The whole world was shaken several days ago with the news of a Spanish boy who killed himself and left a sad note to his parents; it explained that he made that decision because he had been victim of a strong bullying for a long time. The eleven year old child said that even though he knew that what he was doing was truly unforgivable he just couldn’t take it anymore. He was being a victim of harassment and abuse in School.
No one has a clue
The truth was that neither his parents, teachers or any other responsible adults around him had noticed all the suffering he had been through and they all thought he was a “normal” and happy child with a promising future ahead.
How far have we come, how far has the world and the society come, for a child to have to take such a drastic decision as it is to end his life and to kill the joy and most of the dreams of an entire family because of the abuse, the harassment and the rejection of an increasingly corrupt, broken and indifferent society such as ours?
What is particularly worrying about all is that these bullying stories are not isolated cases or scenarios that even though shouldn’t take place, are frequent and common cases that happen with almost daily around the world.
The numbers
There was a renowned case of this type in Colombia, some years ago in which the kid who was bullied didn’t commit suicide, but in this case he stabbed and killed his aggressor without knowing very well what he was doing neither its consequences. Other similar news happened in Mexico in 2014 and several others in Europe in 2013. All these cases are without taking about The States numbers and rates where the bullying in schools seem to be even much higher.
Search results for “kid who killed another for bullying” in Google are terrifying. Thousands of data and ridiculous news invade the screen, each headline is worse than the other and the rates increase significantly when searching only for the term “bullying” or in Spanish Matoneo.
Fear is the basic component
When working in Education people unfortunately can witness that one of the main causes for this sad phenomenon to be as common and frequent as it is, is that those who are victims of bullying do not report it because they are threaten and frighten by a tyrant Prince who truly believes is the king of the world.
This is a phenomenon that certainly knows how to camouflage itself between normal and a given sense of happiness.
Fear is the main factor for the unstoppable and growing harassment: the victim does not complain or inform while the offender keeps receiving the message that he aimed his target.
They think that the person is certainly affected and even retracted, that the panic is spread all around and the most important aspect for them yet the saddest aspect for the society, that in most of the cases bullying doesn’t have any strong consequences.
How much responsibility do we have?
Even though it is clear that in most cases adults and those who are in theory more experienced couldn’t do much when it is so difficult to notice what is happening. I can’t stop questioning myself what our responsibility is in allowing and somehow creating for them, the children, a society in which we pay more tribute to the fear, the impunity and to a permissive silence that makes us equal abettors by omission.
It is not just what we can do, in a difficult case as bullying situations are it is what we fail to do. The reports that we don’t turn in, all the situations that we prefer or have to ignore, the cases that we ignore trying to protect ourselves in some way or another and each and every action that we miss to do for the fear of the consequences that we may have.
Not only the kids suffer from fear that if they inform the harassment becomes bigger and worse, fear that the situation becomes unbearable as in Diego, the Spanish boy, case. Adults do suffer from harassment and abuse in our workplaces, which are also, such as the schools are for the infant population the place in which we spend most of our time.
Workplace Harassment
Harassment at work and in many cases sexual harassment in workplaces also threatens an unimaginable number of adults who are supposed to have many more tools to deal with a difficult situation like this.
In most cases they also prefer to do nothing and remain silent about what they are witnessing or about what they are victims of for fear that a boss or superior will retaliate, in this case another kind of retaliation such as throwing them out of work or worse, chasing them and making life impossible for them.
How can we ask the children not to be intimidate, to be courageous and brave and to act towards their own welfare while we show them with our acts that we live our lives full of fear of speaking and denouncing too and that we allow our superiors to harass, abuse and bully us?
Several studies show that numbers are never wrong and in this specific case The Great Master who knows it all, Mr. Google tells us that the searches that have to do with the term “employment bullying” add up to more than one million data all over the web.
How many of those cases could correspond to silent victims that because of pressure and different social attitudes and behaviours are as equal or more than the most cowed children?
A prevalent and delicate problem
When making a random review of the obtained results, it is evident that the problem is so prevalent and delicate that most countries have seen the need to legislate about it and also to impose severe civil and even penal sanctions for the aggressors also known as bullies in suits who have important job positions.
There is also a sort of consensus about employing bullying definitions it as: “Any persistent and demonstrable behavior exerted on an employee, by an employer, an immediate or mediate boss or superior, a coworker or subordinate aimed at instilling fear, intimidation, terror and anguish, causing job loss, generating demotivation at work, or induce waiver thereof. This definition is even worse for all of us. Haven’t we all been victims in some moment and under any circumstance of this kind of bullying and therefore, what have he been doing to stop and to avoid it?
The topic has recently appeared in Colombian Vogue. This given that a renowned case has reached different worldwide media outlets in which there is not only an alleged case of employment bullying but the matter went further and there is also right now a complaint about sexual harassment within the same case and caused by the same person in chief who according to the proofs, hurt several people.
For sure we have kept silent as well and we have chosen resignation and a passive response for it.
Beyond judging or making any statement about who is right and wrong, who is lying and who has the strongest evidence or who hurt the other more. An irrelevant affaire since it is already being discussed and analyzed by hundreds of people all around the world.
It is certainly very sad and meaningful that a case like this happen precisely at a government institution which is responsible for watching and defending peoples rights. Inevitable it is too to skip common dogmas and clichés: What is the roll model that we are giving and which is the future that we are building for the youngest generations who would be responsible of holding this shaken world?
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Both bullying and employment bullying are clear signs of social and cultural situations in which there is an excessive abuse of power and authority, in which a person, by one reason or another exerts maltreatment over another person taking advantage of a real or supposed superior condition.
There are three different parties. The person who exercises, perpetrator or bully, the person who’s bullied or victim and then, there are all us, the accomplices those who in some way or another permit and allow this corrosive phenomena.
An eternal problem
The worst and real problem of all this bullying fact is that physiology has demonstrated in every possible way, that by one of this natures and universal reasons that we don’t even get to understand, those who have been victim of any kind of harassment tend to become a victimizer.
They seem to find a kind of cure for their ills in becoming a victimizer for other people and perpetuating the endless circle of harassment, abuse and disrespect.
By allowing all kinds of abuse and bullying it promotes indifference and the silence caused by a collective fear without a target, a vicious circle from which it seems almost impossible to get away from. The final question is: what type of society are we constructing and allowing with the impunity of those small or giant acts of those who believe they can decide on the feelings, thinking and acting of others? Its in our hands to put an end to the eign of fear over integrity and justice. It is in our hands, in the hands of each and every one of us the possibility of ending, therefore, the reign of fear over the integrity and fairness that must definitely reign.
