Bul­ly­ing and school vi­o­lence are leav­ing vic­tims with long-last­ing men­tal and phys­i­cal scars. Vic­tims suf­fer from anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der (PTSD), psy­cho­so­mat­ic symp­toms, and these may per­sist in­to adult­hood, says psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh. Stu­dents who are vic­tims of school bul­ly­ing are more like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence de­pres­sion, in­creased sad­ness and de­creased school par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The vi­o­lent episodes have left some stu­dents in hos­pi­tal and oth­ers suf­fer­ing from emo­tion­al scars and con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide.

The pan­dem­ic has wors­ened the sit­u­a­tion. Bul­ly­ing is no longer re­strict­ed to the school com­pound but has be­come preva­lent on­line through cy­ber­bul­ly­ing as stu­dents were away from phys­i­cal class­es for al­most two years.

Mere weeks af­ter the phys­i­cal re­open­ing of sec­ondary schools, vi­o­lence at schools and bul­ly­ing have reared their ug­ly heads again.

Al­though this is not a new phe­nom­e­non, new cas­es have oc­curred just as face-to-face class­es re­sumed.

There have been re­ports of school gang vi­o­lence at the Siparia West Sec­ondary and videos in­volv­ing stu­dents from oth­er schools have since been made pub­lic, with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) now try­ing to as­cer­tain when these fights took place.

Lives turned up­side down

One fam­i­ly told the Sun­day Guardian about how their lives were turned up­side down af­ter their daugh­ter was bul­lied at school.

From sleep­less nights in the hos­pi­tal with their sick daugh­ter to thou­sands of dol­lars spent on med­ical bills to time off from work to meet the po­lice and Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials, the par­ents of the vic­tim have in­vest­ed large amounts of fi­nan­cial and emo­tion­al re­sources to deal with this un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion.

The fa­ther, who lives in the East, re­quest­ed anonymi­ty. In 2018 his daugh­ter passed for Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary School. He re­called that in Oc­to­ber 2018 his daugh­ter was with a group of class­mates at the school when some of the stu­dents start­ed to make fun of a boy who was in Form Two at that time.

“He was fix­ing his clothes and then oth­er stu­dents asked him if he was dig­ging for gold and they were laugh­ing at him. Maybe my daugh­ter was clos­est to him, and he de­cid­ed to tar­get her. He held her two hands and put them be­hind her back and he then pushed his hand down her throat. That was a shock to her. She asked him to stop but he did the same thing again.”

His daugh­ter did not im­me­di­ate­ly dis­play any neg­a­tive health or oth­er side ef­fects un­til Christ­mas that year when she suf­fered a "break­down" just be­fore the next school term start­ed.

“We car­ried her to Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, then they sent her to Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal. She end­ed up get­ting a brief psy­chot­ic dis­or­der. She was not sleep­ing or eat­ing. What the med­ical ex­ams show is that every­one has a chem­i­cal bal­ance in their brain and in her case, it was tripped off by the boy’s at­tack. I re­mem­ber my wife and I were sleep­ing in the hos­pi­tal as she spent days there. It was hell. I suf­fered in­juries years be­fore.”

He said when she be­gan treat­ment, she start­ed to write in a note­book what had hap­pened in the school and then they re­alised what caused her men­tal im­bal­ance.

The fa­ther was not hap­py with the school’s re­ac­tion.

“The au­thor­i­ties said they dealt with the mat­ter, but they are a waste of time. I went to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, I went to the dis­trict school su­per­vi­sor and oth­er au­thor­i­ties. I asked them for a trans­fer to an­oth­er school for my daugh­ter just to get her away. So far, I have had no luck. That mon­ster is still at the school. I asked what type of pun­ish­ment he got and they can’t give me that in­for­ma­tion.”

Right now, his daugh­ter, age 16, who is sup­posed to be in Form Four, is not in school as she had a re­lapse last year.

“Last Au­gust, she went back in­to the hos­pi­tal just as she passed Physics and Chem­istry. Her dream is to be a doc­tor one day. Sad­ly, she can­not at­tend school at this mo­ment be­cause of her med­ical con­di­tion. A week be­fore school start­ed back, she had a re­lapse. She has been on med­ica­tion for the last few years. This is all be­cause of what that young man did to my daugh­ter.”

He ap­pealed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to do more to as­sist vic­tims of school vi­o­lence and bul­ly­ing.

“My ad­vice to par­ents is if they go through the reg­u­lar sys­tem, there is lit­tle help for you and your child who is the vic­tim of school bul­ly­ing. Coun­sel­lors at church have al­so helped my daugh­ter, and I’m hap­py for that.”

Bul­lied by stu­dents for be­ing gay

A 23-year-old Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) stu­dent who is in the fi­nal year of his de­gree pro­gramme in So­ci­ol­o­gy, and who asked not to be named, re­count­ed how many years he suf­fered bul­ly­ing in school be­cause of his al­ter­na­tive lifestyle.

He iden­ti­fied him­self as be­ing gay and said from pri­ma­ry school he was picked on be­cause he was “dif­fer­ent”.

“I was al­so in­vest­ed in my books. I was al­so timid and small. Peo­ple would push me around and tell me I’m ef­fem­i­nate.”

He said noth­ing changed when he passed for one of San Fer­nan­do’s pres­ti­gious schools.

“I went to an all-boys school. By the sec­ond term of Form One, they start­ed to sin­gle me out. My class­mates would ridicule my in­ter­ests. Some of them would say that I’m not mas­cu­line enough. One of them pushed me against a wall and want­ed to fight. There were a lot of ho­mo­pho­bic slurs thrown at me.”

He said one day he went to school and some­one spat on him. He stayed away from school for the last term in Form One as he was ter­ri­fied and hu­mil­i­at­ed by what oc­curred. He even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred to an­oth­er school in San Fer­nan­do.

Apart from school, the sit­u­a­tion was not much bet­ter at home as he al­so faced in­sults and abus­es from some of his rel­a­tives.

He said when he went to his new school in Form Two he al­so faced bul­ly­ing and in­sults. There was even one in­ci­dent where an­oth­er stu­dent at­tempt­ed to phys­i­cal­ly as­sault him and oth­er stu­dents came to his aid. That stu­dent was even­tu­al­ly sus­pend­ed.

As he got old­er and he ex­celled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, he be­came more ac­cept­ed at school.

“As I grew old­er it was em­pow­er­ing. I found out who I was. I am open­ly gay and I have noth­ing to hide. By Form Three I came out. My mom knew.”

He went on to do CAPE at Pleas­antville Sec­ondary which he de­scribed as a good ex­pe­ri­ence.

Now that he is com­plet­ing his ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, he de­scribed UWI as a tol­er­ant cam­pus.

“I would say UWI fo­cus­es on di­ver­si­ty. There was an in­ci­dent where some­one made a ho­mo­pho­bic com­ment in class and the lec­tur­er im­me­di­ate­ly said he would not al­low such hate­ful com­ments in class.”

He ad­vised younger stu­dents in the school sys­tem who are vic­tims of school vi­o­lence and oth­er forms of bul­ly­ing:

“It’s ok to ask for help. I would al­so tell young peo­ple in school to high­light what’s good about you. It’s al­so im­por­tant for par­ents to cel­e­brate their chil­dren. For me, per­son­al­ly, all the years of bul­ly­ing had an im­pact on my men­tal health. I even en­gaged in self-harm by cut­ting my­self. Many times I thought about sui­cide, it was so bad. School bul­ly­ing leaves scars for life.”