BULLYING EFFECTS ON LIFE: Out of the wreckage, a school bullying victim's life rebuilt

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," Tom Tehan says matter of factly across the timber cafe table. "I was just trying to stop feeling. And Panadol is to stop pain, that's how it worked in my head."

The thing is, Tom downed several packets of Panadol in his attempt to numb his pain. He ended up needing his stomach pumped and spent three days in hospital when he should have been out enjoying the spring racing carnival with his girlfriend and friends.
Tom Tehan and his mother, Amanda Wallace. Photo: Jason South

Instead at 19 he was having a breakdown; the result he says of being bullied at school three years earlier.

It's rare to gain an insight into the long-term impact of school bullying. Now and then incidents pop up in the news. Sometimes they are even accompanied by a video shot on a student's mobile phone. Principals, parents and psychologists have their say. And then everyone moves on. Except not everyone can.

Tom couldn't. His years of school bullying culminated in receiving a letter containing a bullet and a death threat at his home. "Bang bang Tomas" the computer-printed note read, misspelling his name. "I just remember breaking down in tears," he says. "It was confirmation, after all the verbal and physical taunts and the times I was excluded, that I wasn't liked."

Though he was never identified by name, Tom's experience was one of those that made headlines in 2007: "Xavier student sent bullet in the mail". Now, more than a decade on, Tom wants to tell his story. It's a story about the car crash that can follow school bullying – and how one man emerged from the wreckage.

At 19, Tom had left Xavier for a new school, finished year 12 and started university. Summer was on the way and things appeared on track. But his bullying burden was always there in the background, unresolved. His stint in hospital brought things to the surface, but he soon suppressed them. He wanted to move on. After being discharged from hospital, Tom deferred his studies at Deakin University and started working in nightclubs.

He was smoking a bit of marijuana, which became a daily habit. He was going out. Lots. Spending more than he was earning. An unsolicited offer of a bank credit card was accepted and before he knew it, he had a $7,000 debt. His family intervened. His dad Peter's cousin offered him a job laying fibre optic cables in the Northern Territory. Arnhem Land. It was as remote and removed as 20-year-old Tom had ever been.

"It was the best thing that ever happened to me at the time," he says. "I had no phone. I was up at 5am every day and working until 6pm. I got to experience Aboriginal communities and hear stories about their Dreamtime from elders."

Tom while working in Arnhem Land. Photo: Supplied

He returned to Melbourne clean: mentally, physically and financially. He was loving life again.
But looking back, Tom concedes Arnhem Land was a Band-Aid. Just as Carey Grammar was – the school he went to after Xavier, where he was part of the successful school hockey and athletics teams.

"I was still in emotional pain, but because I was happy, I could mask it," the now 28-year-old says.

Running for Carey Grammar. Photo: Supplied

He resumed smoking marijuana and working in bars and nightclubs. His nocturnal existence saw him graduate to ice, which gave him supreme confidence. He started to deal in ice to supplement his own habit and mixed with people who used guns to get what they wanted.

Being bullied had made Tom feel he wasn't tough enough to stand up for himself. Ice made him feel that he could handle himself – and that felt good. "I lost all my inhibitions. I could talk without being inside my own head, if that makes sense," he says.

Tom was on ice for years and, according to his mother, Amanda Wallace, he became psychotic. He had "Moses" tattooed on his right arm, painted his car a matt black using spray cans and wrote what he believed were inspirational sayings on the rear window in permanent gold pen.

His memories of this time are hazy – isolated fragments come back. He remembers talking to a neighbour whom he believed was God and apologising to a street tree for the harm humans had inflicted on Earth. In the early hours of January 17, 2014, he was driving down Burke Road, Malvern, on his way to see a friend.  He believed the best way to get there was to put his foot flat on the accelerator and close his eyes. Police estimate he was travelling at 122/kmh when he crashed into two power poles and several trees.

Tom's car after the 2014 accident. Photo: Supplied

How he survived the crash, no one knows. Tom suspects closing his eyes saved him because he became "like a rag doll" as he was ejected from the car, landing bruised and broken on the asphalt. He nearly lost his right leg. Every bone in his right foot was smashed up, he had a ruptured spleen and broken ribs. He spent three months in various hospitals, which in hindsight was like rehab. It got him off ice, which he hasn't touched since.

In The Alfred's intensive care unit. Photo: Supplied

When he was discharged, he went to his mother's house. He says that after the crash he had no desire to use drugs. But while ice was behind him, a week later he sniffed butane gas and released a guttural scream. It freaked him out enough agree to a phone conversation with a family friend, who suggested he try an addiction program. That call started his slow turnaround from the self-destruction he believes was triggered by the 2004 bullying at Xavier.
 
Having lost his licence for two years, Tom was driven to his first session by his mother. She didn't trust that he would go in, so she waited and watched him in her rear-vision mirror. He did. He went every day for three months. He eventually ran the Wednesday night meetings.
"It gave me confidence in myself because someone had entrusted me to do something," Tom says. "I'd lost trust from a lot of people in my life and that was a way to re-grow it and start again."
Slowly, he rebuilt his life. The love and loyalty from his parents and four siblings never wavered. Neither did the support from his Old Xaverians hockey team, who late last year honoured him with the club's Smithy Medal recognising his against-the-odds return to the sport. It's what got him through; it reminded him how lucky he was.

He has had 10 operations in the three years since the accident and remains in pain due to nerve damage. He sees a psychologist regularly and works in hospitality. He has twice spoken to school students about addiction, hoping his warts-and-all story will strike a chord and make someone think twice before taking a similar path.

What he has learnt from all of this is that everyone makes choices. "As much as I could put it all back on bullying, I made choices to do the things that I did," Tom says. "Whatever was driving me, I was still at the wheel."

Talking to students about addiction. Photo: Supplied

This year he will return to uni to study sport coaching at Victoria University. He is moving on but has undertaken not forget the lessons his past has taught him. These are lessons he wants to share and hopefully, in the process, reduce the social stigma around drug addiction.

"One article isn't going to change how society sees it," he says. "But it just might make one person see that completely normal people get into cycles of addiction."

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/out-of-the-wreckage-a-school-bullying-victims-life-rebuilt-20161228-gtj58v.html

Sister Campaign's For Bullying Victim - 14yr old Kodi Pearson Bullied at School & on Facebook

Tayla Pearson’s fight to tackle bullying that led to brother’s suicide

SEVENTEEN-year-old Tayla Pearson is on a mission to tackle the devastating scourge of bullying.

The aspiring Brisbane-based model’s world fell apart last year when her beloved younger brother Kodi, 14, took his life after suffering from bullying, both online and at school.

VIDEO MESSAGE from Tayla

“We were like best friends, we were always together,” Tayla told The Courier-Mail.
“The experience has changed me, it has made me think about all the little things people do to others. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all,” she said.
 Both Tayla, who completed Year 12 last year, and Kodi, who was in Year 9, attended St Thomas Moore College in Sunnybank.

Tayla Pearson holds a picture of her brother Kodi. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Tayla said her brother always came across as a happy student who didn’t have a care in the world, but she was one of the few people who knew about the bullying he experienced.

Tayla Pearson with her brother Kodi, who committed suicide last year. Picture: Supplied
She said that some days he would fake being sick to try to avoid school, but even when he missed class, the torment would follow him home online. “Not only was he receiving grief in school, he wasn’t able to escape from it at home either,” she said.

The Courier-Mail has been unable to reach the school for comment.

Tayla is now working with a number of schools, including Ipswich Grammar, to help teach teenagers about the tragic consequences of bullying.

She hopes that by sharing her experience and speaking candidly about the loss of her brother, other high school students will think twice before bullying.

Tayla is also using a national model search – the Australian Supermodel of the Year competition, to be held this month in Bali – as a platform to raise awareness about youth mental health.
“Having that exposure behind you means you have the opportunity to get the message out there more,” she said.

Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/tayla-pearsons-fight-to-tackle-bullying-that-led-to-brothers-suicide/news-story/15a8613491b10ea3e90edda1cc6ba9a7

The Workplace : Why Can't We Stop Sexual Harassment at Work?

Why Can't We Stop Sexual Harassment at Work?

If you run a company in California, you have to take state-mandated anti-harassment training every two years.

This October, Matt MacInnis, founder of a digital distribution business called Inkling, clicked through two hours’ worth of slides about inappropriate touching and sexual comments in an online course produced by an HR services company. As he answered multiple-choice questions to prove he’d paid attention, a thought occurred to him: This is a farce. MacInnis couldn’t see how an online training course would keep “an a--hole from still being an a--hole,” as he puts it. “There is a laudable goal, but the way we address sexual harassment now, the whole system is flawed,” he says. “I mean, is there anti-murder training?”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which by law must investigate all federal harassment claims before they can proceed in court, received 13,000 sexual-harassment complaints last year (16 percent of them from men), outpacing the number it received for racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination. “We by no means think that’s the extent of the harassment,” says Peggy Mastroianni, the organization’s legal counsel. She estimates that as many as 90 percent of people who experience sexually inappropriate behavior at work never take formal action. Many who do are contractually obligated to litigate through private arbitration, which the EEOC can’t track. But decades of surveys show that harassment remains prevalent: In a 1981 Harvard Business Review survey, 60 percent of women said they’d been “eyed up and down” by male co-workers; last year the EEOC reported that somewhere from 50 percent to 75 percent of women have experienced sexual comments or touches that made them feel uneasy at work.

For more than three decades, U.S. companies and institutions have addressed such behavior through corporate policies and awareness programs, although there’s little evidence they’re effective. Compliance training makes up a sizable portion of what market-research company IBISWorld estimates is a $4 billion HR software market. In California, which has the most robust training requirements of any state, companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on courses every year. About 80 percent of companies offer some form of training, although only three states—Connecticut and Maine, in addition to California—require them to do so. (Thirteen more states order training for at least some government employees.) They use all sorts of courses, produced by dozens of companies, from the cut-and-dried to risible theatrical re-creations.

Skillsoft makes compliance videos covering everything from data privacy to environmental sustainability for about 7,000 companies; it leans heavily on hired actors who demonstrate legal definitions in generic corporate scenes. HR Learning Center advertises one of its courses with a picture of a man and a woman making out on top of a filing cabinet. Inspired eLearning, which MacInnis used at Inkling, starts one of its videos with the words “charges of sexual and other forms of harassment can land your company in court,” followed by a picture of a frightened gray-haired man on what appears to be a witness stand. Emtrain, which creates online courses and runs in-person events for companies such as Chevron, Netflix, and Nordstrom, urges employees to mentally color-code their comments—green is respectful, red is offensive—and to call out their co-workers with gentle warnings such as “that’s a little orange.”

Early versions of these programs first cropped up in the 1980s, but their use didn’t pick up until two U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1998 clarified when companies can be held liable for harassment. In the cases, which considered what’s known as “hostile work environment” harassment (frequent sexualized comments or touches), as opposed to the “quid pro quo” variety (the classic “sleep with me or you’re fired”), the court decided that a company will be held liable when a boss harasses a subordinate unless it can prove that it takes steps to prevent and address such behavior.

Catchall policies that disavowed harassment quickly became the norm. Pick any major institution today, and you’ll find one: “We do not tolerate harassment or inappropriate conduct,” JPMorgan Chase’s official code of conduct reads. Apple is committed to “a workplace free of harassment.” In addition to the standard prohibitory language, Google urges its employees to “be excellent to each other.” Goldman Sachs says it does “not tolerate any form of discrimination prohibited by law.” Despite the recent outpouring of harassment complaints regarding former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, the policy at the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, says that “unwelcome sexual advances [or] … verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature” aren’t allowed, and people should feel free to report any harassment they see or experience.

These policies often go hand in hand with the training courses, which typically cover the legal definition of harassment and what kind of behavior can get people into trouble. Maine and Connecticut passed their laws requiring training in 1992, in direct response to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. California followed suit in 2004 after 16 women accused then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of harassment. (“With your background, you probably ought to sign it,” Sarah Reyes, the state assemblywoman who introduced the bill, said about Schwarzenegger at the time.) But according to employment attorneys, HR managers, and the companies that design the courses, their goal isn’t to stop harassment—it’s to guard against lawsuits.

“You’re building a defense in the event of an incident, passing liability from the organization to the individual,” says Eugene Van Biert, vice president for global compliance solutions at Skillsoft. His company offers different levels of training; he says most of its clients pick the basic online course that employees click through to learn the legal do’s and don’ts. “They want to generate a record so they can say they’ve done it, then they want to move on,” he says. Skillsoft’s most comprehensive program includes a way for people to report harassment they’ve experienced in the past, but Van Biert says fewer than 20 percent of his clients choose the service.

Despite its popularity, there’s little research on this kind of training. Last year the EEOC established a task force to investigate workplace harassment and concluded that “much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked as a prevention tool.” The commission could find only three studies, the most recent of which is 15 years old, that evaluated training programs over time at companies. “These training companies are making buttloads of money off these courses, but what little information we have on them raises serious questions about their efficacy,” says Vicki Magley, an organizational psychology professor at the University of Connecticut who co-authored two of the studies. There’s other academic research, Magley says, but it usually deals with fictional programs designed by researchers rather than actual courses that companies might use. In her experience, compliance courses help employees understand the definition of sexual harassment, but don’t change people’s behavior. “I have absolutely no faith that any kind of an online course is going to do anything to stop harassment,” she says.

The companies that design the courses—and the HR departments that implement them—also have trouble measuring their impact. “I kind of don’t have any answers,” says Phyllis Hartman, an HR consultant who’s been working on anti-harassment training for 25 years. “You just sort of do it and hope it’ll be better.” Emtrain’s chief executive officer, Janine Yancey, says her company plans to publish a report demonstrating how its services decrease harassment complaints, but it hasn’t released any results yet. As a researcher, Magley once teamed up with a company to evaluate its anti-harassment training but had to discontinue her study after the company got nervous about legal liability should she find it didn’t work. “The attorneys from this company came in and said, ‘We are not finding out that information.’ They pulled out of the study because they didn’t want to know,” she says. “If we could ask companies, ‘Have you had fewer HR complaints after taking our training?’ ” says Felix Odigie, Inspired eLearning’s CEO, “and gather that kind of intel, it would be gold. But I don’t know what company would provide that information. I asked the head of my own HR department if they’d be comfortable with that, and she looked at me like I had two heads.”

Focusing on the legal limits of harassment can make these courses culturally tone-deaf. Last year an internal investigation by the University of California at Berkeley found that a renowned astronomy professor, Geoff Marcy, had for more than a decade repeatedly groped female students who worked in his lab. (Marcy referred Bloomberg Businessweek to his lawyer, who did not respond.) And yet the school’s online anti-harassment training course included a hypothetical scenario that was almost the opposite of what the university was dealing with. The course described a fictional female student who “is attracted to her dissertation advisor, Dr. Randy Risktaker, and for months has repeatedly asked him out on dates.” Instead of discouraging a relationship, Berkeley’s training course noted that legally, Randy Risktaker could date the student as long as he first stopped being her adviser. “I have to tell you, that is not a problem most of us encounter as professors,” says Michael Eisen, a biology professor at Berkeley who took the course.

Sindy Warren, an employment attorney whose firm, Warren and Associates, investigates workplace harassment, says the best courses go beyond the law. “If you draw lines around behavior that’s just illegal, you’re missing the broader point. Lots of things are not illegal, but they’re not respectful or appropriate,” she says. But she’s quick to point out that compliance training is better than no training at all. The EEOC’s task force doesn’t want to do away with it either; it recommends that companies supplement training with initiatives that emphasize broader topics such as civility and respect.

MacInnis says he tries to do that at Inkling. Because his company has only 150 employees, he often meets one-on-one with people and asks about their concerns. Not long ago, for instance, he had lunch with a recent college graduate, and they wound up talking about the gender wage gap most of the time because it was on her mind. “The idea is that more nuanced engagement will create the kind of environment where, if it’s necessary, people can bring it up,” he says. Even so, in the seven years since he founded his company, MacInnis has dealt with a few internal harassment cases. “I have friends who are CEOs who’ve dealt with way more gnarly stuff than I have,” he says. “I’d like to say I’m lucky, but usually there’s some sort of observable behavior that you can see before it rises to the level of something really serious.”

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-sexual-harassment-policy/#/