Stopping the Scourge of Bullying

Are you being bullied or is your child being bullied?

Whether the victim is a child or an adult, bullying seriously harms your emotional welfare, can make you physically ill and can cause lifelong damage, especially to a child. Stopping bullying is extremely important.

Successfully confronting bullying will boost your morale for life

ONRECORD advises you to confront bullying if you can, because that way, by overcoming it, you can turn it into a success. Overcoming a life difficulty like bullying will reverse the emotional harm it may have done to you and will give you more confidence when faced by other life difficulties.

Don’t just suffer it

But if that is impossible, which it may well be, it’s not a good idea to simply put up with it and suffer. Leaving the situation - the school, the workplace, the social media platform or wherever the bullying is taking place - is probably the best thing to do..

Of course a bully will pick on a victim because the victim seems vulnerable. They will only do it if they are not afraid of the victim and think they can get away with it. To stand up for yourself or your child means making them afraid of you and it’s only realistic to sometimes recognise that the effort and courage needed to make them afraid will not be worth it. Sometimes it’s best to leave the situation.

Fighting back can be a mistake

One way of stopping bullying, favoured in romantic fiction, films and mythology, is to fight back with violence or some other kind of revenge but that can put you in the wrong and make things worse for you. Fighting, or trying to retaliate in kind, makes you vulnerable to being accused of bullying or even breaking the law. In any case, you might not succeed, which might be even worse than doing nothing. You may intensify the bullying and not feel able to continue to escalate your fight back.

Stop the bullying by proving it and shaming the bullies

We suggest you do something more powerful, but less romantic, which is to collect the evidence. Use our ONRECORD app, to prove that the bullying is happening and how bad it is and turn to the power of the authorities to stop it. By confronting it that way, exposing the shameful behaviour of bullies to public view, you are most likely to bring it to an end.

Make your case with compelling evidence

However, it’s not enough to simply complain. Often nobody wants to step in to help you unless they have to. They may not want to believe you and may think you are simply a troublemaker and complainer. What you need is compelling evidence nobody can dispute and which shows how bad it really is. Complaining about one incident is not enough. You need to show a pattern of behaviour where even little bullying acts add up to something everybody will agree is intolerable.

Be thorough in gathering your evidence

To do this you need a record of every event, written as soon as possible after each event, supported by any other evidence you have such as photos, copies of emails, screenshots of texts and images, names of witnesses and anything else which will prove that what you say is true. You need to record the date and time of the event, the place where it happened and describe exactly what was said and done. Quote the actual words and who said them. List who else was there supporting the bully. Describe what you did in response, what you felt and what happened afterwards. If you speak to someone about it, make a record of who, when, where and what was said and done.

ONRECORD is designed for this

ONRECORD is specifically designed for exactly this kind of record keeping. It prompts you to include all the necessary details. Although making a detailed record of each and every incident can be boring and may even be distressing, it’s essential if you are to be sure of being believed and taken seriously. ONRECORD makes it much easier to do this by:

• Sorting all your records into date/time order;
• Attaching your supporting evidence to the record it relates to;
• Showing how soon after the event you made the record (to prove you didn’t forget the details)
• Marking which events were most upsetting;
• Showing exactly when and where each event happened;
• Allowing you to link your record to friends and family so that they can add to your records if they need to.

Once you have made enough records to be able to convince others that you are being bullied, you can securely share your evidence online with people with authority and get them to intervene.

Good evidence will make the authorities take it seriously

If an organisation is involved, such as a school or a business, you should, wherever possible, take your evidence to them. If they do not deal with it properly or adequately you can turn to other options.

State schools must all have a behaviour policy which includes measures to prevent bullying among pupils. If you are unhappy with the way the school deals with your concerns, you can complain about the school using the school’s own complaints procedures and if that is unsatisfactory you can complain to the Department for Education (DfE).

If the worst comes to the worst and what’s happened amounts to a criminal offence, for example if you or your child is assaulted, you should take your evidence straight to the police.

Bullying in the Workplace

Bullying is a major cause of stress in the workplace and by law, stress must be dealt with in the same way as any other health and safety hazard. Employers who fail to tackle bullying can pay a high price:

• In lost time – because staff are affected by stress and ill-health;
• In lost incentives – because morale is low;
• Reduced work output and quality of service;
• Lost resources – because people who are trained and experienced leave the organisation;

If it goes to an Employment Tribunal or to Court they also face financial penalties and loss of reputation

Most importantly, employers who fail to tackle bullying are breaking the law. That’s why it is in everyone’s interest to take workplace bullying seriously.

Employers have a duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to ensure the health, safety and welfare of their employees. If they do not do this they are breaching an individual’s contract of employment. It may also be a breach of sexual harassment and racial discrimination legislation and the bully him/herself could may be guilty of discrimination and harassment. Employers and/or the bully may find themselves facing fines, compensation and in some cases even a prison sentence.

9 steps to using ONRECORD to stop bullying

1. Record each and every event on the correct label as soon as you can after it’s happened.
2. Make sure you include all the important detail in the text box or dictate it and upload your account of events.
3. If there were witnesses, name them and make sure you have their contact details for future reference.
4. Upload any supporting evidence such as a screenshot of a text or email, a photograph if you were hurt and there’s a visible injury or torn clothing.
5. Rate the severity of the event on you.
6. Record what you did and said. Who did you inform, was it in writing or by speaking to them?
7. Record what response you got – what did they say, promise to do? Record what was done and whether it was a satisfactory outcome.
8. Upload any emails, letters, documents etc that you may have written
9. If the problem continues, keep recording events and report it again once you have collected enough further evidence. Make reference to the previous events and the fact that the outcome was unsatisfactory. If you hear nothing in response to your report then complain and continue recording if the bullying continues.

Above all, don’t give up!