Unstoppable (21 page)

So I offered to come to his school and talk to the students about the dangers and cruelty of bullying. The school officials rallied around the idea. They had me speak to all the classes from kindergarten through the fifth
grade, and I was pleased to hear that the school staffers were doing whatever they could to help. They had Daniel speak to all the students about what he can and cannot do, how he does certain tasks, and what his life is like without arms or legs.

Daniel Day was a slam dunk. I made it clear to everyone at his school that I was Daniel’s good friend and biggest booster and that I would take it personally if anyone ever bullied him again. I told them to be cool, not cruel. Beyond that, I spoke about the dangers and cruelty of bullying from my perspective and from a global view. I also talked about the impact of bullying on the victims and ways to recognize when someone is being bullied, and I encouraged all the students to speak out and act out to stop bullying in their communities.

My personal experiences with bullying did not end in childhood. Just recently I was traveling with friends and enjoying a swim at our hotel when an obviously drunk guy made loud and crude comments to me. It’s a common misconception that bullying is a kid’s problem. Tell that to the female police officer teased, intimidated, and shunned by her male coworkers. Or the elderly gentleman who lives in fear of the teens terrorizing his apartment complex. Or the teenager whose Facebook page is bombarded with crude and hurtful comments.

Bullying comes in many forms, ranging from name calling, teasing, and hurtful rumors to physical attacks and cyberbullying, which involves using the Internet, social networks, texting, and cell phones to harass and intimidate others. Most studies report between 25 and 40 percent of young people experience bullying in school. A National Education Association
report in 2011 said that nearly all students have had some exposure to bullying by the time they graduate high school. That report added that bullying can result in academic, social, emotional, physical, and mental health problems.

Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, has characterized bullying as a form of human rights abuse, and in 2010 the US Department of Education held the first federally sponsored summit to address bullying in schools.

Bullying isn’t kid’s stuff anymore. We all experience minor forms of harassment and intimidation as children. Playground teasing, however, has escalated in recent decades into more serious mental, physical, and emotional abuse that is conducted face to face and on the Internet and via cell phones. The World Health Organization has called bullying “a major public health problem” in schools, on the job, and in general society, where minorities and gays and lesbians frequently experience it.

Workplace bullying is every bit as prevalent and harmful as that encountered in the schools. This can include everything from verbal and physical intimidation to the spreading of rumors, shunning, stealing credit for work, backstabbing, and a boss who uses power to demand things beyond your job description. One study done by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that 37 percent of Americans have been bullied in the workplace and 40 percent never reported the bullying to their employers. Of those who have been bullied, nearly half had stress-related health problems, including anxiety attacks and clinical depression.

According to many studies, people who have been bullied or who have witnessed bullying are at significant risk of isolating themselves, abusing alcohol and drugs, suffering from health problems and depression, and injuring themselves. There also have been increasing reports of victims of
bullies striking back with violence in which innocent people are injured or killed.

The normally peaceful nation of Finland was shocked in 2007 when an eighteen-year-old student massacred eight people at his school, including the head teacher, school nurse, and six other students. The killer, who shot some of his victims as many as twenty times, committed suicide after his rampage. He had taken five hundred rounds of ammunition to the school, and he had also tried to set fire to the building. A police investigation confirmed that he had often been bullied at the school. In a video posted prior to the shooting, he brandished a gun and wore a T-shirt that said, “Humanity is overrated.”

Just a few years earlier, a California fifteen-year-old opened fire in a boys’ restroom at Santana High School with an eight-shot revolver, and he then moved into the school’s quad area. When his shooting spree was over, he had killed two and wounded thirteen. The shooter, Andy Williams, was small in stature and often bullied both at a previous school in another state and in his new school. The attacks weren’t limited to his school, however. Someone had broken into his home, trashed his belongings, and stolen his Nintendo system. In his new hometown, his skateboard and shoes were stolen from a skate park, and just two weeks before the shooting, Williams was beaten up.

Bullying was cited in a 2002 US Secret Service report as a factor in 71 percent of thirty-seven school shootings studied by the agency. In several of those shootings, the attackers had experienced bullying and harassment that was “longstanding and severe.” In some cases being bullied appeared to have been a factor in the student’s decision to attack others.

This is a serious problem when you also consider that in 85 percent of these cases, there is no intervention by authority figures. Research also finds
that a bully is six times more likely to be incarcerated by age twenty-four and five times more likely to have a serious criminal record as an adult. Experts say that today’s school-yard bullies often become tomorrow’s societal predators.

As a boy and as a man, my experiences with bullies have left me feeling intimidated, depressed, anxious, stressed, and sick to my stomach. The scary thing is that mine have been mild cases compared to most. The bullying reports that flow each day into my e-mail box and web pages are truly disturbing, as are many of the stories told directly to me by people who attend my speeches or talk to me in my travels.

I had just finished speaking to a large group of students at San Fernando Valley Academy in Northridge, California, about this very topic when a big guy with graying hair and a goatee approached me as I was walking out.

“Nick, do you mind if I talk to you a minute?” he said, introducing himself as Jeff Lasater.

He had such sadness in his eyes, I asked him to give me a hug.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he thanked me for encouraging kids to stop teasing and bullying. I thought that was all he wanted to say, but then he told me that his son Jeremiah took his own life in 2008 because of constant bullying at his school.

His tragic story shows just how dangerous bullying can be and just how stressful and harmful being bullied is for anyone, no matter what age or size you might be. Jeremiah did not look like an easy target for bullies. At fourteen years old he was more than six and a half feet tall, weighed around 275 pounds, and played offensive lineman on the junior varsity team as a freshman in a high school of six hundred students.

Still, the truth is that bullies prey on vulnerabilities, and we all have
vulnerabilities. Bullies figure out how to get to you. Sometimes they attack physically, but they can also torment their victims mentally or emotionally.

My bullies usually picked on me because I was physically different from everyone else. They made fun of me for my lack of limbs or because I could not do all the things they could do. I was an easy target, but in some ways, Jeremiah’s size and gentle ways made him an easier one.

Jeremiah had two vulnerabilities that his bullies picked on. He had difficulty fitting in because of a learning disability, which made school especially hard for him. He also was reluctant to use his size to scare off his tormentors, because he’d been suspended for fighting in grade school. Instead of standing up to the bullies or asking his teachers or supervisors for help, Jeremiah withdrew and kept his anger bottled up. His friends called him a gentle giant but said Jeremiah’s reluctance to fight, despite his size, made him a big target for some who picked on him to prove they weren’t afraid of such a big guy.

A friend remembered that Jeremiah was tormented so much in class one day that he finally stood up and said, “Just leave me alone!” Once the bullies realized Jeremiah would not fight back, they picked on him even more. Friends said he’d been bullied since grade school, and the problem only escalated once he entered high school.

On a November day in 2008, someone threw chili on Jeremiah in the lunch line. Another student tried to pull his pants down, according to Jeremiah’s father. Distraught, the young man fled to the cafeteria rest room and locked himself inside a stall. Then he pulled a handgun out of his backpack and shot himself in the head.

No one knew Jeremiah’s emotional pain. Like many others who’ve been in distress over bullying, including me, this young man hid his growing depression from his parents and friends.

“I was concerned a year ago that he was slipping into the place where kids go quiet,” one of Jeremiah’s teachers told a reporter after his death. “I would rather see kids act out.”

School administrators said that Jeremiah had actually been doing better in his classes and that he’d also been feeling really good about having his best game on the football team the previous Friday. But here is the thing to remember if you have ever picked on someone, or if you are aware of someone being bullied: you never know what might push someone over the brink.

Jeremiah probably felt good about his better grades and his improved performance on the football field. We may never know why he decided to take his life, but maybe when the bullying continued, despite all the good things he was doing, he felt that the bullies were never going to leave him alone.

There have been similar tragedies, including the January 2012 death of fifteen-year-old Amanda Cummings of Staten Island, New York, who was killed after stepping in front of an oncoming city bus with a suicide note in her pocket. Police discovered that she had been bullied at school and on Facebook by her classmates. A survey of the school a year earlier found that 80 percent of the students there had been bullied or threatened.

One of Amanda’s friends wrote on Facebook that she hoped her death haunted those who “made Amanda feel like the world turned its back on her,” according to media reports.

The mother of another student who has been bullied at Jeremiah Lasater’s high school attended a candlelight vigil after Jeremiah’s suicide and told a reporter, “There will always be bullying as long as no one does anything.”

Bullying is part of the dark side of human nature, and it surely has been with us as long as sin has existed in this world. Jesus Himself was a victim of constant bullying from His enemies. When He was taken into
custody, Jesus was questioned by the high priest Annas about His disciples and teachings. Jesus told him that He’d always spoken publicly, so nothing was secret. He said Annas should question those who’d heard Him speak about His beliefs. Just then, another temple official slapped Jesus in the face and said, “Is this the way you answer the high priest?”

I like that Jesus did not back down from these bullying religious persecutors. Instead, He demanded to know why the official had lashed out.

“If I said something wrong, testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?” Jesus replied.

I believe the lesson Jesus was teaching in this instance was that no one should give in to being bullied or persecuted. Instead, we should put our faith into action, stand against those who would intimidate and persecute us and anyone else, and demand to be treated fairly.

Maybe a little teasing or a practical joke will be the last straw, the final blow to someone you know who has been quietly suffering as Amanda or Jeremiah did. Do you want to be the person who lets that happen, or do you want to be someone who helps prevent a needless tragedy? I suggest that you put faith into action and join those who are standing against bullying, hazing, and other forms of social injustice, like racial or sexual discrimination, religious persecution, and human slavery.

Jeff Lasater told me that he is determined to do whatever he can to take a stand against the sort of bullying that led to his son’s death. Shortly after Jeremiah’s death, his father founded Jeremiah Project 51 (
www.jeremiah51.com
), a nonprofit organization that has become a major force in the battle to eliminate bullying.

This father believes that bullying is like cancer, and the only way to stop it is to cut it out. Jeremiah Project 51 (Jeremiah’s football jersey number was 51) is dedicated to wiping out bullying one school at a time. The organization provides a toll-free phone number (866-721-7385) for
students or parents to call if a student they know is being bullied. The hotline number allows the problem to be reported anonymously. Project 51 staffers then make a call to the school and ask for an investigation within twenty-four hours, and then they follow-up.

Parents may also call that number for help if their efforts to alert a school to bullying are ignored. Again, Project 51 staffers make sure the school addresses the problem. The organization, based in Winnetka, California, insists that schools with bullying reports have an educational program that alerts staff, students, and parents to signs of bullying.

Jeremiah Project 51 also has a mentor program so that students who are being bullied have a senior class member at the school who supports them and advocates for them with backup from the organization. Project 51 pledges to help students and parents deal with bullying, even if it means presenting grievances to local school boards.

You are lucky if you’ve never been bullied. Very few people go through life without running into at least one
bounce
(which is what we Australians call a bully). But there is a big difference between a single encounter with a meanspirited jerk and enduring long-term, malicious verbal or physical attacks. Andrew’s tormenting and ugly taunts against me lasted just two weeks; Jeremiah silently suffered for a long time. Despite his size and strength, this lad endured serious harassment and physical attacks for several years, according to his father. His reluctance to stand up to his antagonists and his lack of a supportive group of friends only made things worse.