A young boy, at 12 years old, already knew enough about life to document the times he was bullied.
He wanted to figure out some coping mechanisms to deal with these situations. And wanted to make sure that the instances of bullying was put this on file so if something happens again, it can be proven that there were past bullying situations.
Something did happen again. Three months later, in May 2006, one of the boys who had made his life miserable assaulted him. A punch to the stomach caused a blood clot to form, and two days later he became paralyzed from the waist down. The bully's punishment was a few days' suspension; the victim's was life in a wheelchair. Documenting the bullying should have stopped it, as the seventh-grader believed, but somehow it continued. Criminal Lawyers in West Orange believe the bully should have received a stricter punishment.
It's a stark story about the worst kind of bullying and its long-term consequences. It also serves to remind New Jersey about why the new anti-bullying law that has some districts indignant and others crying "unfunded mandate" must be implemented to the letter. Among all the minor incidents for which the law may seem overly prescriptive, there will be those cases like this, which should never have gotten to the point it did. If the law works as intended, those cases will be handled before another fist connects with another body.
The Ramsey school district has settled a lawsuit brought by the victim's family. The district will pay $4.2 million, but admits no liability or fault. In some ways the district gets off lightly. Even after he returned to school in a wheelchair, the victim saw his attacker daily, according to his mother. In a deposition taken after the lawsuit was filed in 2009, a school official told his lawyer she thought the boy was a "complainer," the family's lawyers said.
The end of this lengthy legal battle comes just as another one begins, this time in Westwood.
On April 13, a family of Iraqi descent filed a lawsuit against the school district on behalf of their son, who claims his middle-school classmates taunt him with racial epithets, beat him up and say things about him on Facebook. The principal of Westwood Regional Middle School says the school has been intolerant of bullying, even before the new law took effect.
However the case ends, we are glad the anti-bullying law has helped prompt more parents to become proactive. One of the nation's strictest bullying laws makes clear that New Jersey won't tolerate aggressive behavior anymore, and if legal action is what it takes to make districts act on complaints, so be it.
It used to be that children and their families would have to quietly endure the terror and psychological harm because "kids will be kids." Society, at long last, is changing its mind. Not everywhere, and not quickly, but it's happening.
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