More recently, after an alleged case of assault in Admiralty Secondary in January, the mother of a student who took her own life in 2023 went on Facebook to speak out against bullying.
The CNA survey found that verbal bullying was the most prevalent, followed by social or relational forms, which include being socially isolated or becoming the victim of rumours being spread.
Leanne, who used a psuedonym, was bullied until she did not want to go to school. Sharing her story with CNA, she recounted how she was initially close to a group of girls in Secondary 2, until they started to drift away and become distant.
She noticed they would hang out without her, and later started ignoring her. Her classmates also decided to not associate with her.
“There was one rumour that they spread. They said I was the dog of this other friend … People have called me a dog several times,” she said.
“For a long period, I thought I did something wrong. I would spend a lot of time sitting alone, thinking of all my past interactions with them and wondering where I went wrong.”
She felt “really isolated” at the time, and “absolutely hated” the feeling of going through this experience.
“I had multiple breakdowns in school. I had a suicide attempt. I self-harmed for a while because I was punishing myself for being a bad person. I thought it was completely my fault that they dropped me,” Leanne said.
Leanne’s mother told CNA that if she had recognised the long-term impact of bullying earlier, she would have taken “firmer measures”.
“The whole class shunned her. She had nobody to talk to. Can you imagine what that does to a teenager? You go to school for those long hours. During recess, nobody eats with you. Nobody talks to you. Nobody acknowledges your existence,” said the mother.
“Her psychiatrist doesn’t have a lot of confidence that she’ll be able to live until 16 years old.”
