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Bullies and Family Violence
Reverend Brian J. Kiely, Unitarian Church of
Edmonton, May 2, 2004
It used to be that I thought bullies were limited to boys a few
years older than me in grade school. They walked with a swagger and
threw their weight around in the locker room. They picked on kids
who were smaller than them usually causing more humiliation than
harm, but not always.
I believed that once I grew up, once I got as big as they were,
bullies would bother me no more. And since I grew quickly, even in
elementary school, they didn’t bother me for long. I can only
remember two or three times. Each was a random act of meanness by
a bigger kid I did not know with whom I had never had contact. The
events, thankfully were over quickly and never repeated.
I was lucky.
I never had to experience some of the day-to-day kind of abuse suffered
by many children. A young girl, Kaiyla wrote the Canadian website
bullying.org, “Every day I go to school I have to worry about
people making fun of me.” A girl named Leah replied, “I
know how you feel. At the moment I’m getting sort of bullied
by people who are supposed to be my best friends. You see I am in
a class with two other girls, they make fun of me for everything
and try to make me feel small. I really hate them.”
That’s the kind of bullying most often experienced by young
girls, but no less devastating than a punch or a kick. And violence
by girl bullies is on the rise.
I did literally come between a bully and victim in high school.
I say ‘literally’ because in the class we shared, I sat
behind the bully and in front of the victim. Joe had a mean streak
a mile wide and a tongue that cut like a sabre. In that department,
foreign born, mild mannered Tommy just couldn’t defend himself.
Every day, it seemed I had to stop Joe, some times verbally, sometimes
physically. I wasn’t being a hero, I was just caught in the
cross-fire. A few times in the hallway I had to pull Joe off of Tommy.
It wasn’t hard. I was bigger than both of them put together.
You don’t have to be physically large to be a bully. In fact,
statistics suggest girls who verbally bully others through exclusion
and gossip are usually physically weaker than their victims.
I can’t say I was ever Tommy’s pal. I didn’t much
like him. But in the home in which I grew up you just didn’t
pick on people. It wasn’t fair. I would learn later that Joe
grew up in a very different home. He fought daily and bitterly with
his foster father. I heard stories of violence, but never knew for
sure. He found his own apartment when he was 16. An old girlfriend
of his said he had been seriously abused. According to bullying.org “Bullies
often come from homes that are neglectful and hostile and use harsh
punishment. Bullying may be learned by observing high levels of conflict
between parents.” In other words, bullying is frequently an
outward expression and sign of family violence in the home.
There is an element of low self-esteem in bullies. In fact studies
show that “Bullies/victims are the most insecure, the least
likeable, and the most unsuccessful in school.” (Stephenson
and Smith, 1989) That was true of Tommy, the victim. Joe got good
grades, but he never had a lot of friends.
I know Joe committed at least one major act of violence. He killed
himself in his early 20’s. Tommy changed schools at the end
of the year. I have not heard of him since. I hope he has found some
happiness. He’s earned it.
What happens when bullies grow up? Last week I heard a Rocky Mountain
House police constable on the radio. It seems that municipality has
just adopted a strong anti-bullying by-law that includes penalties
for by-standers who egg a bully on. The constable freely admitted
to being a bully in his youth and helped create the by-law as a means
of redress.
Statistics show that incidents of bullying tend to decrease as children
grow older. 26% of grade 1-3 students report incidents. By grade
7-8 this drops in by more than half to 12%. Apparently some bullies
learn other ways of getting along and managing their feelings. Some,
apparently, just grow up and get married.
This week Provincial Children’s Services Minister Iris Evans
is holding a series of family violence roundtable discussions and
has asked clergy to preach on the topic. In the background material,
the ministry links bullying and family violence:
“Power and control imbalances exist in both bullying and violent
family relationships. Children who bully and are bullied are sometimes
from homes where they have been exposed to family violence…Family
violence is the abuse of power within relationships of family… that
endangers the survival, security or well-being of another person.
Family violence includes many forms including spousal abuse, parent
abuse, seniors abuse and neglect, child abuse and neglect, child
sexual abuse and witnessing the abuse of others in the family… Family
violence is not a mental illness. It is not caused by alcohol or
drug abuse, although these substances can contribute to family violence.
Family violence is not a loss of control – it is a choice by
the abuser to use violence or the threat of violence to gain control
over another person.”
It’s all about power in the end. Bullies learn, usually in
childhood, that aggression is a tool that works for them.. Since
it keeps working, they keep using it. In fact, studies have shown
that when someone intervenes, bullying stops within 10 seconds over
half the time. That someone is most often a peer. In other words,
when aggression does NOT work, bullying stops.
Bullies have a need to dominate another person in order to feel
good about themselves and tend to blame the victims for forcing them
to punish them. In the playground, any difference is enough of a
reason to provoke a bully who already arrives with poor impulse control
and a preference for aggression. In spousal and other adult situations,
the bully finds fault with the victim: an appointment missed, a disagreement
over something small, a child that cries too much. It’s always
someone else’s fault. Usually that someone is the victim.
The bully is one of those contradictory characters in our society.
He–or she–seems so strong, but it’s not real strength.
The bully acts out of fear and anxiety. Unsure of their place in
the world, perhaps told time and again how worthless they are, bullies
use whatever power can be mustered to try and prove their worth.
And they look for the unequal advantage. Bullies are the masters
of the ‘pre-emptive strike’, the situation where you
lash out and attack first.
It’s easy to see this in the playground, but it happens in
the adult world too. There are people who will sabotage co-worker
efforts or who will undermine others with vicious rumours and innuendo,
because they see these others as a threat to their position in the
workplace. This is bullying. There are bosses who will yell at their
underlings knowing that they have the power ultimately to fire them.
But they seldom use this power, preferring to control with fear.
There are coaches in both boys’ and girls’ sports who
seldom praise their charges but prefer to harp on every little mistake.
By criticizing they reassert their power.
Because they have a poor sense of self worth they mask it in a quest
for power over others. They fear that they will be unmasked and seen
for the worthless people they perceive themselves to be (whether
it’s true or not.)
Oddly the biggest failing in the bully might not be the abusive
behavior. It might be their inability to confront their own fears
and inadequacy. Tom Owen Towle, a Unitarian Universalist minister
and writer on men’s issues has noted,
As men we have been brought up to suppress and ignore rather than
acknowledge and embrace our fears. We expend enormous energy projecting
our anxieties onto external foes while we rarely deal with the
demons inside our own souls, the ones Jesus called “the enemies
within our own household”.
I think Tom’s idea holds true for a large number of women
as well. We project our fears outwardly onto those who are less powerful
than we are. And if we in fact do fail at something, we often look
for a scapegoat.
The growing tide of racism and bigotry in this country is a form
of bullying that has grown more intense as some people have felt
their jobs and lifestyles threatened. If people are having a hard
time finding work, the age old tradition has been to blame the newest
immigrants to the land whether they be Swedes or Irish or Italian
or more recently Chinese or Indian. Oh, and we can always pick on
the First Nations people too. They are very handy in the west.
Or, perhaps we will lash out at anyone different from us, gays and
lesbians, women, the poor or the rich. By blaming them we try to
put them into a one down position. We mock and disparage and exaggerate
and circulate falsehoods about the latest wave of ‘others’ in
order to solidify our position as the ‘real’ citizens
of this country.
We exploit the weaknesses of anyone who is different and force them
ever more tightly into their marginalized communities for self-protection
and then wonder why they are not more willing to be like us and honor
our ways. And that is no different from the act of the playground
bully who shoves the child two years younger than she is.
You have probably noted that I keep saying ‘we’. The
fact is there are likely some of us here today who have bullied someone
at some time. But more than that we are part of a society that bullies.
We may work to change it, but the fact is we are still active in
that society and a good many of us benefit from the imbalance of
power. The guilt belongs to us all.
All of this is wrong. As Unitarians we affirm the inherent worth
and dignity of every person and assert the need for justice and compassion
in human relations. These principles stand so clearly in contrast
to the actions of the bully that we have no choice but to confront
and condemn the behaviour.
So what do we do?
On a personal level can look for the signs of victimization in children,
relatives and adult friends. I know for years, having nev er been
a victim, I never noticed or even considered that someone else
might be.
Physical changes like sleeping trouble, frequent stomache aches,
lack of appetite are all possible signs. Bruises, limps and other
injuries are also suggestive. Children and adults who delay or avoid
going certain places –even home- may well be afraid. Look for
a decline in self-esteem a change in habits or unexplained absences.
If you see any of those things, speak with the person involved.
Ask them if they need to talk. Don’t be afraid to ask questions,
even quite direct ones, about potential abuse. Victims tend to cover
for the bully either out of shame or fear or both. Don’t be
afraid to ask a few times, whenever your suspicions are aroused.
Secondly, don’t put up with such abuse when you witness it.
Most bullies, especially of children, want and need an audience.
Don’t give them one. If you can’t intervene, you can
still walk away and hopefully take others with you. When you can,
call the bully on their behaviour. Remember it will stop the event
over half the time. In the case of an adult, you may have to call
police. Their training and sensitivity to domestic violence is improving
every year. Don’t be afraid to get them involved. You could
save someone serious injury or even death.
Finally, work with systems to change the culture of bullying. Schools
where the Principal draws a firm line around bullying have significantly
lower rates of victimization. But parents, teachers, students and
the wider community must be supportive.
Support the ideas of shelters and transition houses, zero tolerance
policies for domestic violence in government and police. Give Minister
Iris Evans the feedback she seeks. Tell her domestic violence is
not accceptable, that we need more support for victims and more education
and training for offenders. If you can support institutions like
the Youth Emergency Shelter and transition houses for battered spouses.
Bullying and victimization must be addressed from a systemic perspective,
but the system involves and includes people like you and me. We are
the ones who must say, “Stop!” and “This is not
right”. Why? Our UU Principles say we should. And besides,
too often the victims can’t speak for themselves.
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