Happy Slapping

'Happy Slapping' 14th June 2006

This is a happy occasion so I thought I would keep to a happy subject. Happy slapping—a new craze which began in this country about eighteen months ago —now embarking on a world tour. For those of you who don’t know it—Slapping people around the head and recording it on mobile phones—then uploading it to the net. If you want to see it for yourself go to Ifilm.com The terminology— Bitch Slap—a woman punched in the face. Knockout Punch—someone knocked out with a single blow.

Act Against Bullying is an anti-bullying charity. In actual fact you don’t have to be bullied to be a victim of happy slapping. You just have to be ‘on your own’.
It could be your child sitting on a bench revising history—Coming home from Staines cinema on the top deck of a bus—or on a train—to be a target.

So if that’s what you get for being ‘on your own’ you can begin to understand why being alone today is such a big deal. Why groups are everything today. Being alone is no longer an option for people who don’t do well in groups. The problem is most of the bullying we deal with today is coming from group culture. Young people trying to get ‘in’ or ‘stay in’ have other pressures to cope with. Groups—as they see it are exciting, cool. It s wonderful that feeling of belonging on one hand, being popular. On the other the humiliation, confusion and constant fear of exclusion is what children face particularly if they don’t do what the group wants. Which is what a lot of bullying is about today.

How can Act Against Bullying help? Act Against Bullying is principally a campaigning charity. Our job is to get things known—raise awareness—sometimes things we are told in confidence – particular things which ring alarm bells. Like this new level of random, out of control, violence. Already we are all getting used to it. For example, Victims of happy slapping – how do they cope? According to my research, if it happens more than once - they just ‘get used to it.’ The people who do it - ‘get used to doing it’. What started as ‘jumping out at people for a laugh and filming it’ at the beginning of 2005 has already been the cause of deaths—A few weeks ago for example a young guy, punched out, fell back and hit his head his head against a rail—suffered an embolism—dead. David Morley—last year murdered by a crowd of happy slappers included one fifteen year old schoolgirl.

What is of graver concern is the fact that even the most innocent form of group bullying today can spiral into violence in seconds. I recall one of the very first addresses I gave in 2002 was approached by a couple of school nurses. One in particular who worked at a girls school was very disturbed by what she had encountered. Verbal abuse, exclusion, malicious gossip – just dismissed as ‘the way girls are’ was now escalating into something different. She’d sent several girls off in the back of an ambulance to ICU. What was more concerned was she was told not to report the incidents. She didn’t want to lose her job. The school didn’t want it on the record. Too unsavoury. She wanted to get it off her conscience so she told me. This was four years ago. The adolescent stabbings we hear about today and are shocked by have been building for sometime. Aggression, like the output of CO2 emissions, must be reduced quickly before more innocent victims get assaulted.

What does AAAB do? As an small, independent charity – we get no Government or local funding – but that means we have been able to say things other organisations couldn’t for political reasons. And has it been helpful? When we hear now our own phrases and campaigns taken over verbatim by government ministers and the charity heavyweights we know we have.. No one any longer dismisses psychological bullying campaigns as ‘sticks and stones’. We were instrumental in that trend. Up until today we’ve done that by focusing on exclusion bullying and the appalling rates of suicide amongst children. Sadly these are still commonplace. I don’t often visit hospital but three months ago when our youngest child was being operated on for peritonitis I found myself sitting anxiously waiting in a children’s ward. The other side of the drawn curtain was a young boy who’d been brought in following a suicide attempt because of school bullying. So we will continue with that work.

Our website is popular as is the cool to be kind campaign particularly in November and many schools have reported holding cool to be kind days.

As well as campaigning we try to help our victims and their parents not just with practical tips but also with our positive approach. We empathise with them. We offer moral support and comfort and encouragement. Empathy is at the basis of motivation and in that way we try and remotivate victims in an effort to rebuild their confidence. When I tell them that you can actually learn self confidence it is very uplifting indeed. Self confidence is such an important attribute – I was talking the other day with one of the top CEOs in the country ( who in actual fact happens to be here today) and he pointed out that it was one of the most important attributes he looked for when employing people. Most victims of bullying are suffering from a crippling lack of confidence and lack of trust in other people.

I believe our down to earth approach has something to do with the popularity of Act Against Bullying –we know there are no easy solutions to a very difficult problem. For example, next month we have some runners in the British 10K. We have seven so far. Many of these are adults who were bullied at school and came through the ordeal, some have children at school or just want to support our work. These people are very happy to put on a bright red t shirt and be ambassadors for the charity. In that way they feel they can help lift the stigma some children carry.

While we don’t advertise a help line because don’t have those sort of resources we have taken all the calls that come in. Some of them are very poignant indeed. But it is all worth it when you receive the letters back or a £2 postal order from a child. But in some cases we can help adults. Because being bullied at school can have long lasting effects. I took a call the other week from a person who was being bullied at work. She’d tried some other organisations who told her they weren’t’ taking any more calls. I had a talk with her and she had been having problems ever since childhood. In fact many adults find our tips for teens or other literature useful. They read it to try and retrace their lives. A case which touched me was a 44 year old man. He’d left school early because of bullying. He said ‘I was a good looking man. I was a bright man’. Hadn’t finished his education, so he couldn’t the type of job he was suited for. That had a knock on effect – he said he couldn’t approach the girls he liked because he didn’t have a job And so on and so forth. He eventually took his degree at 42 years of age and by the time he called he’d actually started to sort his life out. But we concentrate on children who need help. We believe if children can learn some coping skills at a young age they will benefit from those their whole life through. So really what Act Against Bullying tries to do is to help children to help themselves.