A 15-year-old student of Fyzabad Secondary School is having medical treatment after he was repeatedly punched by a schoolmate who wore a brass knuckle, covered his face with a mask and wore gloves.
His mother is now seeking legal redress and a transfer, as she said three weeks after this incident, the bully is still at school, while her son is missing classes, and neither the police nor the Ministry of Education has acted in their interest.
Instead of going to school on Monday, the Form Three student spent the day at the Point Fortin Hospital (PFH) having treatment and a CT scan to unveil what injuries he may have suffered in the unprovoked attack which took place on September 27, just outside the school grounds.
The brutal beating was captured by the camera of a private enterprise. The footage has been in the hands of the police since September 30.
It shows the mask-wearing attacker running up behind his potential victim, pouncing on him, and raining blows on part of his neck and head.
The victim, who lives in Point Fortin, was walking towards a nearby bakery after school, to get a bite to eat while waiting for his regular maxi taxi to take him home.
The child fell to the ground, then got up as the assailant ran off. Dazed, and having trouble breathing, the child managed to walk back to the school.
His mother told the Newsday in an October 14 interview the school said it was unable to reach her by cellphone. Her son was put in the care of his maxi-taxi driver, who arrived and took him to the nearby Fyzabad Health Centre, where he was given oxygen and treated.
He was later taken by ambulance to the PFH, where he was further treated and had an X-ray done and given a neck brace.
Almost three weeks later, his mother said, he is still in excruciating pain and has not been to school since. She is afraid there may be long-term consequences.
She said on Monday morning he woke up in tears from the throbbing pain in his head, but she had to delay taking him to the hospital, as she was called into a meeting with school officials, the community police, her son’s attacker and his parents.
“That turned out to be an exercise in futility, because when the mother of the child was shown the video on a laptop, she said she could not identify him. She was not remorseful or apologetic for what her son had done.
"The community police officer said she could do nothing because I had already reported it to the regular police.
" Initially, the school told me that there was nothing they could do because it happened outside of the school’s compound.”
She said she argued that it happened just after school, just outside, and both victim and attacker were wearing school uniform, but that did nothing to change their position.
“I just trip and told them off and left, because they offered no solutions. If they knew they could do nothing, why did they make me leave my home in Point Fortin to come to Fyzabad on Monday while my son was going through his distress?”
The aggrieved mother said although bullying had been