Steve

Bullies drive teenager to the brink of suicide

Steve suffered persistent bullying at the hands of his classmates, destroying his confidence and leaving him depressed and unhappy to the extent that he considered taking his own life.

At the peak of his terrible ordeal, when he was just 13, Steve sat on his bed and took a breadknife to his wrists.  After years of being constantly tormented, he felt like giving up. 

Steve said: “The bullies made me feel worthless. I felt uncomfortable and unhappy within myself and I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I wanted to end it, but when I thought about my family and how it would affect them, I couldn’t go through with it.”

Steve, now 15, remembers being bullied from when he was as young as four. All through primary school, other pupils would call him names and make fun of his weight. The constant taunts of ‘fatty’ and tubby’ made his life a misery, and as he got older, the bullying got worse, becoming increasingly frequent and turning physical.

In junior school, Steve was attacked by a group of boys as he left school. He was kicked repeatedly, beaten up and left crying in a corner until a teacher found him. In senior school he was touched inappropriately by other boys who made fun of his appearance. Every incident made him feel self-conscious and unhappy with who was he was.

The bullying even followed Steve home, when a couple of boys posted abusive comments on his Bebo page. In this case, and as Beatbullying advocates, Steve reported the cyberbullying directly to Bebo, who immediately deleted the perpetrators’ profiles and blocked them from using the site.

Steve told his friends and a couple of teachers about what going on, and they helped him through his experience. He decided to concentrate on his schoolwork and set himself goals that would help him improve his self-confidence.

Steve said: “I set myself the target of becoming a Senior Leader at school, and now I’m Head Boy.  The bullies are still in the school, but I just ignore them. I’m a stronger person now and feel comfortable with who I am and what I’ve achieved, so it’s not a problem anymore.”

Perhaps Steve’s biggest achievement is that he has used his own experiences to set up his own anti-bullying scheme in his school to help others. ‘Don’t hide it’ is a peer mentoring service where older students mentor other pupils in the school who might be having problems.  Steve says it has already helped many students and teachers have praised the initiative as a success.