South Wales Echo

Time for us all to break the silence that bullies hide behind

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WHEN parents feel they have no recourse but to post a video of the dreadful impact of bullying on their 11-year-old daughter on social media, something is badly wrong.

Last week the parents of a Year Seven pupil at Cyfartha High School in Merthyr Tydfil took that drastic step.

They say they had tried to get the school to act – to no avail.

The video shows Lee and Natalie Davies’ daughter having a panic attack after school bullying leaked over into cyber-bullying. Her father recorded her distressin­g reaction with the intention of showing it to the school only.

But the NHS manager and his wife decided to go public on Facebook – with full permission from their daughter – because, they say, they continued to get no joy from the school when they asked for her to be moved to another class, away from those making her life a misery.

Recognisin­g how powerful the message from the video was, they took the plunge, hoping and trusting it would not backfire and that it might help in some way.

Exposing their daughter, who is not identified in the video, was no easy thing, and isn’t what all parents would choose. But it seems to have worked.

The family say they have no regrets. Since Lee posted the video with comments to his Facebook page on October 10, it has gone viral.

Within five days it had been viewed 737,000 times and been shared more than 11,000 times by people from Wales, the UK and across the world. Lee says they have had messages of support from as far as the USA and Australia, and the more than 7,000 comments are all positive as people came out to send encouragin­g messages to his daughter and tell their own experience­s of being bullied and how devastatin­g that was.

The upshot of an action that could have had a very different outcome is that the school has now done what the child’s parents say they were asking for – to acknowledg­e the issue and move her to another class. Not only that, they say their daughter has found support from other pupils in the school as a result of them going public. When she arrived for lessons last Friday, a group of 17 pupils was waiting outside the school, offering to walk in with her and support her.

That is to the credit of the school, its staff, parents and pupils

The school, for its part, has made a statement, via Merthyr Council, since the Facebook post, saying it has met the mothers of both parties involved and the matter has been resolved to the satisfacti­on of all.

That may be so, but something cannot be right if it took such desperate measures to get to this point. The school has given no details, but the girl’s mother says that since the Facebook post she was invited to meet a very helpful teacher and the school’s child protection officer.

This is just one example of a bullying story among the many that, doubtless, go on every day in all schools across Wales and everywhere else. Bullying is in every school and probably every workplace, to some extent.

Hardly a week seems to go by without a story in the media about a young person being bullied at school. It is partly the time of year. The first term of a new school year is often the season for vulnerabil­ity, bullying and both parents and teachers being alerted to the issue – which, although yearround, tends to come to prominence at certain peak periods in the academic year.

This is an issue that should bother all of us, even if we don’t feel affected. Today’s school bullies become tomorrow’s adult world and work-place bullies. Some of those worst affected by childhood bullying may go on to have their lives wrecked, with all the terrible human and financial cost of that.

It’s all well and good for schools to have policies and “zero tolerance” of bullying, but these statements must do more than collect dust on shelves and fill notice boards.

Teachers and parents have a responsibi­lity to be alert to what bullying looks like, what bullies and the bullied look like, and address it. This is no easy task. Everyone is different. Some people are more resilient and less likely to flare up – the reaction so desired by bullies.

Bullying is, by its nature, hidden. One way to get it out in the open is to talk about it and admit it happens. The Davieses recognised that, and bravely did so.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a bully as: “A person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.”

This is the nasty trick. Parents and teachers may not see the children around them as vulnerable. We may not see the weak spot bullies home in on. We are probably even worse at identifyin­g the real bullies.

Rather than get caught up in the toxic mind games of the bullies, we must all talk out about this more. We hear from parents and young people who are bullied, but what parent or young person ever wants to tell the story about how they, or their offspring, became a bully?

Talking about any issue means it loses its power to some extent. It is the unsaid that has the force to worm away and wreck young lives.

Last month I spoke to a brave teenager about how bullying had led her to self-harm and feelings of worthlessn­ess. Hannah Adams was kicked, tormented and told to kill herself by bullies at a Cardiff high school. After years of silent torment, she finally told her mother what was happening, got help and moved to Llanishen High, which she has praised for its culture and ethos.

Hannah, now 16, has become an anti-bullying ambassador for the Diana Awards, which are calling for Anti-Bullying Ambassador­s in every school. Hannah wanted to tell her story because she wants to let other young people know that they can and should speak out about bullying.

These are two bullying stories that had positive outcomes. There are still plenty that do not.

Byron John, the father of 14-year-old Bradley John, who died in hospital after an incident at St John Lloyd Catholic School in Llanelli last month, has alleged his son was bullied at school.

And in 2014 a teenager who suffered years of bullying took an overdose because he wanted “to be with God”.

Simon Brooks, from Tonyrefail, was 15 when he died at the University Hospital of Wales in April 2014 after taking pills he found in his family’s medicine cabinet.

An inquest into his death heard he told paramedics: “I have had enough of being bullied.”

In his witness statement, paramedic David Blacker said: “He told me he was bullied at his previous school and he was bullied at his current school. He said he had taken the tablets because he hoped it would help him to die.”

His story, and the words of his mother Julie Brooks after the inquest, could be powerful tools for any antibullyi­ng strategy: “I am delighted it is not a verdict of suicide,” she said. “Simon did not want to die. He was happy and cheeky and when he walked into a room, it lit up.”

School bullying will never be eradicated, but both parents and teachers need to be more alert to the possibilit­y that the young people around them may either be the bullied – or the bully.

 ??  ?? Hannah Adams was kicked, tormented and told to kill herself by bullies at a Cardiff school
Hannah Adams was kicked, tormented and told to kill herself by bullies at a Cardiff school

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