As a soccer coach, I have seen first-hand how a group of kids can quickly become a mob worthy of a scene in “Lord of the Flies.” (Frankly, I’ve seen it among adults, too.)
But this? This is something even I wasn’t prepared to watch:
Click over to see the viral video of four middle school kids from Greece, New York, verbally bullying an elderly bus monitor. Warning: it’ll make your stomach turn. Also, it’s filled with obscenities, so beware watching it around the kiddies.
In the 10-minute video, the kids call Karen Klein, a 68-year-old bus monitor “fat” and plenty of four-letter words. They even tell her that her kids should kill themselves.
Klein’s oldest son committed suicide 10 years ago, reports CNN.
Soon, the boys’ taunting brought Klein to tears.
Congratulations boys. You made an old lady cry.
According to the police in Greece, New York, the four students, all seventh graders, have “not denied accountability.” But they haven’t been punished either.
As of about 2 o’clock pm ET, police in Greece, New York indicate that this type of harrasment might not rise to the level of a crime in family court for the 13-year-olds involved. One of the boys’ fathers said his son is awaiting his punishment. The victim has decided not to press criminal charges, if that’s even feasible.
It appears that the parents aren’t lawyering up or denying their kids’ involvement, which is refreshing.
Even more refreshing is the nationwide outrage over the video. It’s led people to raise funds to send Klein on vacation. I’ve read the amounts to be nearly $300,000 so far, about 20 times what she makes in a year as a bus monitor.
As for Klein, she just wants a new bus route and an apology, reports the Washington Post.
Matt Lauer called the kids “narrow-minded monsters.” But we probably wouldn’t even know about the incident if they hadn’t had the chutzpah to videotape themselves and upload it onto YouTube.
Think about that:
- Four kids bullied an adult on a school bus.
- They videotaped the entire thing.
- They uploaded it to YouTube.
That takes more than getting caught up in a puberty-fueled ”Lord of the Flies” moment. It takes a level of fearless, predatory behavior you usually don’t see among seventh graders.
Are they monsters? Watch the video and decide.
I’ll be on Wall Street Journal Radio tonight at 6:50 p.m. ET to talk about the latest in the bus monitor bully case.
To offer a twist on that well known line, “sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will last forever.” And it’s true. I can still recall a bullying incident that happened to me when I was in the 7th grade, on the bus ride home. It’s a terrible situation to be in as you can’t exactly stop the bus and get off when it’s your only way to get home. As for this incident, the answer lies in parenting, though I won’t give society a complete pass. When I was a kid there weren’t mainstream movies like SAW and HOSTEL that celebrate human torture or videogames where you can be a Mafia don and have people executed at your virtual feet. To say parents can just keep kids from these things is to be naive; the internet, video streaming, is EASILY accessible; you can’t really control what kids are going to be exposed to. What’s important though, from a parenting perspective, is to explain to kids what’s harmful, what’s dangerous and what it means to take this sort of thing into your heart and mind. Funny, I recall a scene in WITNESS where the elderly Amish man is speaking to a child who has discovered Harrison Ford’s pistol. He says, when you take the bad thing, the evil thing, into your hand, you are also taking it into your heart. True.