IMAGINE waking up every morning oppressed with dread at the thought of facing your tormentors in school. For reasons you can’t understand, they make it their life’s mission (life so far, at any rate) to make yours a living hell.
That’s what it must have been like for Jayden Lalchan for several years. The high-schooler endured physical and psychological torture at the hands of his committed bullies until he felt there was no recourse beyond the tragic escape he chose.
His parents have lost their only child; a boy brimming with potential that will never be realised. There’s a space left in his bed – a space he filled in his parents' lives that will remain a cavernous reminder of the pain he could no longer endure.
This pain is now bequeathed to his parents, which they must carry to their last days. It will be a lasting consequence of the bullying from which there seemed to be no salvation; none responsible, no one compelled to intervene – neither sanctuary nor succour for the victims, both parents and child.
As public outrage over the incident billowed out of control, righteous indignation quickly metamorphosed into large-scale bullying. Self-appointed wrath-of-God types online rained fire on the boys said to be responsible, their relatives and even anyone who pointed out the irony of their fighting bullying with bullying.
But then, that’s human nature. "Civilised society" is only one breath away from eruptive animus through which we gleefully tear each other to pieces.
So shocking were the circumstances precipitating Jayden’s death, they influenced discourse in that esteemed house of pointlessness – Parliament. Minister in the Ministry of Education Lisa Morris-Julian spoke passionately about the services and facilities available to parents and students. A team from the Ministry of Social Services was dispatched to visit the family. The Student Support Services Division contacted the family and is offering support to students at the school.
"Bullying and intimidation is a major offence listed by the Ministry of Education’s national discipline matrix and it carries severe consequences," Morris-Julian thundered. It certainly does – for the Lalchan family, anyway. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men appear to have responded to this long-standing crisis like a fire station – after the house had already burned to the foundations.
Where was this flurry of activity and empathy when Jayden was in the unrelenting grip of his tormentors?
The boy’s mother catalogued a history of indifference from school administrators. For their part, the school’s board issued a statement including the peculiar "clarification" that there was only one report of an altercation, made last month. The statement said all protocols were followed.
"It is the school’s practice that parents are called in to work on solutions. The deans would compile a report for the principal and this would be passed on to the Ministry of Education."
The calamitous outcome of this affair raises serious questions about exactly how much "pr
