The Bully Menace: What Patch Has Learned About Childhood Torture

Over the past year that Patch has been looking at bullying and cyberbullying, some conclusions are inescapable. One of the most difficult to grasp is that bullying can kill. In some of the most agonizing cases, tweens and teens like Rosalie Avilia, Mallory Grossman and Brandy Vela have taken their own lives, choosing death over another day of torment.

A common thread in their stories was their parents had no idea their daughters were suffering so and regret not having pried it out of them before they cut off their own lives prematurely. Zachary Cruz, the younger brother of accused Parkland, Florida, school shooter Nikolas Cruz, shares some of that regret, too, and he has launched an anti-bullying campaign that will include a speaking tour at schools across the United States.

The older Cruz brother has been charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder in the Valentine’s Day 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead and many others injured. Absent a widely accepted profile of a school shooter, a growing number of experts say there is a clear link between bullying experiences like Nikolas Cruz suffered and the very small minority of students who rise to the level of a school shooter.

“I understood what bullying did to my brother,” Zachary Cruz told Patch’s Paul Scicchitano in an exclusive interview. “I don't want anyone to be isolated anymore.”

The consequences of bullying unchecked are devastating in multiple other ways, according to experts. The problem is so pervasive that an estimated 160,000 kids stay home from school every day to escape kids who bully them.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Department of Education said in a joint report in 2014 that at least one in three children experiences bullying in school. Everyone involved in bullying suffers — the kids who bully, their targets, kids who both bully and are targets, and even those who witness the horrible acts, the CDC said.

Those negative outcomes include depression, anxiety, involvement in interpersonal violence or sexual violence, substance abuse, poor social functioning, and poor school performance, including lower grade point averages, standardized test scores, and poor attendance.

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Both kids who bully others and who are bullied are at increased risk of suicide, the CDC said, noting that the relationship between the two is complicated and that a child’s decision to commit suicide rarely stems from just one thing.

“We know that bullying behavior and suicide-related behavior are closely related,” the agency said in a 2017 report. “This means youth who report any involvement with bullying behavior are more likely to report high levels of suicide-related behavior than youth who do not report any involvement with bullying behavior.

“We don’t know if bullying directly causes suicide-related behavior. We know that most youth who are involved in bullying do NOT engage in suicide-related behavior. It is correct to say that involvement in bullying, along with other risk factors, increases the chance that a young person will engage in suicide-related behaviors.”

What’s A Parent To Do?

Patch’s Travis Loose knows first-hand the fear of parents of bullied kids. His son ran away and was missing for nearly three weeks to escape the kids who were tormenting him on social media.

Loose did everything the experts advise. He kept regular contact with police, his son’s mother and administrators at his son’s school. Even though his son was the victim and not the perpetrator of bullying, the worried father took away his son’s cellphone when he safely returned home and restricted his access to social media to “free his mind from the awareness that there are terrible kids who care not for the consequences of their words and actions.”

Loose also talked to his son about what was going on in his life, the most important thing a parent can do, said Susan Raisch, a Staten Island, New York, mother of four adult children who wrote a book about bullying. Listening is at least as or more important as talking, and that's where some parents come up short in their anti-bullying conversations without realizing it, Raisch said.

“Most of us are well meaning but to be trusted, we need skills on teaching empathy, communication, online safety and the big one — listening," she said, emphasizing that requires the adult the fully engage with the child instead of multi-tasking during the conversation.

Raisch's best advice to parents: Keep it simple.

"It's all about skill-building, for the parent and the child, which has a wonderful flip side — teaching leadership skills that will be good for the child for the rest of their life," Raisch told Patch. "It's not about talking about bullying. Kids don't even understand that word. It's talking about not being mean, about respecting others, and teaching them to be very direct about how they want to be treated.

"Notice their behavior and compliment them when they're doing the right thing — 'I noticed you were nice to your little brother, and I was proud of that'; 'in school, I heard you shared your pencil, that's a wonderful thing to do,' " Raisch said. "Then if they need a course correction, you might say: 'I notice you didn't allow Tommy to be in the circle when you were playing.' "

Not all kids will be direct about why Tommy was excluded, but if a child's response is that he just doesn't like Tommy, go a little deeper with something like: "You don't have to like everybody in your class, but you have to be kind to everyone in your class. If someone did something to you that would hurt your feelings, you would feel bad. You don't want another child to feel bad."

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A panel of experts assembled by Patch as part of this year-long project also emphasized the importance of open communication between parents and their children.

“It is important to make sure that you have regular conversation times with your child so that they become accustomed to talking in general about how things are going in their lives,” said Jim Dillon, an educator for 35 years, including 20 as a school administrator.

“Given all that, I would be alert for changes in their mood, any hesitancy they might have to go to school, and/or any reluctance to participate in social events," Dillon said. "These non-verbal cues might be red flags. It is also helpful to have relationships with your child's friends who could tell you how things are going in school. A sibling might also be able to share some information about what is happening in school.”

Are Schools Responsible?

Some of the parents whose children killed themselves to escape bullying have sued school districts for not doing enough to stop the torture. They include the family of Mallory Grossman, who said the New Jersey 12-year-old faced relentless bullying during the months leading up to her suicide.

In their lawsuit, the Grossman family said Mallory was bullied both on social media and in face-to-face confrontations. Dianne Grossman, Mallory's mother, intervened on her behalf, but was met with resistance from the school, who urged her not to file an official bullying complaint, the suit alleges. Instead of taking actions to punish the bullies, the onus was placed on Mallory to fix the situation.

In Massachusetts, the state Department of Education found Malden Public Schools failed to institute a safety plan for a habitually harassed 13-year-old student following a cyberbullying incident and did not notify police about a hallway assault the girl later suffered at Linden STEAM Academy.

The responsibility of schools to protect bullied children is a matter of debate among experts. Often, bullying happens when teachers and other responsible adults don’t see it — in a corner of the playground, on the school bus or when kids are walking home, for example.

Sameer Hinduja, one of the founders of the Cyberbullying Research Center, told Patch that too often, parents “expect schools to do everything” and are “asking schools to take over the role of parenting.”

“We need a united front, with a message that is consistent” both at home and at school, Hinduja said.

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Patch readers also weighed in on the role of schools in confronting bullying.

Reader Letitia Becker thinks that blame for a proliferation in bullying and cyberbullying is too often placed on schools.

"The schools did not put these devices in children's hands and the schools do not have the right or opportunity to monitor the child's use of these devices," Becker wrote in an email. "The schools implement numerous/various regulations on usage/non-usage of these devices in school, but when a parent comes to pick up a confiscated phone, there rarely appears to be acceptance of responsibility for their child's actions.

"The first point of initiation for a child having these devices is in their home."

However, Dawn McGee said schools are in a position to teach empathy and kindness to students from preschool on, watch for signs of bullying and "not be dismissive about the issue."

To do that, they need both community support and funding to ensure that teachers are properly trained to deal with bullying, she said.

Some teachers are building kindness and compassion into their school days and curricula.

In a Texas school district, kindergarteners start each day with a handshake. When Ashley Taylor started the ritual of designating a morning greeter, she saw it as a way to counter some of the horrible ways she saw society in general relating to one another. But after the practice gained national attention, she decided she might be onto something.

Who knows,Taylor wonders, if school shooters or bullied kids had felt like someone was on their side, would things have worked out differently? Both heartbreaking scenarios have multiple causes, but what if learning kindness, like reading and arithmetic, at a young age could stem both?

“Really, I think just how it has taken off, it doesn't have to be something big to make a change,” Taylor told Patch. “This is something so little and so simple, and it's going to affect so many people. I want to make a change, I want to make a difference. I'm just one itty, bitty teacher in this big world — how am I going to make a difference in school shootings? I don't need to skip over the little things; those little things can be important.”

In Indiana, fifth-grade teacher Jen Robinson has woven kindness, understanding and compassion into her curriculum, whether she’s teaching them language arts or history. What happens on social media is often a big part of the discussions.

“We talk about things that happen on social media weekly, as they struggle with that, as well as the struggle of putting out a false self-image or truth about who they are," Robinson told Patch’s Rebecca Bream.

Speak Truth To Power

Bullying experiences have helped some youths, like Phoenix-area teen Kalani Goldberg, find their voices. Kalani covered her T-shirt with adhesive-backed notes conveying the mean things her schoolmates had said about her in a “wear your words” video that resonated around the country. Like many parents, Kalani’s had trouble getting her to open up about what had put her “in a mood” in early March 2018. And when she did open up, they worried whether the video would improve or exacerbate the situation.

In the end, speaking up for herself was a positive thing. She heard from kids from around the country who also struggle with bullying.

“It was therapeutic, and I hope it will help other kids with the same problem know they're not alone,” Kalani told Patch. “That would amazing.”

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Kalani’s advice to kids who are suffering under the taunts of bullies: “You're not alone. There are other people who can relate — your friends and family are important, and they all care about you. It's OK to talk about your feelings. There's no such thing as stupid feelings, and never be afraid to open up. Your parents love you.”

While standing up to the kids who were bullying her worked out for Kalani, that may not be the solution in all cases, according to Stuart Green, the behavioral sciences director at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey, and one of the founders of a group that has promoted anti-bullying efforts in the state since 2000.

The implication that a child could stop the bully by standing up to them “makes them responsible for the assault,” Green told Patch's Karen Wall. “That's a lie, a very harmful lie.

“The cause of bullying is the behavior of adults,” he said, “the way adults address the situation, or fail to properly address it.”

And in some cases, kids who bullied others went on to become fierce anti-bullying advocates. Reformed bully Cameron Thompson, a 12-year-old from southern California, admitted that when he was in second grade, he bullied a boy in his class for playing with a Barbie doll. His mother asked him to write a letter of apology, but Cameron didn’t think that was enough.

With the help of a family friend, Cameron and his mom made a video, "Confessions of a Bully," that led to an anti-bullying club at school and, later, a nationwide movement.

“I was a bully. … I made a mistake. And it was a really bad mistake,” Cameron told Patch’s Renee Schiavone. “I realized this isn't who I want to be. I don't want to be this rude, irritating person. And so I decided to switch everything around.”

Additional Reading
The Bully Menace: ‘The Hurt Never Goes Away’
Bullies And Their Targets The Same: Digital Self-Harm Rising
Boy, 6, Overcomes Bullying, Heart Condition To Spread Kindness
Williamsburg Poetry Teacher Helps Bullied Kids Open Tortured Minds
Bullying Tougher To Confront When It’s Bias-Based: Researchers
Wisconsin Students Protest Racial Bullying At High School
Bullied New Hampshire 5th Grader Makes Tearful Plea
The Bully Menace: 13 Age-Appropriate Reads
Teen’s ‘I Wear Your Words’ Video Inspires Nashville Songwriters
Grace’s Law 2.0 Stalls In Maryland General Assembly

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