When Kristian's father watches videos of his son at age 10, pretending to be a TV reporter, grinning and holding a notepad as he reads weather forecasts, he wonders if he'll ever see that enthusiasm in his son's eyes again.
But at age 17, Kristian is a different person, sullen, distracted and crippled by fear, still suffering the effects of a campaign of taunts, anti-Muslim bigotry and violence at the hands of a small gang of bullies when he attended Markham Intermediate School.
It's been a year since his parents found out about the bullying -- which led to the arrest of four young Staten Islanders on hate crime charges. He's now being home-schooled. But Kristian hasn't gotten better, his father, Shaffiate, tells the Advance. [Kristian's last name is being withheld.]
"Since then, he's never been outside alone. The psychiatrist said his memory is regressing. He doesn't know how to use money ... If he goes in a deli and he buys something, whatever they give him, he'll take it," his father says. "He has no sense of humor -- whatever you tell him, he thinks you mean it."
Occasionally, when he's in the car with his parents, Kristian will look at a group of teens gathered on the sidewalk, or on the street, and think he sees his tormentors' face in the shadows, his father said.
"Before the bullying, he used to play the piano," his father recalls.
Kristian sang in his school chorus in fifth grade, and a video of him at age 13 shows him serenading his mother at home. "He liked sports. He liked to play tennis. He liked soccer ... He was just a regular all-American kid that we had no worries about."
Sitting erect and unsmiling at his kitchen table in his Graniteville home, Kristian taps his fingers against his arm. Sometimes, he frantically moves his hands together -- a tic his father says he developed after the bullying."I feel a little bit scared, nervous, depressed and sad," he said. He used to be enthusiastic about taking photographs and developing film, but now, he said, "I just watch TV."FUTURE UNCERTAIN
He smiles when he watches videos of himself as a 10-year-old pretending to read a weather report, but when asked if he'd like to be that enthusiastic boy again, or pursue his childhood interests, he stalls for several seconds and, after a pause, says, "I don't know."
Laura Martocci of Wagner College's sociology department, who runs an anti-bullying program in local grammar schools, says society often doesn't know what to make of bullying victims like Kristian, even though people can sympathize with his plight.
"There's no cultural support for him. He's in this void. How do you even reconnect?" Martocci said. "He hasn't been able to be re-integrated into adolescent culture."
The shame felt by bullying victims often lead them to withdraw, or to become angry, she says. And even after the bullying is exposed, the victims may be seen as pariahs.
"People have to get him back in the world in some way," she says. "We don't know how to do it. It's not his fault, it's not our fault, it's just the culture doesn't know how to deal with bullying."
Victims like Kristian can be well-served joining a mentoring program -- either using their own experiences to help younger bullying victims, or finding older mentors through a "big brother" type of program, she suggests.
The Advance ran a front-page story on Kristian's plight as a bullying victim on Oct. 10, 2010.
The torment began in October of the previous year, when some of his classmates in an eighth grade class for students with special needs began poking him on his shoulder and calling him gay.
Those pokes became punches to the back of his head when the teacher's back was turned, and as the days progressed, the bullying became nastier. Once, Kristian recalled in the 2010 interview, a student sneaked up behind him, grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, while a second one spat in his face.
"They called me a Muslim terrorist," Kristian said. "That I came to this country to blow down houses and buildings because I have long hair."
Kristian's parents emigrated from Trinidad in the mid-1980s, and Kristian was born in the United States. The family considers themselves Muslim, although they say they are not very religious.
His classmates assaulted him in the hallways, he recalled, tripping him and then kicking and punching him in his knees, his groin and his back as he lay on the floor.
Throughout the torment, Kristian kept quiet, leaving his parents puzzled why he became withdrawn and depressed at home. His father says his son contemplated suicide.
He graduated from intermediate school, and went to Port Richmond High School, but when he saw two of his attackers in class, he opened up.
Liz Lasky, a clinical social worker who specializes in bullying and cyber-bullying, says cases like Kristian's highlight a need for everyone working in the education system to recognize and understand bullying, and work to prevent it.
"Sometimes for people, being bullied ends up being the defining moment for them," she says. Victims can suffer long-term effects like depression and anxiety, she says.'IT SHOULDN'T HAPPEN'
"This just sort of underlines the importance of bullying prevention and awareness," she says. "Bullying is not a right of passage. It's not a guaranteed thing that's going to happen. It shouldn't happen."
After a police investigation, police charged four teenage boys -- three 14-year-old Hispanic students and one 15-year-old black student -- with assault and aggravated harassment as a hate crime. Their full names have not been released because of their age, and Kristian says he can't talk about the case, as per a judge's order.
According to city Law Department officials, one of the suspects, identified as Jonathan R., pleaded guilty to first degree harassment, another, Francisco V., to second-degree aggravated harassment. They were both sentenced in Family Court in January to 12 months probation.
The remaining two, Westly M. and Leonardo R., await trial, and are scheduled to return to court on Nov. 28 for a hearing.
Kristian, meanwhile, is taking an anti-depressant and a drug used to treat mental illness and schizophrenia, according to his father. "He gets counseling two times a week. Is this helping him? I don't think so," his father says.
Source: http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/since_being_bullied_at_school.html
No comments:
Post a Comment