asking questions.
Above all, don’t give up. One of the reasons so many students continue to get bullied even after a parent has approached the school is that the parent doesn’t do the necessary follow-up. Get involved, and stay involved. Don’t assume after one or two meetings with a principal that the problem will resolve itself. You have to be as vigilant as you would with any important project. And remember, you’re never alone. I’m here. Reach out if you need me.
BOSTON – Children singled out for abuse either in person or through cyberbullying are more prone to long-term depression, significantly poorer mental and physical health, and suicidal thoughts and actions than their peers who are spared from bullying, said investigators at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
Children seen as outsiders by their peers – those with developmental disabilities, mental health problems, and gays or lesbians – are the most common targets of bullies both in the schoolyard and online, said Dr. Eileen P. Ryan from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
With cyberbullying – a term that encompasses remote, electronic bullying done on e-mail, role-playing game sites, YouTube, Facebook, and other online venues – the perpetrator doesn’t need to be in the same room or the same town as the victim. In addition, the bully can be physically weaker than his target.
“This is where the little red-headed, freckled, pale child is able to bully the quarterback of the high school football team,” said Dr. Bradley Freeman of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
Dr. Ryan cited a definition of bullying by Dan Olweus, Ph.D., a Swedish psychologist and bullying expert: “A person is bullied when he or she is subjected repeatedly and over time to negative action on the part of one or more people.”
The U.S. attorney general’s office defines cyberbullying as “use of electronic devices and information such as e-mail instant messaging, text messages, mobile phones, pager, and websites to send or post cruel or harmful messages or images about an individual or group.”
Dr. Eileen P. Ryan
Both forms of bullying can have severe mental health consequences for both the victim and the bully, Dr. Ryan said. Although it is widely thought to become less prevalent with age, 20%-30% of 8th through 12th graders have reported frequent involvement in bullying as a victim, bully, or both. A 2001 study from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development found that nearly 30% of a representative sample of 15,686 6th through 10th graders reported moderate or frequent involvement in bullying: 13% as bullies, 10.6% as victims, and 6.3% as both, with boys more frequently being both the bully and the bullied (JAMA 2001;285:2094-100).
In the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a prospective cohort study of 503 boys followed from ages 6 through 19, being a bully at age 10 was the strongest predictor of delinquency. The study showed that 32.6% of bullies become delinquents, compared with 22.5% of nonbullies. In addition, being a victim at age 19 was the strongest predictor of depression, with 32% of victims having depression, compared with 22.7% of nonvictims, Dr. Ryan said (J. Aggress. Confl. Peace Res. 2011 June 9 [10.1108/17596591111132882]).
A recent meta-analysis from investigators at the University of Cambridge (England), found that the probability of being depressed up to 36 years later was much higher among people who had been bullied at school, compared with nonvictims. The authors also found that the probability of offending up to 11 years later was much higher for school bullies than noninvolved students, she noted (Crim. Behav. Ment. Health 2011;21:80-9).
Girls who bully, even infrequently, appear to be at increased risk for suicide, while among boys, only those who bully frequently are at increased risk.
“Suicidal behavior among male bullies may be a function of psychopathology rather than bullying, per se,” Dr. Ryan said.
Equal Opportunity Bullies
Cyberbullies often carry out their abuse anonymously, but according to a 2004 survey of Internet users, 84% of cyberbullies knew their victim in person, and 31% of victims said they knew the bullies.
Cyberbullying increases with age, with males about twice as likely as females to be the electronic bullies (22% to 12%, respectively), Dr. Freeman said. He pointed to a 2007 studywhich found that 38% of cyberbullies said they participated in the activity for fun, 25% for retaliation, and 6% because they felt bad about themselves (J. Adolesc. Health 2007;41[6 suppl. 1]:S1-5).
As with old-fashioned bullying, victims might experience loss of self-esteem, depression, hopelessness, psychosomatic symptoms, or attempted or actual suicide.
Dr. Karen Rosenbaum
Antibullying Legislation
At least 23 states have enacted laws directing school districts to draft policies against bullying, harassment, and intimidation among students; seven states require schools to have disciplinary procedures or consequences, said Dr. Karen Rosenbaum, of New York University.
Many of the laws have been enacted in response to high profile cases of teens who committed suicide after being bullied online and in person.
For example, after the 2010 bullying-induced suicide of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old Irish immigrant who had recently enrolled at a high school in South Hadley, Mass., the state of Massachusetts enacted a law that bans bullying on all school grounds, buses, and activities. The law also mandates that every incident be investigated by school officials and reported to the parents of the students involved.
StopBullying.gov, a federal government website, recommends a number of steps to prevent or stop bullying.
The researchers did not disclose funding sources for their studies. Dr. Ryan, Dr. Freeman, and Dr. Rosenbaum each declared that they have no financial conflicts of interest.
Headlines flash as Lady Gaga vows to stop bullying after a teens suicide
Media headlines calling attention to yet another young death due to bullying.
Jamey Rodemeyer was just fourteen years old when he had taken his life last Sunday.
What had prompted this teen to take his life? In one word; bullying. What makes it even more heartbreaking was his video called “It Gets Better” posted on you tube last May.
Unfortunately, this was not the only teen that had made national headlines due to being bullied and ending their life. In January, news once again traveled as Phoebe Prince, a recent immigrant from Ireland had committed suicide by hanging herself in her home on January 14th.
Being bullied in school is not nothing new. In 2006, 13 year old Megan Meier committed suicide after being harassed and this time not by other children but by an adult who should of acted like one. Instead the woman, a mother of Megan’s former friend had created a fake profile to tease and torment the young girl. More young lives were also ended. Ryan Patrick Halligan, 13 years old, death by hanging due to online bullying. A nine year old boy, death by hanging in nurse’s bathroom of school due to bullying. Eleven year old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hung himself with extension cords after bullies had taunted and harassed him by repeatedly calling him gay.
After this latest report had hit media outlets Lady Gaga had tweeted her followers remarking “Bullying must become illegal. It is a hate crime,”
Lady Gaga continued by strongly stating she will be meeting with President Obama and she will not stop fighting to end bullying noting we need to make a law for Jamey. All it took was a few minutes for her phrase to be re-tweeted by her millions of followers and for the record she has more followers than the president himself.
Lady Gaga a known advocate for repealing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” U.S. military’s standard policy of homosexual men and women in the service. In the early part of this week that policy has been eradicated.
Today is the National Summit sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. in effort to stop the bullying in schools.
Most bullying does not occur from physical confrontation but in the form but in the form of insults, rumors and ridicule.
Counselors at Jamey’s school had advised him against the usage of social media sites to talk about his sexuality. There are parents that do monitor their children’s social networking and advise other parents to do the same. Social media sites like Facebook make it user for cyber bullying.
Jamey had posted on his Facebook “What do I have to do to have people listen to me”.
Those words ring out as this young life has abruptly come to an end do to the hateful words of others.
Hopefully bullying will end no matter what shape or form it is in. No matter if it is directed at homosexuals, race, religion or more. It should be stopped. Maybe Lady Gage will be the one to take the powerful stand against bullying and make this a hate crime so not another young life is lost.
Bullying does not make you cool nor does it make you important but it does make you ignorant.
In honor of Jamey I have just created a Facebook page called Stop Cyber Bullying for Jamey. Bullying must be stop and cyber bullying seems to be rising. Stop by and like the page and honor Jamey’s memory and help put an end to bullying so another young life will not be lost.
If your child is being bullied at school notify school officials immediately. If your child is being bullied on social sites contact the administrator immediately.
Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, was found dead outside his home of an apparent suicide.
Police have opened a criminal investigation in the suicide death of Buffalo, N.Y., 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, who was bullied online with gay slurs for more than a year.
The teen’s parents, friends and even Lady Gaga, who was his idol, have expressed outrage about what they say was relentless torment on social networking websites.
The Amherst Police Department’s Special Victims Unit has said it will determine whether to charge some students with harassment, cyber-harassment or hate crimes. Police said three students in particular might have been involved. Jamey was a student at Heim Middle School.
Jamey had just started his freshman year at Williamsville North High School. (Both Amherst and Williamsville are just outside Buffalo.) But the bullying had begun during middle school, according to his parents. He had told family and friends that he had endured hateful comments in school and online, mostly related to his sexual orientation.
Jamey was found dead outside his home Sunday morning, but Amherst police would not release any details on how he killed himself.
“The special victims unit is looking into the circumstances prior to his death,” Captain Michael Camilleri said. “We are not sure if there is anything criminal or not.”
No bullying laws exist in New York State, according to Camilleri, so police would have to determine whether aggravated harassment charges fit this case. Whether suspects would be tried in juvenile court would depend on whether the alleged bully was 16 or older, he said.
Police said they had spoken with Williamsville School Superintendent Scott G. Martzloff, who has pledged the district’s cooperation.
“We’ve heard that there were some specific students, an identifiable group of students, that had specifically targeted Jamey, or had been picking on him for a period of time,” Police Chief John C. Askey told the Buffalo News.
Jamey sent out many signals on social networking sites that he was struggling with his sexuality, even though he encouraged others on the It Gets Better project websiteYouTube to fight off the bullies.
He killed himself this weekend after posting an online farewell.
Lady Gaga weighed in on the situation via twitter: “Bullying must become illegal. It is a hate crime,” she tweeted.
“I am meeting with our President. I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey,” the singer posted to twitter last night.
Students had been posting hate comments with gay references on his Formspring account, a website that allows anonymous posts.
“JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND [sic] UGLY. HE MUST DIE!” one post said, according to local reports. Another read, “I wouldn’t care if you died. No one would. So just do it 🙂 It would make everyone WAY more happier!”
Friends reported the bullying to guidance counselors. But everyone, including his mother, thought he had grown stronger.
His death coincides with a national summit this week sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., an effort to stem the toll of bullying school children.
Speaking at the second annual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit were the parents of Justin Aaberg, a gay 15-year-old from Champlain, Minn., who hanged himself after being bullied. The parents, Tammy and Shawn Aaberg, said that one form of the bullying came from a student religious group whose members told Justin that he was going to hell because he was gay.
“Justin was a smiley, happy boy who loved to play his cello,” said his parents. “School systems need to do more to protect LGBT students from bullying, and not turn their back on them because of their sexual orientation.”
Rodemeyer’s suicide also sets off a somber beginning to LGBT History Month in October.
“Jamey’s suicide is a tragic reminder of the vulnerability of gay teens,” said Malcolm Lazin, founder and executive director of the Equality Forum, which focuses on LGBT civil rights and education.
“They are bullied and marginalized,” he said. “While some may say that Jamey took his life, it is unrelenting homophobia that murdered him.”
Jamey’s mother, Tracy Rodemeyer, who did not return calls from ABCNews.com, told the Buffalo News that her son had been questioning his sexuality and had expressed thoughts of suicide, but had also been encouraged by good friends and was a “happy” and “strong” teen.
Friends described him as caring and friendly, and he had been seeking help from a social worker and therapist.
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 28 percent of students aged 12 to 18 reported that they were bullied in school during the 2008-2009 school year. Bullying also slows down as children get older from a high of 39 percent of all sixth graders to 20 percent of high school seniors.
The most overwhelming form of bullying is done through ridicule, insult and rumors, rather than physical aggression, according to the report.
The rate of victimization among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students has remained constant between 1999 and 2009, the latest date for which there are statistics, according to the National Climate Survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
Parents and educators say they face significant challenges in stemming LGBT bullying, particularly at schools where there are fewer resources and support groups such as gay-straight alliances.
“We have seen some positive signs in available resources and supportive educators and society is moving in a good direction,” GLSEN spokesman Daryl Presgraves said. “But it’s still very difficult to be an LGBT youth in school.”
In May, after coming out to friends, Jamey posted a YouTube video on the new online site, It Gets Better Project, which provides testimony from adults and celebrities to reassure troubled and potentially suicidal LGBT youth that life improves as they get older.
He wrote: “Love yourself and you’re set. … I promise you, it will get better.”
Jamey’s school counselors had advised him not to go on social media sites to talk about his sexuality, according to the Buffalo News.
Some parents urge others to monitor their children’s social networking accounts. And school principals such as Anthony Orsi of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J., have urged middle-school parents to outright ban the use of social networking to prevent cyberbullying.
Social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook have made it easier for bullies to target their victims, but at the same time they are sometimes the only venue for talking about their pain.
“It’s a very challenging time for parents and for youth,” Presgraves of GLSEN said. “You have a scenario where for a lot of youth, it’s the only support to go online and seek peers to give them support and to feel connected to a community. At the same time, they expose themselves to negative cyberbullying.”
Jamey’s mother told the Buffalo News, “He touched so many hearts, so many people. I didn’t realize how many people he touched. He was the sweetest, kindest kid you’d ever know. He would give all his heart to you before he gave any to himself.”
For months, the teen, who idolized pop singer Lady Gaga, had blogged about being bullied and thoughts of suicide.
Jamey posted on his Facebook page, “I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens. … What do I have to do so people will listen to me?
“No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you’re the ones calling me [gay slur] and tearing me down,” he wrote.
But on Sept. 8 he posted lyrics to a song by Hollywood Undead that included the line, “I just wanna say good bye, disappear with no one knowing. … I don’t wanna live this lie, smiling to the world unknowing.”
He posted a lyric this weekend from Lady Gaga’s song “The Queen” on his Facebook page: “Don’t forget me when I come crying to heaven’s door.”
His final message appeared on his Tumblr blog expressing a desire to see his great-grandmother, who had recently died, according to the local newspaper.
His mother said his tears and anger had recently dissipated. “Lately, he’s been blowing them off, or at least we thought he was,” she told the Buffalo News.
Teens in Crisis
When the family went camping last weekend, he seemed happy.
Suicide prevention experts say they are grateful that the media has played down the details about how he killed himself.
“The risk, especially in this case, is potentially causing other young people in their direct vicinity to take their own lives,” said Laura McGinnis, a spokeswoman for the Trevor Project, which runs a national lifeline for people younger than 24, especially LGBT and questioning youth. “The risk for contagion is too high when we share the means and method and how he did it can actually increase the likelihood that others will do it, too.”
Few statistics exist on young people who kill themselves. But overall rates among those aged 10 to 24 declined from 9.24 suicides per 100,000 in 1991 to 7.01 suicides per 100,000 in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Suicide never has one cause, that is something really important to recognize,” McGinnis said. “But [Jamey] had the support of parents and friends and he was planning on going to a homecoming dance and dress like Lady Gaga. How do you know as a parent what signs to looks for? And sometimes, it’s really difficult to know.”
In her work with teens in crisis, McGinnis does not recommend covertly monitoring a child’s social networking accounts, but instead establishing trust and open lines of communication to gain a welcome invitation.
“Parents should pay attention to what’s going on in their kids’ lives and what is important to them,” she said. “They should maybe structure a day to ask detailed questions of the child: What is going on, what are they excited about and what are they afraid about. ‘Who is bugging you and who did you tell?’ Establish trust, listening, accepting everything they say and not judging them. Let them share their story.”
Bullying is one of the biggest issues in education today. There are articles in professional journals and parenting magazines about it. There are news stories, it seems almost weekly, about it. There are websites and organizations dedicated to fighting it. There is plenty of advice about preventing it. There’s even legislation against it. This month, New Jersey passed an anti-bullying law that’s been called the toughest in the nation.
But what if none of it is enough? What if all of it misses the mark? What if preventing bullying is as simple as paying closer attention? The research indicates this may be the case.
Stan Davis, a social worker and school counselor and founder of Stop Bullying Now, was a recent guest on Body, Mind and Child. Joining him for the discussion were Karin Frey, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, and Sarah Sparks, who pens “Inside School Research” for Education Week and who has written quite a bit about social aggression.
According to the Stop Bullying Now website, there is adult intervention in only 4 percent of bullying incidents. Davis indicated during our conversation that that’s an older statistic but didn’t say whether or not it was now higher. Still, even if it’s, say, 100 percent higher, it’s a startling figure. How could there be so little adult involvement in an issue as huge and as potentially damaging as bullying?
Here are some of the reasons my guests cited:
Adults believe kids should solve their own problems.
If adults only see it once, they’re not inclined to intervene.
Teachers often don’t have a clear procedure to follow.
Kids are taught from an early age not to “tattle.” (This helps us understand why two-thirds of children don’t go to adults for help.)
Dr. Frey’s research adds further support to the contention that adults aren’t paying enough attention. She discovered that gossip contributes greatly to bullying and certainly can lead to physical disputes. But her study showed that teachers were unable to identify playground gossip even though it was “semi-public in nature” and gossip sessions lasted quite a while. I asked how that could be. The answer: the gossips are rarely the kids who are problems in class. In other words, they don’t fit most adults’ idea of what a bully “looks like.”
And here was yet another reason why teachers fail to intervene: There’s much confusion about what constitutes bullying. “It’s only bullying if… ” One significant ending to that sentence is “… the behavior is perpetrated by those kids we expect to be bullies.” We don’t imagine that friends would bully each other, but my guests assured me that bullying does indeed occur between and among friends.
Given the amount of attention bullying receives in the media, I thought that everything possible was being done to eradicate this problem. At the very least, I thought that teachers and parents would know it when they saw it. Clearly, I was wrong.
Stan Davis offered this succinct piece of advice for teachers and parents: “If we see mean behavior we should stop it.” But first, of course, we have to see it! For more advice from my guests, click here.
Academic calls on schools to give staff more support and protection after study finds many teachers have been victims of cyber-bullying attacks
Teachers are the latest group found to be at risk of cyber-bullying, according to a recent report.
The study by Professor Andy Phippen found several instances where teachers had been targeted for abuse by social media users on websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
One head teacher interviewed for the study said she had a breakdown and was left feeling suicidal.
The headteacher suffered a year of abuse by a parent at her school who used a Google group to post libellous untruths about her and her school. “I eventually had a mini breakdown in the summer holiday, needing an emergency doctor to be called out as I had become suicidal,” she told researchers.
Growing issue
While cyber bullying among children is a well-documented problem, Professor Phippen has uncovered alarming evidence that the trend is spreading to adults.
Researchers surveyed 377 professionals and analysed 35 helpline cases. Of those, 35% said that either they or their colleagues had been subjected to some form of online abuse, ranging from postings on Facebook to campaigns of abuse on Twitter.
Most of the abuse came from pupils, but in 26% of cases parents played a role. The researchers also uncovered cases where parents would abuse pupils using social media.
“Some parents view teachers as fair game for abuse,” Professor Phippen told the Western Morning News. “They use online technologies to hide behind while posting lies and abuse about their chosen victim.
“It seems that, to a subset of the population, the teacher is no longer viewed as someone who should be supported in developing their child’s education, but a person whom it is acceptable to abuse if they dislike what is happening in the classroom.”
He continued: “Given the potential impact of this abuse, we would call on all headteachers and boards of governors to take these matters very seriously and have a zero-tolerance approach to the abuse of their staff. Schools should not be afraid to involve the police.”
The results are drawn from the 2009-2010 British Crime Survey, a rolling programme of interviews designed to record experiences of crime beyond incidents reported to the police. Some 3,700 children were interviewed.
According to the figures on knives, almost 70% of those aged between 13 and 15 said that carrying a knife meant they would be more likely to be stabbed themselves.
However, the older the children were, the less likely they were to strongly agree that such a risk existed.
Nasty texts
There have been previous attempts to work out how many young people carry a weapon.
A survey by the Youth Justice Board published in 2009 estimated that 23% of young people said they had carried a knife in the previous year.
Typically they admitted to carrying a pen knife – and a third said it was nothing to do with protection. A survey by BBC Radio 1 in 2009 found that 9% of respondents said they carried a knife for protection.
On bullying, boys aged between 10 and 12 were more likely to have experienced bullying than other groups.
Some 6% of children said they had been victims of cyber-bullying – such as nasty texts or postings on websites – in the last year. Girls were more likely to have been cyber-bullied than boys.
Eight out of 10 of those surveyed said they hung around with friends in public spaces – but just over a third said that there was a problem with teenagers hanging around in their neighbourhood.
Overall, the figures suggest that children are more likely than adults to think that there is a problem with teenagers hanging around.
The figures also reveal that children trust the police far more than adults.
According to the survey 87% agreed that “the police would help if you need them”. When asked a similar question, only 50% of adults agreed that police could be relied on to help.
The majority of young people also agreed that police were friendly and treated people fairly “whatever their skin colour or religion”.
These latest figures come almost a year after the Home Office’s first experimental statistics illustrated the problems with quantifying crime affecting children.
That earlier report suggested that up to a quarter of children could be victims of crime – but it stressed that defining a crime involving children was very difficult.
In one example, using the strictest legal definitions, squabbling siblings smashing each other’s toys could be classed as crime – but the children themselves would not consider themselves a victim.
Sean Mulveyhill, center, was accused of bullying Phoebe Prince so relentlessly that the 15-year-old hanged herself. (By Gordon Daniels/Associated Press)
Five teens charged with bullying that contributed to the suicide of Phoebe Prince accepted plea deals this week, ending the long court-proceedings and offering Prince’s family some closure. But the question remains: What can be done to prevent this from happening again?
The 15-year-old moved from Ireland to Massachusetts in 2010 and began attending South Hadley High School as a freshman. Prosecutors say Prince was targeted by a group of girls because she had briefly dated a senior football player, Sean Mulveyhill, and another popular student. They allegedly intimidated her and called her names, both at school and on the Internet. Prince committed suicide Jan. 14.
Mulveyhill, who prosecutors say encouraged some of the girls to bully Prince after he broke up with her, and Kayla Narey pleaded guilty to criminal harassment Wednesday and were sentenced to a year’s probation and community service. Mulveyhill didn’t speak, while Narey told the court, “I am immensely ashamed of myself that I allowed my emotions to spiral into acts of unkindness.” Three other students — Ashley Longe, Sharon Chanon Velazquez and Flannery Mullins— accepted similar deals on Thursday. None of the five teens will serve any jail time. The single statutory rape charge against Austin Renaud was dropped yesterday.
Anne O’Brien, Prince’s mother, addressed the court yesterday, saying “It is nearly impossible to measure the impact of Phoebe’s death upon our lives. … There is a dead weight that now sits permanently in my chest.” She also read one of Prince’s last texts: “I can’t take much more. … It would be easier if he or the other of them handed me a noose.”
his heart-breaking suicide, along with severalsimilar cases, has brought national attention to bullying and cyber-bullying. The Post’s Valerie Strauss wrote that, although more than 40 states have a law that makes bullying illegal, it is not enough to stop the problem:
“Researchers say that the only kind of anti-bullying program with any hope of reducing such behavior involves the entire school community, such as the the Olweus Program (pronounced Ol-VEY-us) for elementary, junior high and middle schools. (You can find reports analyzing different bullying programs here.) That means that every adult in the school, from the principal to the janitor, must be trained in how to recognize bullying and what actions to take to stop it.”
One evening two weeks ago, Nancy Anderson Dolan’s 13-year-old son opened his laptop and yelled like he’d been struck. Dolan rushed to his side and saw what had appalled her child: An expletive-filled message from a child her son has known for years, threatening to hurt him.
Moments later, her son’s phone lit up with text messages from another child: More threats, more cruel insults.
“It was an odd experience, like kind of a home invasion, actually, because it was just so sudden and unexpected,” Dolan, a counselor in Calgary, Alberta, told LiveScience. “It was freakish. You just couldn’t wrap your mind around something like this happening.”
Even now, after involving her son’s school and helping him recover from the cyberbullying incident, Dolan finds herself on edge.
“We are having a pretty optimal response, but still that sense of not being able to keep my child safe is so pervasive,” she said. “It strips away any facade you might have that you think you are able to protect your children.”
Most research on bullying has focused on its effect on children, for the good reason that children bear the brunt of the suffering. But parent reports suggest that Dolan’s emotional reaction isn’t unusual. When a kid is bullied, many parents say they feel angry, frustrated and helpless. Their relationships with other adults in the community may crack as parents choose sides. In some cases, bullying strains the whole family, making it harder for parents to help end their child’s torment. [The History of Human Aggression]
“What I always encourage parents to do is to have a measured, calm approach to the situation,” Susan Swearer, a bullying expert and psychologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told LiveScience. “That’s difficult to do, because it’s upsetting, obviously, when your son or daughter comes home and they’re upset.”
Fear and worry
Parental worries over bullying were in the national spotlight recently, with a “Good Morning America” feature on 7-year-old Samantha Shaw, who got cosmetic surgery to correct a minor ear deformity — largely, Shaw’s mother Cami Roselle told GMA, to prevent her daughter from being bullied.
“I don’t want her to be teased and bullied and then have her lash out and treat people the way she’s being treated,” Roselle said.
Kids do bully each other because of perceived differences, Swearer said, ranging from clothes to body shape to intelligence. But body modification may not protect kids from being taunted, she said. [Facts About Your Teen’s Brain]
“The fact is, we are all different in some way from each other. That’s one thing that makes humans so interesting,” Swearer said. “Since kids bully others for a variety of reasons, I suspect that having plastic surgery will not stop the bullying.”
A bully’s choice of victims can come out of nowhere for parents. For Dolan, the bullying incident shook her perception of her tight community and her son’s small private school. It saddened her younger son, who had previously looked up to one of the boys who’d sent the messages. And it raised the specter of her child getting physically harmed, either by the children who’d threatened him or by his own hand.
“A teacher who is a client came in that week and talked about a student of hers who committed suicide from bullying,” Dolan said. “It really impacted me to have that come up during the same time.”
Marie Newman, a business consultant from suburban Chicago, felt similar fears when her middle-school-age son became a bullying target. Despite attempts to intervene with the school, the bullying went on for a year and a half. Eventually, Newman told LiveScience, the bullying went viral across the school, and her son became a pariah.
“In the news every day, a poor, poor child is committing suicide over this, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, will it get to that point?'” Newman said.
The bullying brought out a series of emotions, said Newman, who later co-authored a book on coping with bullying, “When Your Child is Being Bullied: Real Solutions for Families” (Vivisphere, 2011). At first, she was incredulous that her child could be the brunt of such cruelty. Then she became outraged, frustrated — and worried.
“During the day, I’d be sitting in a meeting with a client, and I’d be thinking, ‘Who is doing what to him now?'” she said.
In the end, Newman and her husband sent her son to another school, where she says he is thriving. The rifts between their family and others in the community have also pushed the family to make a long-discussed decision to move to another Chicago suburb.
“Everybody needs a fresh start,” Newman said. “You become so negative and anxious.”
How to deal
That anxiety can intensify when parents run up against unresponsive schools. Eric Bergman, a communication consultant in suburban Toronto, said he was disgusted when another girl at his daughter’s middle school started psychologically bullying her with rumors and whisper campaigns. The middle school shut the bullying down, Bergman told LiveScience. But when both girls moved on to high school, the bullying became physical — and neither the school administration nor the local police would take action, Bergman said.
“It went from disgust to fear,” he said. “And an utter feeling of helplessness, impotence. It was very scary.”
While it can be hard to cope with the emotions bullying brings, Swearer encourages parents to focus on solutions for their child.
“Going in angry and yelling and screaming, which I have seen, does not help anybody,” Swearer said. “Everybody just gets defensive.”
Parents should realize that bullying is a complex social problem, and the situation may have been developing for some time, she said.
Parents can take steps to protect their children before bullying starts, said Rene Hackney, a school and developmental psychologist for Parenting Playgroups, which offers parent workshops in Alexandria, Va. Bullies often target kids who don’t stand up for themselves, Hackney told LiveScience, so parents can teach their kids early how to express their emotions and assert themselves in social situations.
For example, parents might try reading a book such as “The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Teasing” (Random House, 1995) to their children, Hackney said.
“The idea is to read through and really talk about the characters in the story, ask if [the child] has ever felt that way,” Hackney said.
Making sure the child has a wide range of play dates with different peer groups can also prevent bullying, Hackney said, because the more social connections a child has, the less likely they are to get picked on. In middle and high school, the focus shifts to making sure tweens and teens know they should report bullying when they see it.
“If bystanders just watch, it gives power to that aggressive child,” Hackney said. “To curb the social aggression in the middle and high school years, it really takes the whole community.”
If a child does report bullying, Hackney said, parents should take it seriously.
“Don’t think of it as, ‘They’re always telling,'” she said. “You want to think, ‘They’re finally telling’ … Once they do come to you, they’ve often been picked on for weeks.”
No matter how upsetting that news, both Hackney and Swearer emphasize the need to stay collected for the child’s sake.
“Generally, it’s important to remain calm, collect the facts, remember there are two sides to every story and then go in with a solution-oriented, problem-solving approach,” Swearer said. “How parents react to the bullying can make it worse or make it better.”
You can follow LiveSciencesenior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescienceand on Facebook.
