This topic was driven home to my heart recently as a young one so very dear to my heart, like my own daughter, came home from school upset by her experiences with being bullied. She had enough and couldn't take the idea of having to go back to school the next day. She experienced sexual harassment, sexual assault in the form of having her butt grabbed, emotional abuse with name calling, psychological abuse of friends' betrayals, and so on. Here I hope to let their voices be heard when they are ready to share their stories.
Days later I realize we won't be hearing from our local teens. As with anyone abused, they distance themselves from the issue. Sure, they'll pass alone a Facebook posting against it, but they aren't really feeling it in the same way teens will become activists against drugs but still be doing them. It is why they will sign contracts committing themselves to abstinence while dating, having sex and having babies. There is a disconnect, a detachment from everything else and their actual experience. They live in two different worlds: a virtual world in which public opinion, parents and adults live in alongside their actual reality made of up of friends and real events they personally feel.
When I wondered what it must be like for these children in the hallways at school each day, it triggered a memory of one time when I left class to go to the bathroom. I had to go down a back stairwell. On my way back to class a large male classmate was about to go down the stairs. Upon spotting me, he knocked me to the floor and began sexually assaulting me. I pushed him off and continued on back to class. It never occurred to me to tell anyone. I wondered why it never occurred to me. The big question is why do we not tell adults, parents, teachers, etc? Because it never occurs to us. Why does it never occur to us? Because adults are not constants in our lives. Our peers are and how much we tell them depends on whether or not we feel accepted by our peers.
If we think about it from a child's perspective, we can begin to see how this is so. In the morning we are rushed off by parents into the custody of a bus driver where we socialize with peers. The bus driver rushes us into the custody of the first teacher of the day while we are socializing with peers. From one class to another, thus one teacher to another, one adult to another all the while socializing with peers every chance we get. Back to the bus driver, on to a coach or home where there may or may not be parents, but always peers and maybe siblings. This began at a very early age when mom passed us off to daycare, preschool, kindergarten. Siblings to some extent and peers become a child's ONLY constant. They exist in a different psychological world, isolated and alone. They are given no other choice by parents who force them to go even when they don't want to. So children learn at a very young age that they are not allowed to say "no" to force. A child does not have to be "abused" to become alienated from parents, trustworthy adults, authority figures, etc. They do not know they can trust them, turn to them, ask for help. But their peers are always there, talking to them, sharing with them and thus proving that this is where one can talk, share, tell, etc. It is why children take things into their own hands or huddle together helplessly believing they cannot complain, say "no", etc.
And then along comes an adult who tells them they CAN tell. They CAN be heard. They WILL be protected from such abuses and for a moment they hope, get motivated, etc but then they back down. They would be leaving the world of their peer group, the only world they have ever known. This is terrifying. So, they escape back into it and back into silence.
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