I am not privy to the reasons why no teacher spotted an incident which one would think is fairly easy to pick up, but even if there was a valid reason for not identifying it, one has to wonder about general standards in yard duty. I find it ironic that by law teachers have to wear a fluro vest to stand out among the students at recess. Perhaps the problem isn’t of students finding the teacher but vice versa.
I hope this awful story doesn’t just highlight the bullying problems our schools confront but also the importance of proper supervision during recess:
A STUDENT at a metropolitan high school was taped to a tree, bound with a garden hose and allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulted in an incident recorded and posted on social media.
The Year 9 girl was filmed, allegedly distressed and screaming, while a gang of eight boys humiliated her during a recess break, just metres from the western suburb school’s staffroom.
The incident, in which the boys allegedly rubbed their buttocks and genitalia against the girl, is now the subject of SA Police and Education Department investigations.
The gang, meanwhile, has continued to harass its victim as recently as this week.
Her mother, who declined to be named, said her daughter was a “confident, happy child” when she began her studies at the school in 2010.
In mid-2011, she “became withdrawn”, performed poorly in class and received “particularly nasty” messages on social media.
For three years, the mother sought help from teachers and counsellors with no change in her daughter’s “extreme stress, anxiety and depression”.
In April, the girl told a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service worker and her mother she was being bullied by a girl and a gang of eight boys, culminating in the recorded incident.
“(The girl) taped my daughter to a tree out the front of the school and staffroom where most students gathered at recess and lunch,” the mother said.
“My daughter noticed a gang of boys approaching … she began to ask (the girl) to let her free … as the boys drew closer they grabbed the hose and sprinkler.
“By this stage my daughter was screaming and begging (the girl) to untie her; however, the girl chose to laugh at her and do nothing.”
The woman said the gang of boys wrapped her daughter in the hose and, while filming her with mobile phones, “dropped their pants and rubbed” their buttocks and genitalia on her.
“She said she felt so humiliated and so frightened … everyone around her stood there and did nothing or were laughing in the distance,” she said.
The woman has spoken out about the incident for the first time after she was prompted to come forward by the historic first-ever prosecution of a teen under the state’s new “humiliating and degrading” filming laws.
The laws, introduced last year, carry a maximum one-year jail term for anyone who subjects another person to a degrading act, or one that would violate their privacy.
Click on the link to read Anti-Bullying Song Goes Viral
Click on the link to read Some Schools Just Don’t Get it When it Comes to Bullying
Click on the link to read The Bystander Experiment (Video)
Tags: a gang of eight boys humiliated her during a recess break, boys allegedly rubbed their buttocks and genitalia against the girl, Bullying, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service worker, Cyber Bullying, Education, social media, teen taped to a tree, teen tied to a tree at school, teen tied with a hose at school, Yard duty
Topical Teaching 
August 4, 2014 at 9:02 pm |
Speaking as a teacher, I have two thoughts about this. Either the staff on duty is physically present, but pays no attention to what is going on, not feeling any responsibility toward students because of apathy or overwork (OR has no administrative support whenever they do try to intervene); OR, staff is afraid of students.
August 4, 2014 at 9:36 pm |
Lynne, I hadn’t considered your second theory. I would risk life and limb to protect a student who was being sexually abused on my watch. Fear wouldn’t stop me.
August 5, 2014 at 3:18 am
I believe you, but I’ve spoken to other teachers who are scared of students, especially when they have school administrations who won’t back them up. Thankfully, I’ve never been in such a situation personally, where I was too scared to take action. Also, you didn’t mention where this school was, or what type of school it was. Some teachers on lunch duty just stay together in one place, talking to another teacher, or not paying attention at ALL to what’s going on on the playground. Most teachers receive no instruction at all about what they are supposed to be doing (walking around and proactively looking for situations to police). Many teachers feel put upon to be out at lunch duty at all, and feel the school should pay someone else to do it. And sometimes, teachers who have tried to help in the past, and received no support, are unable or unwilling to do their jobs out of fear of students or fear of reprisals, or fear of bodily injury. Imagine if this school is a ghetto school and there is a lone, young (or old) female teacher on duty. Would she be willing to stop a whole gang of boys acting that wild, or would they attack her, or her car, or herself? Were these elementary students? A whole gang of them could still be quite dangerous. There need to be specific procedures for lunch duty. Often, schools put teachers on lunch duty and the teacher doesn’t even have another period in which to eat their lunch, so they are simultaneously trying to sit or stand and eat while at the same time being present on the playground. There need to be rules and PROCEDURES TO FOLLOW when incidents are witnessed. In all my years of teaching (30+ years) I have yet to work at a school that gave ANY GUIDELINES AT ALL to teachers about what to do on lunch duty. The consequences can be appalling, such as what happened to this girl, and no one apparently seeing it at all. As far as the girl who was a witness and laughed, she probably hated the girl it was happening to, and did not report it in order to have her secret revenge. I see this sort of bullying among girls (on a much lesser scale) constantly. This is a supervision problem, an apathy problem in the school among staff in an out-of-control school, and a bullying problem. I’m sure all three issues need to be addressed in this particular school.