School Bullying Council

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Mobile phone footage shows a fight between two boys at a Sydney school with one boy being thrown to the ground.

World famous: Bullying victim Casey Heynes. Picture: Channel Nine.
Source: Supplied

Enough is enough: Casey Heynes takes action against another student. Picture: Facebook
Source: The Daily Telegraph

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IN just one week, Casey Heynes went from having one friend to 230,000.

The 16-year-old became a global Internet sensation after he was filmed picking up a bully in the schoolyard and throwing him to the ground after being repeatedly punched in the face for being “overweight”.

During an interview with A Current Affair , Casey said he had been bullied almost every day at school and even contemplated suicide a year ago when the taunts became too much.

“I started putting myself down and all the crap just kept piling on,” he said.

“That’s when I contemplated suicide.”

A Year 10 student at Chifley College, St Marys, Casey said he was being targeted by a new gang of Year Seven students last Monday when he was attacked by Ritchard Gale.

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World wide fame for Casey

Standing up against the wall with nowhere to move, Casey was punched repeatedly by Ritchard until he snapped – lifting the Year Seven bully over his shoulders and throwing him to the ground.

Victim of bullying a hero in web attack

The footage was captured by another student, who filmed the incident on his mobile phone and then posted it on YouTube.

Casey Heynes gets suspended over bully attack

Casey said his outburst was a “build-up” of more than three years of being attacked verbally and physically by other students.

“They used to slap me on the back of the head and said I was a fatty and to lose some weight.

“I’ve been duct taped to a pole before as well. They target me because I don’t retaliate.

“I’ve never reacted that way before but everything built up inside me for three years…I just had enough. All I wanted is for it to stop.”

His celebrity status peaked once again after his interview last night, with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter – which have more than 230,000 followers – labelling him “a hero”.

One blogger, Wayne McCoy, said minutes after the television interview: “you have inspired alot of kids who have and are being bullied. you have changed lives. well done mate. hopefully the bullies will learn thier lesson.”

Others, like Aidan Blackley, said: “Good on ya!!! ur a legend”.

Casey said he had been overwhelmed by the amount of people who backed him after last week’s footage went viral.

“I’ve never had so much support before,” he said.

“Nobody touches me and teases me anymore.”

Both Casey and Ritchard were suspended by the school following the incident, as well as the student who filmed it on their mobile phone.
 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/casey-heynes-breaks-silence-over-bully-video-from-chifley-college-and-thoughts-of-suicide/story-e6freuy9-1226024997247

The bully gets a new perspective on life: upside down and heading for the concrete.

Casey Heynes, a 10th Grader in Sydney Australia, fought back against a schoolyard bully Monday and is now a world-wide hero for doing it.

A friend of the bully recorded a video of the confrontation to post on YouTube to humiliate Casey, but things didn’t turn out that way.  The video went viral, people from all over the world are applauding Casey for fighting back, the citizens of Sydney are divided over it and now the bully looks like the chump.

Sixteen-year old Casey says he “snapped” after constant bullying because of his weight.

“All I was doing was defending myself. I’ve never had so much support,” he said during an interview with A Current Affair.

The bully is a much smaller 7th Grader who felt confident that he could punch Casey in the face without having a fight on his hands.   He backed the much larger boy against the wall and started throwing punches.  Finally Casey had enough and picked him up and threw him down hard on the concrete.

He was asked if he was a superhero, he replied with a laugh, “No, but I wish I was.”

Both boys were suspended for four days in accordance with established school guidelines.

The people of Sydney may be divided over the affair, but the world is clearly not:  websites and Facebook fanpages like  Casey the Punisher or this YouTube tribute with music sprang up overnight hailing his action.

You be the judge:

http://aquapour.com/schoolyard-bully-video-goes-viral/556427/

A chubby Australian boy has rocketed to YouTube stardom after a classmate recorded a cell phone video of him body-slamming a smaller boy who’d been taunting him in the schoolyard.

The clip shows the apparent bully, seventh-grader Ritchard Gale, teasing and punching his victim, Casey Heynes, as a gang of other kids laugh at the abuse. Heynes, who is in the 10th grade, takes the bullying for a while, but then snaps and picks Gale up and throws him down on the concrete floor. Gale eventually gets up and limps away.

Both boys were suspended from their school, Chifley College in New South Wales, outside Sydney. Gale’s mother has demanded an apology for the body-slamming of her son, and the bad publicity her family has received because of the YouTube video. But public support seems to be overwhelmingly on the side of Heynes, whose father said he’d been bullied for years without fighting back.

“People pick on him every single day. They hit him around and stuff, and he just got sick of it and let out the anger,” an unnamed classmate of the two boys told Australia’s Telegraph newspaper.

More than 100,000 people have joined a Facebook group defending Heynes, with some dubbing him “Casey the Punisher” and Gale, “Ritchard the Rat.” The global computer hacker group Anonymous also rushed to Heynes’ defense, launching what it dubbed “Operation Fat Hero” in which it hacked into the website of the boys’ school, Chifley College, and posted a manifesto accusing teachers of “failing to provide a violence-free environment for their students.”

Heynes’ YouTube video and Facebook group have drawn more attention in recent days to the problem of childhood bullying worldwide. Last week, President Barack Obama opened a White House conference on boosting anti-bullying programs in U.S. schools.

“With big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune,” Obama told about 150 students, parents and teachers gathered at the White House last Thursday. “I didn’t emerge unscathed.”

Obama also announced the creation of a new government website to address bullying concerns: StopBullying.gov

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/18/youtube-hero-australian-boy-casey-heynes-body-slams-his-bully/

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• John Birmingham: Kudos to kid – but it could have been tragic

It was inevitable. The Sydney boy who retaliated against a younger student at school after an apparent bullying attack has been transformed from a victim to an online hero.

Since video of the incident at a western Sydney school this week was posted online, it immediately went viral.

Transformed into a mini Incredible Green Hulk online.

The 16-year-old “victim” has been dubbed “Little Zangief” – a character from the Street Fighter video game – and likened to the Incredible Hulk and The Punisher, with websites, mash-up videos and even a Twitter account set up in his honour.

The video, which has since been featured on US and British news sites, shows a smaller 12-year-old boy punching the bigger boy. The bigger boy then picks up his tormentor and throws him to the ground.

The issue dominated talkback radio after it happened. Psychologists disapproved of retaliation, saying there were better strategies, but many callers backed the actions of the bullied boy.

Now a Street Fighter remix video shows the same fight, but overlaid with a soundtrack and graphics from the video game.

Another video features audio of actor Charlie Sheen uttering the words “winning”.

An animated version of the fight was also created by a satirical Taiwanese news service, where the victim gets so angry at being bullied that he transforms into the Incredible Hulk and chases after his tormenters.

Comments on online forums and social networking sites were full of praise for the boy.

“S— happens, when the hunter becomes the hunted,” one YouTube video was tagged.

“That bullying went to far. [Name removed] is my hero for slamming that lil punk kid that bullied him,” one Twitter user wrote.

“Kharma…you got to love it,” wrote another, while a Facebook user quipped: “At night Chuck Norris looks under his bed for [name removed].”

In many forums, users argued over whether the bullied boy should have fought back.

Most commentators wrote in support of the victim and commended him for standing up for himself.

Kimberley O’Brien, principal child psychologist at the Quirky Kid Clinic in Woollahra, said the victim needed to be careful even though he might now find himself attaining status and respect at school.

“He may become popular because of this incident. But he’s not going to be able to fight back physically all the time. He needs to be able to develop the skills to respond to verbally and to keep himself safe without having to use physical violence.”

The South Australian government has proposed new laws to combat cyber-bullying following the posting of the footage online.

Attorney-General John Rau said in a statement yesterday that such videos were “disturbing and potentially damaging”.

“The government wants to attack this disgusting fad of thugs engineering and filming violent and humiliating acts and posting the images to websites,” he said in a statement. Under the proposal, people who post these videos could face a fine or jail time.

The NSW Department of Education said both boys involved in the fight remained suspended from their school. The length of the suspensions had still not been determined, a spokesman for the department said.

“Counselling is available at the school. Support will be provided to the students when they return from suspension, including counselling,” the spokesman added.

Inspector Almer of St Marys police said officers had collected a statement from the victim and were still investigating the incident to determine if any criminal charges should be laid.

Dr O’Brien said adults could help victims of bullying by giving them support when they were approached for help instead of telling them to avoid the bully.

Bullied? Call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/net-transforms-bullied-boy-20110317-1byik.html

BOSTON — A viral video is sparking an intense worldwide debate about bullying. On Wednesday, a local expert gave her take on kids getting pushed too far.

The father of the teen who acted out told an Australian newspaper that his son is not violent and had been the target of bullying for years.

It stated with verbal taunts and then a punch in the face. At first the 16-year-old in an Australian school didn’t seem to budge, and then there was another jab from the smaller 12-year-old – then two others – and then a bully smackdown.

The YouTube video that’s gone viral shows the taunter limping away and leaving some online applauding the actions of the victim turned aggressor.

Leslie University professor Nancy Carlsson, who has written about kids and violence, says the video tells a lot more about the school than it does the students.

“It tells you there’s a whole school climate, that’s one of alienation and aloneness and separation,” said Carlsson.

Both boys wound up suspended from school for four days.

The school system was quoted as saying “it does not tolerate any violence, and that the only injury was a grazed knee.”

(Copyright (c) 2011 Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42122701

By Brad Cohen, SportsGrid

Australian student Casey Heynes became the latest YouTube sensation—and unofficial anti-bullying PSA posterboy—when he was captured on video bodyslamming a bully that had hit him in the face.

The (much smaller) bully taunted and hit Casey after school while other kids laughed and videotaped the whole incident. Eventually, the much-bigger Casey could take no more, as he picked up the scrawny antagonizer and smashed him hard onto the concrete.

http://nation.foxnews.com/bullying/2011/03/15/teased-kid-snaps-body-slams-bully