Marginalising them for the future

Does anyone think that you start to get immune to news of bad things happening to people? Not ignoring it, or not not appreciating the severity of it, just not being entirely surprised. It takes a little something extra, something particularly cruel and unusual to get our attention. Maybe it’s just me.

Most things I see at work don’t affect me a great deal, but there are exceptions, images that at the end of the day when I close my eyes aren’t that easy to forget. The homeless guy who got hacked around the face for no reason with the claw side of a hammer. A woman who was pinned down by her “boyfriend” and systematically beaten over a six hour period. Most of all it’s the kids who are abused – immersion injuries, and the anger I feel inside when I calmly listen to a supposedly distraught parent as they explain how their 9 month old broke their femur and got neck bruising falling off a chair. Things on the news – the bloke with the carrier bag standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square, the report on R4 a few months ago of the 30,000 women in Congo who have been raped in the last 10 years, about 500 of whom have been shot in the vagina afterwards. Nasty torture reports from Iraq and Zimbabwe.

Yesterday however really broke me up. A friend of a friend has an 8 year old boy who attends a local state school. This school has a good reputation, well known locally as a good state school which is why most locals want their kids going there. This kid is very bright (comfortably top of his class), and in every way possible, completely normal. I don’t know him or his mum personally.

He’s been bullied by three other 8 and 9 year old since October last year. One apparently has mild autism. It started by just verbal taunts and escalated fairly quickly into him regularly being punched. It got so bad, despite mum and the school knowing about it and trying to deal with it, that one day the kid was found by himself in a quiet part of the school grounds trying to hang himself by some rudimentary means.

The school took “action”, whatever that means, and things quietened for a while. The school said they would arrange some counselling for the kid, as he was understandably fairly traumatised by it. That never happened, and mum arranged some independently.

It started up again, with verbal abuse, name calling, saying he’s gay, getting other normal kids in the class to join in. Also, things like “we’re going to go to your house and fuck your mother”. The kid apparently didn’t understand the exact meaning of a lot of this, but clearly got the gist of it and the fact that it was extremely hostile. School again contacted time and time again, with lots of “we’re dealing with it”

A few days ago the three kids tied a noose around the kid’s belly and dragged him through the plaground.

They each got 2 days suspension.

The next day there was a face to face with the headmaster, with my friend going with the mum as some support. Throughout mum has been more than reasonable, worried to death, and having had to take her kid out of school for days at a time while the school was supposedly getting it’s shit together. The headmaster said of the 7 month incident :

“he didn’t know of the verbal abuse”

“it sounds like ‘japes’ “

“he can’t suspend for longer or expel the kids because they would be marginalised for the future”

“cannot guarantee the safety of her child”

Naturally the head got what he deserved, which was the fact that although the kids were less than 10, it would be reported to the police so that it can be logged for the future, they would expect an immediate end to this bullying regardless of cost to the school and a meeting with the head of governors to discuss why the headmaster cannot guarantee the safety of any child at the school despite the fact that he has a legal duty of care towards them. This on top of going to the press if mum hears, sees or simply doesn’t like anything that happens, and reporting the school to whatever local authorities that need to be told. Far far from satisfactory, and amounts to a grand total of not a lot, but there aren’t really a lot of other options.

The kid has actually gotten a full scholarship for an independent school up the road, starting in September, and the current school doesn’t know that, as the presumption is that if they knew that then they wouldn’t bother sorting out the problem they have. The fact that the new school is an independent is irrelevent. Quite what motivates 8 and 9 year olds to bully in such a manner is perhaps not the biggest worry. The question is what sort of cunt gets to be headmaster with that sort of attitude? In charge of a primary school?

Fuck me, an 8 year old trying to hang himself, and then being dragged across a playground by a noose around his waist. I had tears in my eyes last night.