Recently, two teenage girls in Maryland were arrested and charged for torturing a 16-year-old mentally challenged boy.
The 17 and 15-year-old high school girls have admitted to recording the harassment on their cell phones. On top of assaulting the boy with a knife, kicking him in the groin and making him engage in sexual acts with an animal, the footage shows the girls forcing the victim to walk on a partially frozen pond. He fell through the ice multiple times, and each time the girls refused to help the boy out of the water.
The girls were charged with two counts of first-degree assault, two counts of second-degree assault, soliciting subject in the production of child pornography and false imprisonment. According to The Washington Post, the 17-year-old girl will be tried as an adult, and the 15-year-old girl is charged as a juvenile.
As horrifying as this story sounds, it gets worse. The autistic victim doesn’t understand the charges. He believes that these two teenage girls are his friends and even considers the younger of the two his girlfriend.
Bullying is a massive problem. Although it’s a commonly addressed situation, solutions are rarely sought. It’s disturbing to think about how many other kids knew about this and didn’t say anything. This discrimination went on from December to February, and it’s hard to imagine this went on for months without anyone outside of these two girls knowing about it.
This newest case of bullying has brought the issue back into light, and on an even bigger scale. For an individual to manipulate and torture a child the way these two girls did, knowing full well that he suffered from a mental disability, shows just how big of a problem bullying is and how it should have harsher consequences.
Bullying doesn’t just stop at those who are mentally ill either. Since we were in middle school, our teachers and parents repeatedly strained some ideas about bullying: you can stand up to a bully, you can come to an adult when you are being bullied and that bullying is not to be tolerated.
If these morals and ideas are being pushed on kids and things like this are still happening, something bigger needs to be done.
According to a Susan Swearer, a professor of school psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, often kids think that telling won’t do any good or that the bully will retaliate if they tattle.
I believe a good way to help fix this problem would be more anonymous feedback from students in all grade levels. We have to protect the identities of the victims. Leaving a complaint box or a chance to go to the counselor to talk is a sure way for other students to know that another student has a problem or is “tattling.”
Something else that needs to be addressed further is the help factor. A survey of students would also help others intrude in bullying situations.
Going back to this example of the mentally-challenged victim, he didn’t know he was being abused. However, it is extremely likely more than just the victim and two girls knew about this situation.
We should enforce more in schools that you can stand up for others as well. I think it’s heavily enforced that you can stand up for yourself against bullies, even if no one else is behind you. However, this situation could have been avoided or put to shame quicker if another student had spoken up or was given the chance to.
Bullying is a problem discussed between students, parents and teachers a lot, but it’s apparent through this new case that talking about this isn’t doing enough for our students.