AmericanAnDerTU

During my morning surfing I found this video that I promptly posted to Twitter and received the following response:

@minusfortynine
@AmericanAnDerTU if you think this is funny you are truly sick. Please don’t ever ask anyone to watch something like this again. 

This prompted me to do a little bit more surfing on the topic and see what the background to the fight was to try and confirm what I thought (kid being picked on finally retaliates) and it turns out that I was right. I came across this article from The Daily Telegraph in Australia (where the video was filmed) that details the fact that the kid was bullied constantly his entire life. Here’s a quote from the article:

Casey’s father said yesterday his son had been the victim of bullying for several years

Now the school is quoted in the article as saying it “does not tolerate any violence and deals with all cases according to its community-agreed discipline code”, but I’ve grown up in public schools that were similar to this. At my high school there were often daily fights and some of them would tend to get pretty brutal. Outside of suspension and sending the kids home, though, not much was done to truly solve the problem of why kids were being bullied or why fights were breaking out.

Just look at the video and see how there is a group of kids watching it, not defending Casey and at all and are making no attempt to step in and break it up. This is about as worse as it gets. You’re made to feel really alone and shut off and it’s a pretty shitty place to be, especially when you’re growing up in your early teens. The fact that it was filmed and the article from The Daily Telegraph says that fights are often filmed and posted to the Internet is simply appalling. The school needs to definitely take a look at these videos and start punishing kids for filming it and maybe even going so far as to punish kids for not getting help from teachers. If the school really wants to send a message saying that they won’t tolerate bullying amongst students, that’s one way to go about it.

Now let me let you in on a personal aspect of my life - I was often bullied when I was growing up and I know for a fact what it’s like to go to school every day and just wait for the torment to begin. It’s a horrible feeling. Often you’re too afraid to retaliate and take a stand because of how bullying makes you feel. Thankfully I overcame my fears and my parents stood behind me with the rule “if they hit you first, hit them back but never be the first to strike” because the schools I went to were essentially useless. They were more happy to ignore the problem and do the bare minimum (if that) so they could save face rather than admit that the school wasn’t as nice as they promoted to the community. 

It’s with a lot of pride that I say congratulations to Casey Heynes and I hope that this encounter has given him a boost on confidence affirming the idea that he can take care of himself and he does not have to accept the horrible treatment from others around him. Certainly the other kids at his school might be on the lookout for revenge, but judging from my experience, they will be too afraid to pick on him anymore and just leave him alone. I do hope that my experience holds here for Casey and he can maybe now go through school without being bullied and can be allowed to do what he wants without having to worry about reprisal from other students. Someone has even made a “Support Casey Heynes” Facebook page, so maybe that will also send a message to other bullied kids around the world that they don’t have to take it and they can stand up for themselves.