12 students bully a classmate and feed him trash for accidentally stepping on clothes

Article: "12 students attack a fellow student for stepping on clothes, even feed him trash"

Source: No Cut News via Nate

Summary: A student (junior high school, 12 years old) has been bullied for over a month and is currently receiving psychological treatment.

Reporter: Why do you think your son was bullied?

Mother: Because he accidentally stepped on a clothing item that was left on the floor. That was the start of it. Their phys ed class was combined with another class so he had no idea who the clothes belonged to when he stepped on them. He brought it up to his teacher and asked who it belonged to but the teacher didn't know either so he left it on top of a bench.

After class had ended, the owner of the clothes came up to him and demanded an apology so he apologized. Despite the apology, he ganged up on him. I guess my son felt bad about stepping on his clothes even though it was a mistake and just let him hit him. He told me that he just held it in because he didn't want a history of a fight going in his record since it wouldn't be good for his high school placement.

Reporter: So the bullying began the day he stepped on the clothes? I don't understand... how can that one reason be enough to continually abuse someone?

Mother: The day after he was first hit, the same student brought back a group of his friends and verbally abused him during lunch class and hit him whenever possible. About 12 students did this.

Reporter: How bad was the abuse?

Mother: They'd beat him up and put trash in his mouth.

Reporter: Trash? Like snack bags?

Mother: I'm not exactly sure. He told me that they'd pick things up off of the floor and put it in his mouth.  When he was writing a performance assessment, they took that and ripped it up too on top of swearing about his parents.

Reporter: So this all happened in front of other students? In the classroom?

Mother: Yes.

Reporter: What were the teachers doing? How could they not know?

Mother: They had no idea at all. I noticed that my son's personality began changing in April so I requested a conference with his homeroom teacher but she declined because it was testing season.

Reporter: Your son did not tell you at all?

Mother: He didn't. I thought he was going through growing pains and puberty... He began yelling a lot, too.

Reporter: What happened that made you decide that something was really wrong?

Mother: While we were in the car, my son suddenly erupted into anger and opened the car door, threatening to jump out of it. We were on the highway so I was really shocked. Before he opened the door, he told me, "You'll receive insurance money if I get into a car accident so let this be my last filial act to you as your son. No one will care even if I die." (crying)

Reporter: And another incident happened?

Mother: He opened the veranda and threatened to jump off of it and die...

Reporter: What happened on May 10th?

Mother: He was hesitating about leaving for school that morning. He then told me really fast, "I'm being abused at school so mom, could you please report this before lunch time." I then asked him what was going on and he explained everything that had happened really quickly before running out the door for school.

Reporter: It seems he was bottling it all in before finally mustering the courage to tell you. So did you go to the school that day?

Mother: Yes. The school said that they are not responsible for knowing these things if the student does not come in and tell them. Even when I told them that I had called in before, they said that they have no way of finding out about the abuse.

Reporter: Is that all? Or is there more to the story?

Mother: The school never contacted me after that so I called them again asking if they had followed up on it and they told me that all of his classmates testified to my son's claims so that investigations were all over... I asked about the results of the investigations but they'd just avoid me saying that they were busy. On May 24th, my husband visited the principal himself and asked about the issue and the principal admitted that it was only an hour before that my husband had arrived that he had even received a report on the issue.

When he asked him why he only received it now, the principal said that he's not responsible for knowing about petty issues like this and that my son is also at fault. He said that if we let the issue get even bigger, the consequences for my son will grow as well.

Reporter: The principal threatened that the victim will receive a bigger consequence?

Mother: Yes, he seemed to have investigated into my son's history and found some evidence that he claims is enough to brand him a sexual offender.

Reporter: What do you mean?

Mother: A lot of students joke around with each other by tapping the private area. (TN: For some cultural context, I do see a lot of posts about this come up on community boards... mostly from female students asking why male students do this to each other all the time and it's just considered a non-sexual joke amongst them. No one considers it a big deal.)

Reporter: Yes, a prank students often do in school.

Mother: So we decided that the principal has no intention of protecting the victim and is fully intending to turn him into a sexual offender so we have filed a lawsuit for blackmail.

Reporter: Your son is currently receiving treatment. Was he normally an average student?

Mother: Yes. He was very studious and was in honors in elementary school. His grades were always in the top and he's in a gifted program even now.

Reporter: How is he now?

Mother: He yells a lot and doesn't want to sleep alone at night. I always have to sleep next to him. He yells when we try to turn off the TV or light.

Reporter: Unfortunate that an average 12 year old is showing signs of extreme anxiety now... How do you feel?

Mother: As parents, we feel horrible and blame ourselves for not listening to him more.. We even sometimes wonder if we were wrong to teach him that it's wrong to hit other people...

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1. [+301, -6] They need to make it a law that if a student is charged with school violence, his parents are also the ones that are charged

2. [+237, -4] That teacher is such trash ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ He's too lazy to handle issues like this so he was trying to push it under the table but after the dad said he was going in to see the principal, he flew the file into his office ㅋㅋㅋ I want to take that teacher and feed him trash since he obviously thinks it's petty and not a big deal.

3. [+182, -7] Parents + trash = Trashy offspring

4. [+24, -1] I watched another interview this morning where they interviewed a mother of one of the bullies and she was throwing a fit saying that the victim sexually harassed her son in the bathroom -_- As expected of the mother of a son like that. Ajumma, if you're on the internet reading this, don't live your life like that. You think your son will be filial towards you when he grows up?

5. [+15, -3] We should just set up a school on some deserted island and throw all the bullies in there.

6. [+12, -0] I was a teacher at a school for quite a long time and I know it's wrong to judge people but if you look at the parents of bullies, they're just as bad as their kids... They're just trash. People really need to pay more attention to teaching their kids basic manners... or not have kids at all if they're not going to take the time to do that.

7. [+7, -1] If Korea was like America where owning guns is legal, all of the victims could just bring a gun to school and shoot the bullies. Disappointing.

8. [+8, -1] President Park would go down in history if she solved this bullying mess...

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