WOODSTOCK, Ga. — Bill Head clicked on his television and saw an evening news report that was chillingly familiar--scenes of tearful friends and family; children describing a pattern of bullying; a photo of a smiling teenage boy.
The youth was dying, punched by a student who had been taunting him.
The tragedy being played out just a few miles from Head's home triggered terrible memories of a day four years earlier, and a telephone call that signaled a transformation of his life.
A co-worker of his wife, Rita, told him to come to her office, that she had fainted.
Racing there, he saw an ambulance and a sheriff's cruiser. A knot tightened in his stomach as the sheriff approached.
"There's been an accident," he said.
But it was not an accident.
That morning, 15-year-old Brian Head, their only child, took a revolver into his classroom and cried out, "I can't take it anymore!" Then he put it to his head and pulled the trigger.
So Brian ended the taunts of "fatso," the signs taped to his back, the tripping, the sneak punches--and his own tears.
And so began his parents' crusade.
Bullying Becoming More Violent
For many, bullies are unpleasant school memories, as common as recollections of unrequited crushes.
"Yet for all the sunny childhoods darkened by taunts and torments, research on the subject is scant--especially in the United States," according to Education Week magazine in an article last year.
Those who have studied bullying--defined as chronic and systematic verbal and/or physical tormenting--say it seems to be growing and worsening in its impacts. And even in a time of greater societal attention to issues such as child abuse, bullying often is tolerated as a rite of growing up.
"It's one of those underestimated problems," said Dr. Gery LeGagnoux, a UCLA teacher and psychologist. "There has always been bullying, but I think it is escalating. Bullies have become more aggressive, with much more lethal techniques of carrying out their intimidation."
He and others offer reasons for the escalation, ranging from movie and TV violence to gang activity.
Surveys of U.S. schoolchildren in recent years indicate 10% to 25% reported that they had been recently bullied, many to the extent that they began dreading school.
"People don't realize how awful it is," said Dorthea Ross, a Seattle-area psychologist who began studying bullying after tracing a boy's mysterious stomach pain to his desire to avoid facing a bully at school.
