I Was Assaulted & Everyone Just Watched

The ‘bystander effect’

When I was 14, I was dragged down the stairs by my hair by a persistent school bully who wouldn’t leave me alone.

We’d been in computer classes but the room didn’t have enough computers for each of the students. So she demanded that I give her mine. I refused. She didn’t want to share. She hated me and wanted me to go without. Rather than take the problem up with the teacher, she thumped me in class, then said she’d ‘get’ me later.

Once the class was dismissed, she got hold of me by my hair and dragged me down the stairs by my hair — which hurt.

She then thumped and kicked me at the bottom of the stairs. I wasn’t a fighter, and I didn’t want to fight back. She was popular, so her friends encircled us and started cheering her on. I just wanted her to leave me alone. Her bashes became more brutal and vicious as she laid into me.

She dragged me to the floor by my hair and kicked me ferociously. I rolled up into a ball, putting my arms over my head to protect my face from her feet. Meanwhile a crowd of about 40 people gathered to watch and cheer. She stood there for a few minutes kicking this hopeless ball, leaving me with bruising.

Eventually she got bored and moved off, shouting insults and laughing with her mates. After I could hear that everyone had gone, I got up and went about my day.

Someone reported the incident to the deputy head, and the girl was disciplined by the school. It didn’t surprise me that no one stepped up to help me. No one ever did.

After the event was reported, the bullying from this girl ceased for a while, but she was never taken out of my classes, or expelled for being a bully. It started again later on.

The Bystander Effect

There’s a well-documented ‘bystander effect’ where people stand by and watch others being bullied or abused. It famously happened in a train in Philadelphia in 2021, but the story in this case was misrepresented in the press for some time. It was widely reported that people watched while a man raped a woman, but it seems the rape itself probably wasn’t witnessed.

However, the abuse running up to the rape was recorded on people’s cell phones. One of the bystanders who recorded the experience turned their recording in to police to help with their enquiries. This was helpful to the police as they proceeded towards a prosecution.

Watching a murder

Back in 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York and almost 40 people were reported to have witnessed the attack. The reports said no one tried to help.

Studies relating to the incident resulted in ‘bystander effect’ becoming a common term to describe what happens, “when everyone thinks that someone else will act, nobody does,” says the Guardian newspaper.

It later transpired that far fewer people had witnessed the murder than originally reported. Some had tried to contact the authorities, and a neighbour went to help the woman as she lay dying on the ground. An ambulance attended the scene because people had reported it.

So the idea that people watched a murder without trying to help was not true. But they didn’t physically intervene, presumably because of the threat to themselves.

Are things better today?

A recent study looking at CCTV footage of 200 violent crimes showed that in 90% of cases, people did intervene in abuse taking place in a public place. Of course, that means in 10% of cases they didn’t, presumably because people feared for their own safety. But it raises the question, are people more likely to intervene now than they were when I was at school in the 1970s and ’80s?

I think people’s decision about whether to take action may depend upon the risk to the victim, as well as their own safety. In schools, it also probably also depends on the popularity of the bully, the social status of their victim, and peer pressure.

A popular bully is more likely to be supported by other children than a victim who is an unpopular outcast because they’re autistic, lack confidence, or are just different. That’s children for you — immature by nature and with seriously warped priorities much of the time.

In the memorable case of the time I was dragged down the stairs by my hair and beaten, I don’t think I was in danger of serious harm. Just bruising, but it wasn’t very nice. Perhaps the other children realised that, and decided not to intervene, to protect their own popularity.

I was bullied all through school. Groups of bullies, mostly girls, would constantly harass, push, hit, kick, and pick on me. In the 1970s and ’80s, the school authorities didn’t care most of the time. My mum tried to report it in primary school, to no effect.

I don’t know whether it’s improved these days, but I suspect it’s very varied depending on the institution. Some schools do attempt to tackle bullying more now than they did in the past, but I suspect their efforts may not always be very effective.

I always believed that school bullies should be expelled. I still do, but schools always seemed very reluctant to take any action, let alone expulsion.

Perplexing double standards

I remember as a child feeling perplexed and pissed off by the fact that it was considered to be completely fine for children to beat up another child without consequence, but if the same thing happened to an adult, it was considered ‘abuse’ or ‘assault’, was reported to the police, and could result in a prison term for the perpetrator.

I wonder what kind of adults the kids who bullied me turned into. Nasty ones, I expect.

© Susie Kearley 2023. All Rights Reserved.

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