An alleged teenaged bully is facing arrest and has been issued a no contact order following two incidents of violence this past week - one of which landed a boy in hospital.
As was widely reported in province wide media this week, last Friday (Sept. 24), 14-year-old Don Ross Secondary student Austin Aldridge ended up in hospital with a concussion and broken hand after being forced to fight another boy off school property during a lunch break while being videotaped and surrounded by two dozen teenagers.
Austin knew of plans to force the fight the previous week, so he and his mother Zoe Aldridge approached vice-principal Robyn Ross days before asking for help.
Ross told him not to fight, according to Sea to Sky School District director of instruction Rose MacKenzie. But fearing a worse beating from the four or five older boys who were threatening him, Austin chose to fight his intended opponent. Both were suspended for three days while the instigators got detention.
"That's telling children they can't even go to adults because nothing will help anyways," said Zoe Aldridge. "I think they don't have any control. I think these kids are running the school."
Vice-principal Ross got possession of a cell phone video and showed it to Aldridge.
"They had a video of Austin and this boy fighting, Austin breaking his hand on the video. He was curled on a ball on the ground, they were video taping it and calling him names and you could see Austin trying to get away and the bigger kids threw him back in," said Aldridge.
Ross then deleted the video fearing it would get on the Internet, according to MacKenzie. Austin's parents said the act amounted to "getting rid of the evidence."
"They're not bullies anymore, I consider them criminals," said Aldridge, who has been complaining about the same boys for three years. "They're not learning their lesson. Why should they be in a normal school if they can't behave themselves?"
Aldridge has pulled Austin from school until they can feel safe knowing he'll no longer be victimized, but that didn't stop one of the bullies from again harassing him.
On Tuesday (Sept. 28), Austin and his 13-year-old friend Jacksen Peters were threatened with violence, and were only able to escape by hopping on their skateboards.
That final incident led to one the bullies indeed being treated as a criminal as he faces possible arrest and a no contact order.
Jacksen and his mother Bianca Peters - creator of the Facebook page Bully Free Howe Sound - filed the police complaint Wednesday.
"The police officers have the power if they have grounds to arrest and lay a charge," said RCMP Cpl. Dave Ritchie. "We can get conditions on the person not to have contact and that usually helps alleviate the problems of bullying while we wait for a court process and have more stringent rules put on by a judge."
Peters also met with the school administration to establish a "safety plan" before she would reinstate her son to Don Ross.
"I wasn't going to return my son to school until there was a safety plan for my son, and I think that we've executed that," said Peters.
She said she was encouraged by the meeting. According to Peters, Don Ross held a school wide assembly this week to announce students are not to leave school property during school hours, and kids are to support the students that had been bullied.
Calls to MacKenzie was not returned by deadline
"I think they're taking it seriously now. I think they've got a lot of work to do, a lot of planning to do, a lot of investigating to figure out social media, to figure out bullying, but I think it was a wake-up call what happened on Friday and hopefully our children will be safer for it."
Peters said she's learned that bullying victims cannot rely solely on the school, and they should not hesitate to call police when physical violence is threatened or perpetrated.
"I have instructed my son and the administration that if anybody threatens my son in any physical way my son is instructed to call the police [non-emergency line]," she said.
"I encourage anybody else who has a child and they feel that they're being physically threatened that perhaps if they don't feel comfortable talking to their parents or talking to the school administration, that perhaps they can also call the police."
