By Craig Babstock
Marino Sani of the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police says the only violent act he hasn’t seen in a schoolyard is a shootout.
And that may not be too far off, because he says many guns are confiscated along with all the knives he finds on students.
Sani has been a cop for 17 years, the last two as a youth school resource officer in Centretown. He’s the officer who responds when there’s an assault reported at a school in the area.
He says school yard incidents are more violent than ever before.
“I think the serious incidents are more serious than they’ve ever been. There are more injuries and assaults where serious bodily harm is the result,” says Sani.
“You can safely say there’s not many fights where two people duke it out and that’s it.”
Sani says the biggest difference in bullying he has seen, besides that it’s more violent than ever, is that it’s not just the high school students any more.
“We’re seeing the same things we’ve been seeing, but now the kids are younger,” says Sani, adding that it no longer surprises him to find a knife on a 12-year-old child.
“The kids are growing up a lot faster. There’s a desensitization among these kids. You don’t have to look beyond the video games they play and the television shows they watch,” says Sani.
Child pschotherapist Dena Tenenhouse says young people may not be facing a higher rate of bullying than when she started 20 years ago, but she says the violence has definitely worsened.
“It’s amazing when 16-year-old boys admit to you that they’re nervous when they go to the corner store,” says Tenenhouse.
She deals with a lot of young people who have learning disabilities which place them at a higher risk for ostracization by their peers.
“Children who have a learning disability often are the easiest target because they may present themselves more awkwardly or just not get the joke everyone else does,” says Tenenhouse.
“I think the difference is with teenagers. The violence and type of bullying has severely increased. Teenagers now don’t feel safe. They feel the need to travel with a group to back them up,” says Tenenhouse.
Wendy Craig, of Queen’s University, has been studying the phenomenon of bullying for 10 years. She says the reasons for anti-social behaviour can often be found in the home.
Craig says family stress, unemployed parents, drug and alcohol abuse and anti-social parents can all play a role in turning a regular child into an aggressive playground bully.
“They go to school with a repertoire of coercive and aggressive behaviour. Other kids reject them, so they don’t get the opportunity to be exposed to pro-social role models,” says Craig.
The bullies are forced to hang out with those most like them, resulting in gangs of thugs and juvenille delinquent groups made up of kids who reinforce one another’s behaviour.
Craig says the victims of aggressive children also tend to come from a specific background. They usually grow up in overprotective families where they often aren’t allowed to make their own decisions. As a result of being pushed around, these kids can become stressed, withdrawn and prone to drop out of school.
In serious cases, the situation is too much for the child to deal with on his own.
“Bullying is an abuse of power, so you always need an adult to come in and balance things out,” says Craig.
Mars Bottiglia finds himself stepping into situations like these on a regular basis.
Bottiglia’s job is to enforce policy with the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board. That includes when students break the zero-tolerance policy on violence which has been in place for the last five years.
“I usually get a call when there’s an attempt to injure,” says Bottiglia.
He says the zero-tolerance policy means that any incident reported by a school is dealt with through suspensions and intervention by parents or police, depending on the severity. Bottiglia says this has brought the overall rate of violence down.
“Students were never dealt with as harshly. Before we just said,’Oh, it’s just a little scrap.’”
But whether or not the rate is going down, Craig says being beaten up or threatened with a knife is not really the problem for young people. It’s the psychological effects of the intimidation which takes a toll.
“The thing about bullying is the fear that the bully is going to come back. Parents don’t realize how much terror one child can instill in another. One child telling another he’s going to get him at recess has a lasting effect.”