School Bullying Council

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 This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)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

Calgary Counselling Centre, an organization dedicated to ending violence in the community, has issued a plea: help stop bullying before kids resort to violence. The Centre was responding to a video that has become an internet sensation. It shows an alleged bullying victim in Australia, Casey Heynes, fighting back against his tormentor. Heynes body-slams the younger, and smaller boy, into the ground.

The video, originally posted on YouTube, now has a Facebook fan page with hundreds of comments congratulating Heynes for fighting back against his aggressor.

But Kim Busch of the Calgary Couselling Centre says the younger boy could have killed if he had landed on his head. “Celebrating this video is misguided – this violent act should never have happened,” says Busch. “Early interventions could have prevented this unfortunate incident from taking place.”

Busch says statistics show bullying occurs in school playgrounds every seven minutes and once every 25 minutes in class.

“We must bring more awareness to this issue in order to prevent it. Bullying can be stopped if our community steps up and says ‘no more’.”

YouTube has since taken down the video but it is now available on other websites.

http://www.globaltvbc.com/Bullying+victim+hero+says+Calgary+group/4451943/story.html

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