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BULLYING

Bullying in focus after Norway teen’s death

While police push for the mother of a dead teen to be held in remand, attention has turned to the bullying the girl faced at her school.

Bullying in focus after Norway teen's death
The girl was reportedly reunited with her tormenters at this school. Photo: Cornelius Poppe / NTB scanpix
Defence attorney Aasmund Olav Sandland held a four-hour long meeting with the mother being charged with gross negligence after her 13-year-old daughter was found dead from emaciation in a hut on New Year’s Eve. 
 
“She’s doing terrible because she lost a child. The situation becomes almost absurd when on top of that she is being charged with a serious criminal offence,” he told TV2. 
 
 
Sandland said that after the meeting at the Reinsvoll psychiatric hospital he is even more convinced that the charges against he mother are unfounded. 
 
“The more knowledge of the facts I get, the more pointless this becomes,” he said. 
 
Police have not yet spoken with the mother, as she is not seen as in good enough condition to deal with their questioning. 
 
The mother, who is in her 40s, was the one who called emergency services on New Year’s Eve. According to Sandland, the call occurred at around 7.30pm when the girl collapsed. The mother reportedly tried to resuscitate her daughter. 
 
Inland Police believe that there are sufficient grounds to suspect serious neglect on the mother’s part and that the mother both failed to help her daughter and may have attempted to destroy evidence. On Tuesday, police sent out a press release that underlined that the indictment was related to the daughter’s health. A preliminary autopsy report ruled that the girl died of emaciation. 
 
In addition to investigating the mother, police are also trying to determine to what degree public agencies might have known about the girl’s health problems and what was done about them. 
 
Record of bullying
In 2012, the mother appeared on TV2 to speak about her daughter’s eating disorders and the bullying she experienced at the Gullhaug primary school in Bærum. The mother claimed that complaints of bullying were not taken seriously. 
 
Municipal officials have looked in to the conditions at the school and discovered several offences. 
 
The school, which the girl attended until autumn 2012, had received complaints over its handling of bullying episodes. The school was also reported for violated the Education Act but the case was dropped. 
 
Following the 13-year-old’s death, a number of people have spoken critically about the school’s approach to bullying, but Helen Førland, who served as rector of the school while the girl attended first through third grades, said she never received bullying complaints related to the girl.
 
The girl fared better after switching schools in 2012, but when she began at Mølledammen junior high school in autumn 2015 she was reunited with the same students who had previously bullied her, despite promises the school made to the mother that she would not come in contact with them. 
 
The girl’s death has spurred a national conversation about bullying within the school system. Education Minister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen told Dagsavisen that more bullies should be transferred to new schools when other measures aren’t effective. 
 
“It is a familiar pattern that it is often the bullying victim that ends up switching schools. I think that is a mistake,” he said. 
 
“This is obviously a tragic case. We know that the mother reported bullying but we don’t know so much about how things fit together,” he added.

EDUCATION

Madrid to suspend pupils who don’t report bullying at school

School kids in Spain’s capital who fail to report another pupil being bullied will be expelled for up to six days or face other punishments.

Madrid to suspend pupils who don't report bullying at school
Photo: Deposit Photos

Educational authorities in Madrid want to stamp out bullying from the region’s classrooms, their newest measure aimed at preventing the climate of silence which allows bullies to continue getting away with their behaviour. 

From the next school year onwards, any pupil or teacher who fails to report an incident of bullying will be held accountable as silent witnesses.

For pupils, the punishment for not informing a teacher or any other member of staff about physical or verbal abuse against a classmate or teacher will range from a playground ban to a six-day suspension.

Each educational centre will be responsible for determining the severity of actions, or lack thereof, for those who failed to speak up.

The newly approved school coexistence decree will apply to all schools and high schools in the Madrid region, regardless of whether they’re public or private institutions.

This poster by Madrid authorities reads: “Snitch!”, “Snitch? If you mean I don't keep quiet about abuse, then I'm a snitch. The slogan reads “When it comes to abuse at school, speak up”.

Although the decree is aimed at de-stigmatising the concept of being a school snitch, several associations have expressed doubts about the end result of the measure.

“This isn’t the solution,” Lucía Martínez Martín, head of the Madrid office of Save The Children, told La Vanguardia.

“Once they put the measure into practice, they’ll realise it’s not an efficient measure.

“Children first have to know what abuse is because many of them can’t recognise it when it’s there.

“Some think insulting someone isn’t abuse but hitting someone is.

“We have to work with them to fight these abuses, promote respect and teach them their rights.”

The measure also sets the bar for how bullies themselves should be punished, considering online bullying, any form of discrimination relating to sexual orientation, race or religion, insults and threats made to teachers and numerous other forms of abuse to be serious incidents.

Bullies, depending on the severity of their actions, will have to either take part in reintegration workshops, be banned from certain schooling activities and subjects, be moved to another class or face temporary or permanent suspension.

An October 2018 report by Madrid's public prosecutor's office found that there has been sharp increase in the number of reported bullying cases involving “very young children”. 

 

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