Bullying to become a crime in Australia

[scissorhands]

from herald

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/workplace/...ectid=10717366

Bullying is set to become a crime for the first time in Australia as concern grows at the rise of abuse that has destroyed lives and driven workers and teenagers to suicide.

Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark is expected to introduce amendments to stalking laws in the state Parliament tomorrow, placing workplace and cyber bullying under the Crimes Act.

The new legislation will provide penalties of up to 10 years' jail.

It follows the 2006 suicide of 19-year-old cafe worker Brodie Panlock, who was subjected to "merciless" bullying by four colleagues at Melbourne's Cafe Vamp.

She was abused, spat upon, had fish oil poured over her and, after one failed suicide attempt, was laughed at and advised to try rat poison before jumping from a multi-storey carpark.

Her abusers, head waiter Nicholas Smallwood and waiter Rhys MacAlpine, with chef Gabriel Toomey and cafe owner Marc Da Cruz, were fined A$337,000 ($432,337) under occupational health and safety laws in what the dead woman's father, Damian Panlock, described as a "slap on the wrist".

No criminal charges were brought because bullying is not a crime anywhere in Australia, and is instead covered by workplace, compensation, discrimination and similar legislation.

Last year a Sydney security guard was awarded a record A$1.9 million in damages after bullying that included threats of violence, financial penalties, racial and sexual abuse, and excessive and unpaid working hours.

But until Victoria's new move, governments have been reluctant to include serious bullying in criminal law, despite research estimating that one in four employees is likely to suffer from it at some stage.

Workplace bullying is also estimated to cost Australia between A$17 billion and A$36 billion a year in lost productivity, damage to mental health and staff turnover.

The new Victorian legislation will also cover cyber-bullying, another area of increasing concern, especially among teenage students.

Last year Victorian police used stalking laws to convict a 21-year-old man who hounded a teenager to suicide - but the cyber-bully was sentenced only to community service.

A three-year survey of 16,000 children by Edith Cowan University found that during the period of the study the number of victims grew from 15 to 25 per cent of respondents.

Clark said yesterday that under the new legislation - already known as "Brodie's law" - serious bullying would be treated as a crime if it could cause someone physical or mental harm.

Mr Panlock told a press conference yesterday that the new law was better late than never.

"If someone else can be protected from scum like these people, and they know that they are going to be charged, and they are going to have jail time, they might think twice," said Mr Panlock.

[scissorhands]

from http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/peop...ml?comments=42


Cognitive deficit ... research finds bullying affects the victims' brain structure.

They lurk in hallways, bathrooms, around the next blind corner. But for the children they have routinely teased or tormented, bullies effectively live in the victims' brains as well - and not just as a terrifying memory.

Preliminary evidence shows that bullying can produce signs of stress, cognitive deficits and mental-health problems.

Now University of Ottawa psychologist Tracy Vaillancourt and her colleagues at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario plan to scan the brains of teens who have been regularly humiliated and ostracised by their peers to look for structural differences compared with other children.
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"We know there is a functional difference. We know their brains are acting differently, but we don't know if it is structural as well," said Vaillancourt, an expert in the biology of bullying.

She says she hopes her work will legitimise the plight of children who are bullied, and encourage parents, teachers and school boards to take the problem more seriously.

Vaillancourt has been following a group of 17-year-olds since they were 12. All 70 of the children were routinely bullied during those years - teased, harassed, threatened or excluded.

Physical violence is relatively rare, she says, because their tormentors are smart enough to know it will get them into trouble.

"For many of these kids, every day is a nightmare," she said. They go to school and no one will talk to them. Someone deliberately bumps into them in the hallway, and all the other children laugh. They get called horrible names.

The researchers will start with brain scans of 15 of the extreme cases, like the child who stood in her gym uniform while other kids put her school clothes in the toilet and urinated on them.

There are also teenagers in the study who have been bullied for five straight school years.

The scientists have already shown that children who are bullied are more likely than other kids to have cognitive deficits.

They score lower on tests that measure verbal memory and executive function, a set of skills needed to focus on a task and get the job done. Mental-health problems, such as depression, are also more common.

Vaillancourt suspects they will also have a smaller hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory. Depression has been shown to be related to a smaller hippocampus. As well, animal studies have shown that chronic high levels of stress can kill brain cells. Vaillancourt says this kind of damage may help explain why children who are bullied often perform poorly academically.

She will also be looking for a smaller prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in being able to pay attention and other executive functions.

These kinds of differences have been documented in functional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, studies of children who have been neglected or abused. Vaillancourt suspects the chronic stress of being bullied will have a similar impact.

She and her colleagues have already published research showing that boys who are bullied tend to produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. It is as if their system is in permanent overdrive.

It's the opposite for the girls; they tend to produce less cortisol than average, as though their stress response system is overly subdued.

"At some point, their brains stop reacting," said Vaillancourt, who holds a Canada Research Chair in children's mental health and violence prevention.

These changes to the brain's stress response system may be linked to the higher rates of depression among children who are regularly picked on by their peers, especially girls. The adolescent years are when peer relations are most important and when girls, more than anything, want to belong, Vaillancourt says.

42 comments AWESOME AS COMMENTS

Some conflict is normal while children find their place in the world and learn how to fit into society without being mean and cruel. We really ought not to brush off the extreme cases though. Most educators don't want to know. Many parents don't care or are powerless to do anything to fix it. Meanwhile it's the kids that suffer - all of them. We're breeding sociopaths and social misfits.

My second girl was bullied at the age of 4 (if you can believe it) and it has changed her irrevocably from being the outgoing, confident and gregarious girl she was to having manic terror attacks, self-doubt, etc.

We were initially disappointed when our girl who had been so keen to follow her big sister to school started coming home and saying that she did not want to go anymore because other girsl were being mean to her. The day I went in to speak to her teachers about it I actually saw three girls being so cruel and mean to her I was absolutely livid. The teachers made huge efforts and the bullying stopped but unfortunately the damage was done and it still affects her profoundly 3 years later. You cannot imagine the anger I feel towards those 3 girls that took away my bright, happy and self-confident girl.

Reading that article bought home that the damage is probably for life......

Jason - March 19, 2010, 4:07PM

Why do we keep encouraging people to play the victim? This is utter nonsense. Those who are bullied obviously have some inadequacies which need working on.
Yes the brian responds to experiences, and eventually this can manifest itselft physically, but that is what it is supposed to do, a stressful environment requires a different approach to survive in, that's all it is.
People need to learn to cope with the situations they find themselves in, and often they not be fair, that's life suck it up. We are going to raise ageneration of wuss bag cry babies. Boo hoo it's not ym fault, it;s someon else's fault my life didn't turn out ideal.

What Nonsense | Over there - March 20, 2010, 12:05PM

Interesting article. I'll be very interested to see the final results. I'm so glad to see that the issue of bullying is being given more attention in the media, thanks to the Age. I think Brodie Panlock's death has brought some much needed and long overdue attention to the harm bullying can do. I was bullied for two years non stop by all the boys in my school from the ages 45 - 15 who would call me stupid. It took the teachers 2 years to intervene and separate me from the ring leader. I'm now a 32 year old woman, have a good career, and I'm only just starting to make strides in rebuilding my confidence. It's been a long and constant fight. The damage they did to my self esteem is still there. And it hasn't done much for gender relations in my case. My expectations of men's capacity to behave like decent human beings is very very low. I'm still bitter and very angry.

[imdying]

Yay humans, aren't they awesome! Totally worth saving, for sure

Fuck em, bring on the global warming, WWIII, or the bringer of the apocalypse of your choosing.

[Dave Lobster]

Will the police be exempt??

[scissorhands]

Will the police be exempt??

Looks as though they are attending to this now. Sgt Folan is for the high jump in the news, I always hear of a cop being done for drunk driving or such after being a prick with the public or other officers...

I wonder if it will apply to minors?

[Dave Lobster]

I wonder if it will apply to minors?

Nah. No other crime does.. why would this be any different?

[awa355]

The defence lawyers are going to love this one

How do you differ between bullying, criticisim ( constructive & destructive), having an opinion etc.

I can see how the extreme cases will be obvious, but most complaints will be conjecture.

[CookMySock]

Farrrk if if that comes to NZ there will be a few websites reviewing their policies.

[SPman]

Well - that's most Australians behind bars.......!

[short-circuit]

Farrrk if if that comes to NZ there will be a few websites reviewing their policies.

Who said you could speak?

[Virago]

Farrrk if if that comes to NZ there will be a few websites reviewing their policies.

Why?

[Str8 Jacket]

Farrrk if if that comes to NZ there will be a few websites reviewing their policies.

Yes, they'll have to introduce IQ tests that people will have to pass before joining there forums.

[ac3_snow]

on a semi serious note (doesn't belong on KB i know) I read in the paper a few weeks ago that one school was taking a different approach to bullying. If there was a complaint about such behavior, the class would form a sort of 'anti bully group'. This was done without naming the particular bully but the teacher made sure the bully in question was a part of this group.
The group then had to work together to come up with a solution to solve the complainants problem. All this was done with out the mention of either parties names.
In every case the bullying stopped straight away, no one lost face or was embarrassed or told off.
When i first read it thought o yeap what a bullshit airy-fairy way of dealing with it. BUT the results I think speak for them selves?!

I know it also doesn't quite apply to the crime scenario but interesting way of looking at the same problem

[scissorhands]

98% of cyberbullying will be wiped out.....only those with no electronic trail will dare risk a jibe

Any victim could easily video or audio record said abuse, should be fairly easy to prosecute a bully with video evidence

This is huge..like slavery laws a bit, at least to the victims of bullying

[p.dath]

I like the sound of having such legislation. Too many people are bullied to the point of suicide.

On the flip side, I can not imagine how they could draft such legislation to prevent it from being abused.