To feel a wee bit sorry for the bully girl in the new "happy slapping" video?

[Bluemonkeyspots]

I mean the one with the girl jolene bullying the autistic boy.

The video is disgusting and makes very uncomfortable viewing, I felt sick watching it and putting my own dc in the place of the poor boy, if it was my dc I would want to rip her head off but I'm also really disturbed by all the comments about the girl that are online.

She is only 14 and I can't help but feel a bit sorry for her, maybe she is just pure nasty through and through but none of us know her background story.

While it would not make what she did ok what if she is abused at home by her own parents? What if there is nobody to support her through this and it pushes her to take her own life?

Maybe I'm just going soft due to pregnancy hormones but I really don't like all the hate groups springing up on Facebook etc with adults calling her all the nasty names under the sun and listing the disgusting things they would do to her. Can they not see the irony in what they are doing.

[Nancy66]

happynewmind - your poor daughter

[IloveJudgeJudy]

I haven't and won't watch the video. However, this seems to me to be a trend. Some girls (and I have a DD myself) seem to think it's OK to hit boys and know that if the boys retaliate, they will get called girl beaters. It is not OK to hit anyone, but to hit someone, knowing that they cannot/will not retaliate is despicable. I hadn't realised that the boy concerned has SN, but that makes the whole situation worse.

[thefirstmrsrochester]

This makes me sad on several counts

• that it happened at all
  
• that her friends were happy enough to stand by and watch
  
• that it was filmed and put on YouTube
  
• that there are so many vile and aggressive comments being left on Internet forums by presumably grown adults
  
• that an 11 year old could have so little self respect for herself that she on turn has no respect for others
  
• that the family home was tracked down & the windows smashes and the family have relocated for their safety
  

Yes, it's an example of vile bullying. My dc attend school in the same region. This is not what you would call uncommon, it just happened to get filmed, uploaded & went viral. So many young folk are almost feral - what the hell has happened in society to get to this?
She is 11, not 14.
I am sorry for the boy on the receiving end and sad for the reasons ^

[AllThatGlistens]

Save your sympathy for the victim. God these things make my blood boil! This is a particularly emotive subject for me at the moment, my oldest son is autistic and we're currently having our 2 yr old assessed too, the likelihood being that he is also autistic.

Bullying will never stop until we start educating our children, neurotypical or other. How can anyone reassure me that my boys will ever be safe in the outside world whilst people feel sorry for the perpetrators and minimise the amount of harm they cause? Not in my lifetime, I suspect

[JaponicaTroggs]

As the parent of a lovely autistic fourteen year old boy this kind of thing makes me weep as it could so easily be him. He would have no clue how to defend himself. Can't believe that there are people making excused for this scum. Personally I think this type of bleeding heart "feel sorry for the bully" crap is what has created and enabled a generation of Jolene types in the first place.
Feel sorry for her?, seriously, get a dose of reality.

[Flobbadobs]

How can we educate our children to understand that bullying is unacceptable when online bullying of children by supposed adults of the type mentioned in the link upthread is becoming more acceptable with every incident?
All types of bullying behaviour should be unacceptable.
I recently saw a post on an FB site (local group) about one members child being bullied at school. The replies underneath were from people I knew and considered to be kind, lovely people in general were posting comments asking for names and addresses of the bullies so they could go round and 'sort them out'. These were people who I knew damn well would not tolerate their own children being involved in bullying behaviour but were competely prepared to go round and threaten and beat up 11 yo children. I know I'm not the only person to have left the group in disgust. How have we got to the stage where any of this on any level is acceptable?
My DS is currently waiting for a referral as we suspect Aspergers. He was bullied when younger and humiliated in class by a small group of children. At no point did we want these children to harm themselves in remorse! Maybe we were just lucky that we got support from the school and crucially from the childrens parents to get it sorted. The constant nasty remarks, name calling, tripping him up in class, spraying water at his pants to make him look like he had wet himself all stopped. They will never be mates but they are quite civil to each other now.
The whole thing makes me very very angry.

[confusteling]

I do feel sad for her.

I had very similar things happen to me at school - never physical violence but I was sexually assualted and harrassed, and my life was a misery, from I think primary one - although I can vaguely remember incidents from nursery - right up until I had left school at age eighteen.

I feel very sorry for the people who treated me in the way they did; I've never understood why they did it. They treated me like shit and for them to have found that acceptable, they must have had hellish home lives and weird upbringings.

I mean - I thought my home life was hard as a child, but I had the benefit of parents who while they weren't always there, taught me right from wrong and clearly for whatever reason, these children/teens lacked that, which is quite sad.

"Jolene" has effectively ruined her life and his and there's not a lot she can do to solve it now, sadly.

I fail to understand the behaviour of grown adults wishing an eleven year old child dead. Very strange and very hypocritical.

[FellatioNels0n]

Why so much pity for her? She's experiencing a little snippet of what it feels like to be hated, sneered at, insulted and intimidated. Some people live their whole lives feeling like that - she's just having a little taster of what she dishes out. Hopefully it will teach her a valuable lesson and she'll grow up to be a half decent human being after all.

[Veritate]

I must say, I really dislike the "no sympathy" line which so often appears in comments on stories like this. We don't know all the facts, and, loathsome as this girl's behaviour seems to have been, it can't conceivably be appropriate for adults to be publicising loud calls for her to commit suicide.

[Vagaceratops]

I find it extremely difficult to have one iota of sympathy for her.

Maybe now she will realise what it feels like to be a victim.

[EastHollyDaleStreet]

I've not seen or heard of it. What is it all about? Sounds horrific :(

[MrsTerryPratchett]

It is possible to feel sympathy for two victims of bullying. I haven't watched the video but this kind of bullying is heartbreaking and very widespread. I worked for SS in an LD team and it is really dreadful what happens. And people have killed themselves after being the victim of this.

As well, calling a child a slag, witch, slut and saying they (adults) would like to kick her in the cunt or hit her with a chair, "she fuckin takes it up the arse"? Words fail me. Both are reprehensible.

[ApocalypseCheeseToastie]

tbh I think public shaming is the way forward for dealing with bullies, bet she's not so cocky now.

[Nancy66]

EastHolly - it was mobile phone footage uploaded to Youtube and picked up by several newspapers.

It featured two school girls picking on a boy. One girl was filming on her phone and goading as the other girl (Jolene) blocked the path of the boy walking home from school. She calls him names and ridicules him. She says several times 'don't worry I won't hit ya' and then continually shoves him before slapping him several times in the face.

[thefirstmrsrochester]

Pity i think because she is an 11 year old girl who, for whatever reason, has got to this stage in her young life with a woefully lacking sense of decency. As for all the downright aggressive and inappropriate posts that are being lobbed about the internet about what should be done to her - is this not bullying and harassment? Yes, she gets a taste of her own medicine but adults attacking her viciously online?

[EastHollyDaleStreet]

I've managed to track it down now :( So so sad - for them both I sort of agree. How can a child think that sort of behaviour is acceptable? And as for adults and their comments on fb etc, that is just outrageous. It's akin to the hysteria that crops up about 'peedos' etc.

[Catchingmockingbirds]

She was punching him in the face, not slapping him. She was calling him a spastic etc too because he has autism, hence the replies on this thread relating to autism.

[IDrankAllTheGravy]

I do slightly agree. There was a point he said something and she shouted back "don't you fucking cheek me" or something along those lines, but the way she said it looked as if she was imitating an adult. I could be totally wrong, I just got the impression she's not had it easy in her home life.

Still, that's no excuse to pick on an innocent boy, special needs or no special needs.

[Groovee]

An 11 year old and a 15 year old have been reported to the childrens panel and hopefully will be remorseful of what they have done. There is no reason for any child to behave like this and if I found my 12 year old or 10 year old behaved like this they would be punished and understand this is not tolerated.

[heather1]

She is old enough to know what is right and what is wrong. She decided to take the action she did. Do I feel sorry for her that it ended up on the internet? No. Are the people making vitriolic comments about her in some small way as bad as her? Yes.
I feel more sympathy for the boy being slapped. My son was bullied at his new school, we are in Europe but not the UK. No action was taken against the bullies, even when my son was punched in the face on more than one occasion. As a result of the school not taking action we have removed him from the school and are homeschooling while we wait for a place at a school that will try to ensure he recieves the happy school experience he should have had. He is in a form of therapy to repair his damaged self-esteem and desire to protect his family from his bad experience. He is 8. And the bullies - still at the same school, no doubt having moved on to other targets now my son is not available to them. And the school teachers are as bad as the bullies as they did the bare minimum the help my son. Bullies need help yes of course to stop their behaviour. But sympathy for the results of such horrible action, not from me.

[merlottits]

This seems to be a fashion. My 15 year old DS comes home with bruises and cuts from injuries caused by females. The girls taunt the boys who 9/10 times won't retaliate because they are girls. Disgusting. Just an extension of the ladette culture I expect.

There have been times when I've half wanted to tell my son to lamp one girl to stop it but I know its wrong and you know that HE would be the evil one and she would be the innocent little female.

[TinyDancingHoofer]

YABU. This wasn't a small scuffle between children. This was a violent attack by someone who knew what they were doing. The girl should be in in a detention centre.

[WilsonFrickett]

The comments are disgusting. We don't educate people not to bully by bullying back. However my sympathy is entirely with the boy. I should say I haven't watched the video though. With a vulnerable boy, I already have nightmares about this sort of thing. I don't need to see it on YouTube.