TRANSCRIPT: Mother describes impact of daughter's bullying

Here is a transcript of part two of an interview between CBC's Terry Seguin and a Fredericton mother who describes her daughter's experience of being bullied at Fredericton High School. The incident happened three years ago.

Terry Seguin: A mother in Fredericton hopes the story of her daughter's experiences with bullying in the school system three years ago — again, the incident was three years ago — she's telling her story now in hopes she can share  how much damage bullying can do. As we heard yesterday she says her quiet, shy daughter was targeted time after time during her years as a student at Fredericton High School.

And now here's part two of our conversation. The mother had picked up her daughter after getting a call from her. She found her near the payphone at FHS, just in her bra. Her shirt was missing and her prized flute was in pieces in the hallway.

Once again we are not identifying the mother to protect the privacy of her child and this happened three years ago.

Mother: The school didn’t get back to right away, I wanted two days and on the second day I had taken it off of work to be with her. On the second day, I had to keep myself busy, so I decided to paint her room to try and brighten her spirits. And I hit a ceiling tile with the roller handle and it moved.

And out of the ceiling tile fell a box, it was a shoe box and in it were a bunch of notes that she had written, about things, basically a journal on scrap paper about all the different people who had bullied her and how they had bullied her. And there were broken shards of glass and razor blades. And it was her suicide box.

Seguin: A suicide box?

Mother:  It was a suicide box. It was a box that she was going to use when she couldn’t take it anymore. She wrote me an ‘I’m sorry letter,' 'I love you mommy you’ve been the best,’ and she said that, ‘I can’t do it anymore, I can’t go to school you’re making me go to school and I can’t be with these people anymore.’ And to know that the baby that you held in your arms, was contemplating leaving the Earth.

We finally got to the bottom of who was bullying her. We did the mediation, where you bring the parent and the child in, where one parent — a professional parent — all thoughts would be that they would have a clue, said, ‘well you have to realize that your daughter is a bit of an odd ball. She plays the flute.

Seguin: They said that to you?

Mother: That was basically the excuse, if she didn’t draw attention to herself, if she wasn’t so quiet, if she socialized, if she went to the school dances, she’d have more friends and she’d be part of the bigger group.

Seguin: That was the parent saying that. What was your daughter saying, how did your daughter respond to this session that you had?

Mother: She left halfway through. As I chased her down the hallway, she said, ‘You’re only making it worse. I’m going to meet with them and every tear I shed will be held against me.’ She said, ‘Everything I say we will be repeated amongst their clique and it will only get worse. You are not making this better.’

It didn’t get better, it just continued to get worse for awhile, until she started doing things that got her put into detention because if she was in detention she was safe. She got to go detention five minutes before the lunch hour started, she got to go there after school ended. No more getting pushed down the stairways, no more being exposed to slurs, no more being called horrible things. She could be safe. So she’d skip class to go to detention, she didn’t submit work to go to detention, whatever she could do to go to detention because that is where she felt safe.

We struggled through and she left, without finishing, she left in her final year. And now she is struggled to get her GED outside of the classroom. She is finally going to go to university but the scars, I’m trying to convince her that university is a totally different, a totally different environment free of that type of bullying and that type of hurt and she said, ‘But mommy I trusted you that I’d get through school.’

Seguin: This is now how it is supposed to turn out, is it?

Mother: No.

Seguin: Your thoughts on how the peoples in positions of authority responded to what was happening to your daughter?

Mother: I think it has become, with my daughter it was, I almost had to understand that bullying was commonplace, bullying happens, we address it, you stand up to the bully and it goes away. And I felt like they failed completely to address what was going on. Even when they recognized that the steps that they were taking at mediation weren’t helping, there was no extra offer of support, nothing. I ended up moving my daughter from one school to another school, adding an extra hour to my morning commute, begging the district to let me to move her to another school to get away from the problems and even then the school was, ‘what do you want us to do?’

Seguin: That is a good question, what would you have liked to see done?

Mother: I would have liked to have seen if the kids that were bullying didn’t respond to the first steps in the mediation and they didn’t stop, they should have been removed from school. Maybe if the parents had had to suffer some consequences for their child’s actions, if parents had to take their child to another location to have them tutored so they could maintain their grades, and it was an inconvenience to them, maybe they would have gotten the point that this was serious. Instead my child lost out on an education because she wanted to play the stupid flute and study in the library.

Seguin: You are telling the story of your oldest daughter, you have two younger daughters. Have you changed your approach to school with your other two daughters?

Mother: I actually, my middle daughter started middle school last year, I cried for two weeks before school started because I was terrified to send her. But she is more outgoing, she is in drama, she is very social. She tends to be a little tougher. She is the one that when she sees someone being bullied goes over and says, ‘Hey my sister was bullied and you are not going to do this to another child.’

Seguin: There are going to be some parents who are listening to you this morning who will identify, in a painful way, with your story, with what you are saying, who maybe are just beginning on the journey that you went through with your daughter. What advice would you give them?

Mother: I think you have to stay so close to those kids and every time they push you away is the time that you have to cling a little closer even though all the experts will tell you to give them space. I think it is critical that they know that you love them and they have value because the only thing that saved our kid from the most extreme circumstances was the fact that she didn’t want to hurt us and she knew that we loved her.

And when I think of the times, that was the only thread, and I think if we had been riding her about her marks and about everything else like everyone else was – the teachers, the bullies – if we had been the negativity, she would have had nothing left to live for and I would have buried her. I would have buried her.

You have to love them and just be everything you can be even when they are pushing you so hard away because they don’t want you to get involved because they know you are going to go to the school and the school is only going make things worse, which is going to make their life worse which is going to be a big circle. I don’t have, I’m not a PhD, I’m not a counsellor, I just know that the thing that saved our kid was the fact that we loved her.

Seguin: It is a tragic story and I thank you for having the strength to tell it and to share it.

Mother: Thank you for the opportunity, if just gives one family the strength to continue to fight, it is worth it.