School Bullying Council

Australian high schooler Casey Heynes catapulted to the upper reaches of Internet celebrity last week when video of him fighting back against a would-be tormenter hit YouTube. Since the video caught fire, the 15-year-old has become of a voice for the voiceless and the poster child for anti-bullying movements the world over.

Now, Heynes has given a heart-rending first interview to Australian television program “A Current Affair.” He describes the loneliness he suffered through years of bullying, something that even left him briefly contemplating suicide. And while he acknowledges that the other boy could’ve been hurt in the scuffle, he defended his actions, saying he wanted the abuse “just to stop.”

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/03/20/australia_casey_heynes_interview_bullying/?page=2

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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

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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

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

I wonder if anyone at NBC Entertainment watches any of the shows on NBC News or vice-versa. If so, Sunday night might be an epiphanous moment for network television, a cognitive flash of self-awareness that could jolt American culture in the direction of human decency.

Well, yes, I do understand I’m talking about the same network that aired “Fear Factor,” “The Weakest Link” and “My Mother The Car.” But it could happen. It could.

OK, OK, it probably won’t. But dreaming is cheap. And the contrast between Sunday’s episode of “Dateline NBC” about bullies and the reality-competition show that follows it is so dramatic that even a segment of the population as intellectually vacuous and emotionally retarded as network programmers ought to get it.

“America’s Next Great Restaurant” might have been a mildly interesting entry in the reality field. Four chefs and restaurateurs judge the proposals and performance of 21 contestants seeking funding to open a small fast-food chain. Some of the ideas, admittedly, range from loony to disturbing: A combination gun store and cafe? A place featuring “lactation smoothies”? A Hooters for the opposite sex called Peckers?

Others, however, are intriguing. I’d love to visit a joint featuring tacos with fillings like jalapeno crabcake or an all-pot pie place with flavors like Philly cheese steak. And listening to the judges chat about potential marketing or cooking problems with the contestants is pretty interesting. Would a restaurant with nothing but grilled-cheese sandwiches on the menu be able to turn out the product on a fast-food timetable? Have enough Americans sworn off meat to make a vegetarian fast-food chain worth a try?

But “America’s Next Great Restaurant” is quickly undone by the same mean-spiritedness that makes “Survivor,” “American Idol” and the rest of this genre such an unpleasant viewing experience. Winning depends at least as much (and probably much more) on impressing the producers with television skills as it does on winning over the judges with culinary expertise or business savvy. So taunting and back-biting among the contestants is a dreary constant.

And the judges, whatever their restaurant acumen, are out-and-out louts, smirking and ridiculing their way through the shows like the cross-bred bastards of Gordon Ramsay and Donald Trump. One is Miami’s Lorena Garcia, who maintains South Florida’s near-perfect record of contributing nothing to national television, but she’s far from the worst. That would surely be the Brit chef Curtis Stone, whose surly abuse of contestants is all the more untoward for his utter ignorance of American cuisine. How did a guy who’s never heard of banana cream pie manage to get a job as a judge on a show like this?

The answer is supplied in the hour before “America’s Next Great Restaurant” airs. “Bullies love an audience,” declares one of the experts interviewed by “Dateline NBC’s” Kate Snow for a disquieting but perhaps hopeful episode titled “My Kid Would Never Bully.”

Though it includes some insightful conversations with such people as Rosalind Wiseman (whose book “Queen Bees and Wannabes” was the basis for the film “Mean Girls”), this report is much more than a compendium of talking heads. Its most compelling moments make use of hidden cameras to record the reactions of teenagers when they observe other kids being bullied. Unknown to them, the bullies and their victims are unpaid actors. Another thing they don’t know: Their own mothers are watching on video monitors in another room.

In some ways, the results are heartening. Almost all the unsuspecting kids react against the bullies when they start mocking a skinny, unathletic boy as a “queerbag” or trashing an overweight girl for wearing horizontal stripes. Some try to distract the bullies; others are openly confrontational. It quickly becomes apparent that if just one kid will speak out against the bullies, others will back him up.

But there are also moments of desperation so disturbing that they’re almost impossible to watch. One girl slips quietly away to a corner of the room, where a hidden microphone picks up her tearful whisper: “It’s so hard.” It turns out she’s been the victim of bullies at her own school. After last year’s furor over the suicide of a gay college freshman tormented by his dormmates, thinking of bullying as a subset of homophobia has become common. But as “Dateline” makes clear, bullying is neither new nor necessarily related to sexual orientation: Kids for years have been victimized for walking, talking, dressing or doing almost anything else differently than the rest of the crowd.

Still, I wonder if a hidden-camera show done at my high school or junior high 40 years ago would have revealed as many kids willing to stick up for the weak or the out of step. My favorite was a girl named Lilly, who argues fiercely with the bullies and finally unleashes an F-bomb. “Nice language, daughter,” gasps her blushing but proud mother in the room down the hall.

If only we could slip Lilly onto “America’s Next Great Restaurant.”

DATELINE NBC: MY KID WOULD NEVER BULLY

7-8 p.m. EST Sunday

AMERICA’S NEXT GREAT RESTAURANT

8-9 p.m. EST Sunday

NBC

Glenn Garvin: ggarvin@MiamiHerald.com

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/04/2698515/what-high-schools-and-restaurant.html