Indian couple sues Swiss school after their daughter was ‘bullied’
After their daughter was allegedly subjected to emotional harassment by her classmates at the prestigious Swiss school Institut Le Rosey, Indian businessman Pankaj and Radhika Oswal have taken legal action against the institute. Radhika shares the details
It started with an unfortunate series of harassment incidents within the school dormitory involving multiple students against my 15-year-old daughter and soon escalated into systematic harassment and cyberbullying. Today, given the advancement of technology and its unrestricted use and ultimately abuse by children, who are not being given any guidance or control through responsible adults on protocols and any rules around its use, it has led to another form of bullying in the form of cyber harassment. Because of this, the incidents that would normally just occur on children’s playgrounds and campuses can now follow children home and into their safe spaces, and attackers can find ways 24/7 to disrupt their victims and ensure that they are further oppressed. They form groups online and try to oppress the child through attacks on their perceived differences, background, racial, cultural, or other such derogatory slurs. They ensure that the victim is constantly targeted and mocked in a bid to ultimately isolate them. This is precisely what our daughter went through. But ultimately, it was the responsibility of the school — Le Rosey — to control the delinquent children at the very beginning of such incidents so it didn’t develop into anything serious, which I feel they completely failed at, and hence we are at this situation today.
This was the first time such a situation happened with her. But the problem is that, these are rapidly developing and continuously amplifying situations and unless the responsible adults or the school (specifically, if it’s a boarding school) takes immediate action, it can fast escalate to something that is out of control, like it did for my daughter. Le Rosey minimised and trivialised the situation and did not have the necessary protocols or staff training to address such issues when they happen, and sadly, these are the consequences of their failure to do their duty towards my daughter.
We repeatedly raised our concerns to the management at all levels. But it seems that the more we asked them to take some action as we were increasingly worried about our daughter, the more aggressive they became towards us. And ultimately, they lowered our daughter’s evaluation grades (as she was one of the top students in her class) and then altogether cancelled her enrolment. In other words - they expelled her! This was clearly an attempt to subjugate us all into silence. And of course, one of the worst mental and emotional traumas that you can put a young teenager through. It can scar you for life!
We are aware of other children who have been through racist and derogatory remarks that go against their culture, ethnicity and dietary choices, especially the choice to be a vegetarian. It’s very sad to hear of other children going through such issues and not be heard or taken seriously. I believe that both parents and children need to be made more aware of how to deal with these issues as well and parents should unhesitatingly in-still confidence of their support to their children. It’s not fair to pressure a child into staying in a school that isn’t responsive to providing their child full protection of their personality rights. After all children have as much, if not more, rights to protection of their self-identity and protection from harassment as we do as adults.
Our daughter was heartbroken for most of a year. For her, the school was not just a school, it was her life. She had been there for 6 years and at the age of 15, six years of life is a long time! First the school completely minimised and trivialised the situation, and then went to the other extreme and lowered her grades and threw her out instead. So eventually it paved a way for the other children into thinking that the institution was on their side because our daughter was the one that got expelled, and so it led to an even worse situation of harassment and cyber harassment towards our daughter which they couldn’t or didn’t choose to stop.
We have recently filed our last submission and procedural replies and are waiting for trials to begin. We have support from children’s right experts who work specially in the field of school bullying and we hope to bring to light how harmful such harassment can be towards children. We have full faith in the Swiss court system to recognize that bullying did take place and that bullying is also an infringement of personality rights and that children must be protected.
It’s personally very sad for me to see that Indian children abroad get the least amount of protection towards this, even from their parents. It’s important to recognize and instill in our children the values of a good education and standing strong in the face of adversity and that things are done differently in other cultures, but at the same time, they should be taught that it is not okay to take defamatory remarks made towards our country, culture or background.
This includes racist remarks towards Indian students, their skin colour, accents, the smell of spicy foods and other such cultural aspects, which are something we must be proud of rather than be ashamed of. We must encourage our children to talk to us openly about any such issues or comments towards them or even other Indian children studying in their schools, and we must take action to protect them just as we would if it happened to us as adults.