I’m sorry but ‘soul searching’ isn’t going to be sufficient in this case:
The suicide of a 13-year-old boy in southern Japan after classmates systematically bullied him — even making him “practice” suicide — while teachers ignored the abuse or laughed has prompted soul-searching among educators across the country.
One of the boy’s last acts was to text his tormentors and leave voice mails for them to say, “I’m going to die.” They texted him back to say, “You should die.”
The middle school student, whose name has not been released, jumped from his 14th floor apartment in the city of Otsu last October after enduring heartrending tales of abuse at the hands of his classmates.
His father filed several reports with the police, but officers never accepted them, saying that they could not prove that bullying led to his suicide, according to Japanese media reports.
Details of the harassment are coming to light eight months later, following a student survey conducted by the city’s board of education. In that anonymous survey, students write the bullying escalated to “punching and kicking” in September last year, about a month before the teen jumped to his death. The victim was pressured into shoplifting, had his legs and arms tied while bullies duck-taped his mouth. Students watched as their peers pressured the teen into eating dead bees, “pantsed” him, and made him “practice” committing suicide.
In the survey, some classmates report alerting teachers to those “practices,” but say nothing was done.
Instead, teachers reportedly laughed as bullies tried to choke the victim.
Any teacher found to be laughing needs to be sacked immediately. Those who texted back to the boy on the night of his suicide should be expelled.
There is a place for “soul-searching”. This however, is a time for action.
Click here to find out what happened next in this tragic saga.
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