The Bully And The Damage

by Sarah Anne
(Hemel Hempstead)

My story, unfortunately, is told on behalf of my daughter.

In January 2017 I removed my daughter from the Educational system, within 4 months of her starting at Secondary School. She was being bullied by a 15 year old girl. She was sad to leave her Junior School because she loved it there but was looking forward to starting at her new school with the same enthusiasm she showed at Junior School. Then within a few weeks she was being bullied. This went on for a couple of weeks before she told me and I monitored the situation. She didn’t appear to be too bothered at first but was soon feigning illness and begging me to home school her. I told her that I would seriously look into this but, in the meantime, this 15 year old girls continued with her campaign. The reason was; my daughter has adult teeth missing and misshapen teeth that now require a brace, that’s all.

At Christmas 2016 she felt so desperate and didn’t know what to do to stop the bullying that she wrote me a suicide note. She had no intentions of harming herself but this was a cry for help, her cry for help. The decision, after reading her letter, was easy. Shortly after, seeing her whole demeanour change told me I had made the right choice for her, but I will do everything within my power to protect my child no matter what the circumstances. I know what I would like to have done in this situation but it’s illegal. The school took this girl out of circulation for one lunchtime and, although it wasn’t verbal any more, the bullying continued in the form of dirty looks and my daughter was left looking over her shoulder every day.

She was bullied at Junior School just once and, thankfully, it was rectified immediately and never happened again. She had a slightly protruding ear so I put her through an operation at the age of 7, against my wishes, to have her ear pinned which didn’t work anyway and now at the age of 12 it’s back to the way it was. She now has a thick red scar behind her ear. I did this to stop her being bullied.

I personally think that there should be a zero tolerance on bullying in any situation and the bully should be excluded permanently because the victim will never feel the same again until this happens. There is always the silent side to bullying which can be just as damaging.

If the bully were an adult they would be tried and possibly sent to prison. I think they should be sent to carry out voluntary work in a Children’s Hospice for the day. I am not clever enough to try and fathom out why these people behave the way they do and I don’t think I would really want to but I firmly believe that drastic measure have to be made in order to stamp it out.