STOPPING THE BULLIES STARTS AT SCHOOL
A BULLYING consultant should be made available to every school in the country to stop kids taking their own lives – and offenders should be publicly punished.
The parents of a 15-yearold girl who suicided in February after she was targeted on Snapchat, said schools should have a bullying expert on hand to deal with cyber abuse disputes – and principals need greater powers to detect and punish bullies.
Matilda ‘Tilly’ Rosewarne was bullied at primary school, but it escalated at high school after one kid faked a porn photo of her and shared it online.
Her alleged abusers, who have never been punished, then urged her to take her life and then joked about her death online.
Matilda’s dad Murray, 58, found his daughter’s body in the garden of their Bathurst home, in regional NSW.
Mum Emma Mason, 49 said principals and police have no powers to stop the abuse and the esafety Commission – set up to help those being bullied online – was a “toothless tiger” and “ill-funded”.
They only learnt about the Commission’s existence after their daughter’s death.
Ms Mason said bullying begins in schools and therefore every teacher needs to undergo training in how to deal with this issue.
“It has to start with education and there needs to be repercussions in the schools,” Ms Mason said.
“The children that did this are still at school, they’re at the same school.”
She said the family is moving to Sydney next year because her two youngest daughters cannot cope with having to face the people who allegedly abused their sister.
The couple have spoken out following Sky presenter Erin Molan’s documentary Online Haters: Erin Molan Fights Back that aired this week.
In it Molan detailed the online abuse she received during her TV career, particularly as a new mum.
Molan said she wanted to highlight the issue because she didn’t want what happened to her to happen to her child.
One in five Australian children have been the target of online bullying and the peak age is 14, with girls experiencing cyber-bullying at a higher rate than boys.
The esafety Commission, which is the only one of its kind in the world, says online bullying is often an extension of physical bullying taking place in the schoolyard.
It has removed online content on behalf of more than 4200 children since its launch in 2015. Tilly’s parents said the documentary, which detailed bullying stories including that of celebrity Charlotte Dawson, was hard to watch.
Ms Mason said it highlighted how hard it is, especially for children who rely on their mobile phones to keep socially connected, to “shut the noise down”.
“They couldn’t escape it,” she said.
Ms Mason described the impact of bullying and Tilly’s death on their family and friends as “like a bomb going off”.
She said their other daughters Maggie, 13, and Molly, 11, have hardly gone to school since their sister’s death.
“I have my poor dad who can’t get out of bed. My mum spends her life crying,” Ms Mason said.
“All of Tilly’s cousins have in one way or another suffered.
“Almost all of them have stopped working, stopped being able to engage in university.”
Mr Rosewarne vowed his daughter’s death “would not be in vain” and they would fight until there was change.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare paid tribute to Tilly’s Mum and Dad for “bravely shining a light on this issue”.
esafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said following Tilly’s death the commission has ramped up its efforts to raise awareness of its work with local police forces, educators and mental health organisations so they refer victims to its services.
NSW Minister for Education Sarah Mitchell, who is working with Tilly’s mum on reform, said Ms Mason “continues to be a strong and powerful voice in her advocacy against bullying” and is involved in the state government’s anti-bullying roundtable.
She said the government was introducing a Chief Behaviour Adviser “to work across the state and the three school sectors to support schools to tackle complex issues like bullying and social media”.