To fight or not to fight

Michaela is still anxious in public after being bullied. Photo / Supplied

The months of verbal and sometimes physical abuse and death threats on Facebook are over but Michaela Blaauw still finds it hard to sleep at night.

The 14-year-old's parents took the extraordinary step of sending Michaela back to KwaZulu-Natal in their native South Africa late last year when the ongoing bullying of their daughter at Howick College became too much.

She's now back in Auckland and has started afresh with new mates at Macleans College but Michaela still gets anxious in public and dreads the 30-minute walk home when she has to pass her old school.

"I do worry that I might see one of these people again, I'm actually still struggling with nervousness and being scared," she says.

"I used to have nightmares about it and I still struggle to sleep now, I was threatened by these people and they threatened to burn our house down - it was very stressful.

A fresh spotlight has been shone on school bullying after images of Casey Heynes emerged showing him body-slamming his would-be assailant at a Sydney school.

Yesterday, graphic cellphone footage surfaced showing a prolonged and vicious assault that left a 15-year-old Wanganui girl bleeding from her ears and needing hospital treatment.

The Herald ran an unscientific online poll asking what was the most appropriate response to handling a school bully.

Nearly 19,000 people responded and of those more than 55 per cent thought it best for children to retaliate.

Less than 44 per cent thought children were better advised to tell their parents or teachers while just 1.2 per cent said they would do nothing and hoped the bullying stopped.

Associate professor in clinical psychology at the University of Auckland, Dr Ian Lambie, says the retaliatory result was an "unfortunate" one.

"As a society we are quite punitive, we have a belief of an eye for an eye and that punishment works so I'm not surprised," he says.

He said the number endorsing retaliation would have been higher in the past when initiatives to address bullying were not in place.

"There wasn't the Ministry of Education with their [anti-bullying] programmes like Safer Schools that are put in through the police, there was nothing around anti-bullying or restorative justice programmes to address it.

"And there simply was not the awareness we have now."

Auckland Family Therapist Diane Levy was dismayed at the result saying responding in kind to aggression was not only dangerous but was just as likely to get the person who retaliates into trouble.

She says New Zealand also has a "don't tell tales" culture where "narking" was frowned upon.

"But that is a culture that defends the bully and victimises the victims," she says.

"I'm in favour of telling tales and where children should be encouraged to be assertive to stand up and yell 'stop it, I don't like it'."

Levy says early intervention against bullies by caregivers, teachers and even bystanders should be encouraged.

"When we look at that 16-year-old [Heynes] he said he had been tormented and bullied all his life. As a society people had been watching him being bullied for 12 years and bystanders had not stepped in to stop it."

Reports paint a bleak picture of bullying in New Zealand schools.

The findings from School Safety: An Inquiry into the Safety of Students at School presented at a Ministry of Education summit in 2009, showed bullying rates at New Zealand schools were more than 50 per cent above the international average.

The Youth '07: The Health and Wellbeing of Secondary School Students in New Zealand report showed that 33.1 per cent of school students had threatened physical violence while more than 6 per cent of students were bullied at least once a week.

Netsafe executive director Martin Cocker told the Weekend Herald the Casey Heynes incident reflected a tension people felt wanting children to be able to protect themselves but also a desire to see violence reduced entirely. "Most of us would say every young person has a right to be safe from bullying ... but when that system fails young people I don't think anyone begrudges them taking matters into their own hands."

We now live in a "networked public" where people are constantly connected to others, altering the bullying dynamic, he says.

Scores once settled in playground scraps are now recycled and amplified via cellphones and the internet so the vanquished can relive their humiliation over and over.

"When I was a child I went to school we had a bus ride that we made every morning to our secondary school and there was quite a lot of bullying on the bus. For us it was an unsafe zone but once you got to school or home you felt safe," he says.

"With cyber bullying ... you feel constantly unsafe; you feel constantly under the barrage of bullying because you don't have those safe refuges to go to - the psychological damage can be quite intense."

New Zealand Principal's Federation president Peter Simpson says students who film others being attacked are as big a part of the problem as bullies themselves.

"To me they are a perpetrator and just as much a problem as the kids who were fighting."

Simpson said banning cellphones at schools was "unrealistic".

He says there is no blanket cellphone policy for schools but what is in place works well with many students signing agreements for the responsible use of cellphones and computers.

"How many times do you actually see it where it goes on a social networking website the way that one [in Sydney] has where it has created that much interest ?"

Meanwhile, Michaela Blaauw, who last year was sleeping in her parents' room and refused to leave the house alone, says she is loving her new school.

She plans to become a special needs teacher when she finishes.

Blaauw says she would stand up for those being bullied and report any incidents a lot sooner than she had in the past.

"I know what it feels like, so whenever I see it I try not to be a bystander."