School Bullying Council

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The Bully Project follows stories of several kids who are being bullied or have been bullied.

Silverdocs

The Bully Project follows stories of several kids who are being bullied or have been bullied.

Director Lee Hirsch started filming The Bully Project in 2009, about a year before bullying fully came of age as a high-profile crisis with the launch of what became the It Gets Better project. (That’s not to say that’s when bullying started, obviously — it’s when the current wave of popular media coverage swelled after several awful stories of suicides by bullied kids.)

What The Bully Project adds to the public conversation is an unflinching look at the stakes. At its center is the family of Tyler Long, a 17-year-old who had just recently hanged himself in a closet when filming started. It follows his anguished parents as they launch a community discussion of bullying in the wake of his death that it certainly appears the school doesn’t want to have (they organize a town hall meeting, and plenty of kids and parents show up, but nobody from the school or the district).

The film also follows Alex, a 14-year-old who can be funny and comfortable at home, but who has been so relentlessly brutalized at school (his special zone of torment seems to be the bus) that he walks around looking shell-shocked and a bit lost, which seems to isolate him even more.

There are other kids in the story: Kelby, a young lesbian from Oklahoma whose father explains that after she came out, people he’d known for years started refusing to acknowledge him on the street; Ja’meya, a 14-year-old whose very difficult path represents the dangers of and to bullied kids who get fed up and decide to fight back; and Ty Field-Smalley, whose suicide at 11 years old — 11 years old — drives his father, too, into activism.

At times, The Bully Project is a pretty grueling experience, but it probably wouldn’t be fair if it weren’t. And it isn’t only the bullying that’s frustrating: We see Alex’s parents try to take their concerns (which are amplified after the filmmakers conclude that they’re obligated to tell them what’s happening on the bus) to the school. There, they have a bizarre meeting with an administrator who gives them precisely the pacifying “we’ll take care of it” speech that many of the parents in the film say they hear all the time right before nothing happens.

Unfortunately, by that point in the film, we’ve already seen that same administrator intervene in what certainly smells like a bullying situation by forcing the two boys involved to shake hands and later telling the one who’s complaining of being bullied that if he doesn’t shake hands and make up and really mean it, he’s just as bad as the bully. (She really says this. It’s almost surreal.)

It gives you a sense of what these families feel like they’re up against, although in fairness, the schools are up against quite a lot themselves. There’s a point where a local official tells the Longs that it’s extraordinarily difficult for the school to single-handedly stop destructive behaviors by a kid whose parents are reinforcing those behaviors at home. To the Longs, it feels (very understandably) like blame-shifting and refusing to do anything, but I felt some sympathy for the school, too, because … it’s probably true.

There aren’t any suggestions of easy solutions in The Bully Project; it’s more about driving home the need for everybody to keep trying by just standing as a reminder of what’s at stake. Kelby’s father says at one point that he never understood the expression “you never know what someone’s been through until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” until he had a gay child. The Bully Project can’t let you walk a mile in any of these people’s shoes, not by a longshot. But it can let you look at those shoes up close, maybe try them on. It’s not fun, but it’s well worth doing.

Note: The film has an online home at TheBullyProject.com, where there are extensive links to resources for kids and parents dealing with bullying and to the “grassroots movement” the film is intended to spur.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/06/23/137362129/the-bully-project-finds-its-moment

By
Lin Jones

Last updated at 4:51 AM on 24th February 2011

Bullied to death: Public schoolgirl Natasha MacBryde, 15, died after being struck by a train on the railway line near Bromsgrove

Fans of the internet never tire of proclaiming its virtues.

Communications, business, travel, entertainment and shopping have all been transformed — opening up new worlds, enriching people’s lives and vastly expanding consumer choice.

Yet the darker side of the internet has all too often been ignored. Just as computers can be a force for good, so they can promote misery and harm. In our brave new cyber world, freedom of communication can degenerate into a licence to abuse.

The truth is that the internet has opened up a window on the cruel and vicious side of human nature. In the virtual sphere, online sadists operate with impunity.

On many websites, particularly those aimed at the young, the boundaries of normal, civilised behaviour have been replaced by the sort of savage anarchy famously portrayed in William Golding’s novel Lord Of The Flies, in which civilised prep school boys turn into savages.

The consequences were highlighted this week by the tragic case of Natasha MacBryde, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who committed suicide after a remorseless campaign of internet bullying.

But that was not all. The malice that had led to her death continued on the internet, causing more anguish to her distraught family.

A Facebook website set up in Natasha’s memory was invaded by a deluge of offensive comments, ranging from sick jokes about the manner of her death to spiteful remarks about her character. This form of cyber bullying is known as ‘trolling’.

A Facebook site set up in Natasha’s memory (right) was invaded by spiteful, offensive comments. Left, a written tribute to the much loved pupil and daughter

One of the worst forms of on-line bullying comes from the so-called ‘trolls’, who post outrageous comments to get a perverted thrill from the reaction they provoke. As Natasha’s father, Andrew, said: ‘I simply cannot understand how these people get any enjoyment or satisfaction from making such disgraceful comments.’

Sadly, Natasha MacBryde’s case is not unique. Persecution through the web, by mobile phone, text or micro-blogging site Twitter is rife among young people.

My own family has direct experience of this appalling phenomenon, which resulted in the death of our beloved son, Matthew, in December 2008, when he was just 17.

Matthew had been a bright, happy child who loved playing on computers. But from the age of ten, he started to be bullied at school, perhaps because he was not as keen on sport as other boys.

The ordeal he had to endure was appalling. He was tormented by a gang of about 20 bullies, who never left him alone. They would taunt him, and steal from him, everything from pens to his bike. When the risibly named ‘happy slappy’ craze was at its height, they used their mobile phones to film their attacks on him, deepening his sense of being an outcast.

Tragic death: Matthew Jones committed suicide in 2008 aged 17 after the bullying became too much for him

Technology worsened the pain, as he was subjected to a endless stream of heartless messages on his phone and his computer.

Bullies love the internet for several reasons. First, they can indulge in cruelty behind the mask of anonymity. Those who hurl abuse in public risk themselves but, in the virtual world, there is no such danger. Even the most malicious threats cannot easily be traced.

Not surprisingly, it all became too much for my son. He grew severely depressed and had to be treated by the mental health services. A mix of counselling and medication led to an improvement, with the result that he passed his GCSEs and went on to sixth-form college.

But the old problems of isolation and bullying soon returned. Matthew sank into despair. So dark was his despondency that he began to log on to a series of websites that promoted suicide. It seems unbelievable such websites are allowed to exist, since they openly encourage vulnerable people to take their own lives.

There may be a proper debate over the issue of assisted suicide for the terminally ill, yet here we have, in the online world, bloggers who goad people into killing themselves.

‘If you’re still here tomorrow, you’re just a chicken,’ is one typical taunt. For Matthew, the result was all too predictable. In December 2008, he gassed himself, having left a final message: ‘I used to be headstrong, happy and optimistic, but after seven years of fighting I have no fight left in me.’

The internet even facilitated his demise, for it was on eBay he bought the gas canister that killed him.

The tragedies we and the MacBryde families have suffered are, I believe, an entirely modern phenomenon. There was nothing like this level of bullying when I was at school.

In a recent survey, half of all 14-year-olds said that they had been bullied, mostly via Twitter or Facebook.

When one anti-bullying charity set up a website in March 2009, 23,000 youngsters visited it in the first three weeks, a graphic indication of the scale of the problem.

Internet unleashed: With scenes of unimaginable violence and sexual depravity just a click away, the internet is desensitising our children

The internet has also encouraged the misguided belief that such viciousness is acceptable, being just another aspect of the kaleidoscope of human existence. In the virtual sphere, all barriers of what’s right and wrong, moral or immoral, have disappeared.

With scenes of unimaginable violence and sexual depravity just a click away, the internet is desensitising us, robbing us of normal human emotions. And the results are terrifying. Children are especially vulnerable to this, with studies showing that youngsters who have been exposed to violent images on the internet are desensitised to real-life violence.

Instead of challenging this barbarous culture, social networking sites are ignoring their responsibilities and choosing instead to profit spectacularly from this murky business.

Service providers, website managers and the Government ought to be responsible for cracking down on the widespread bullying and threats, yet they act as if they are powerless.

Facebook, for instance, could provide tougher monitoring of its users. But that would cost money which it doesn’t want to spend.

Similarly, Government ministers could introduce stronger regulation of websites. After all, the Government had no problem outlawing smoking throughout the nation.

Enforcing a sense of on-line responsibility should not be beyond the wit of our political leaders if the will existed.

If the present anarchic cruelty is allowed to continue, there will be more cases like those of Natasha and our son, Matthew.

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