Media accounts are circulating regarding an incident in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, where 14-year-old disabled Student Brett Corbett was bullied into lying into lying facedown in a stream so that another student from the local high school could use him a stepping stone to cross without getting her feet wet.

Image Description: “No Bullies” in red block type with a black shadow giving it a 3-D effect against a yellow starburst with a bold red border and a black shadow. 

Content Note: Ableism, Bullying, Vulnerable Groups and Risk

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Brett Corbett, who has cerebral palsy, says that the incident started as a dare.

“But then someone threatened to push me in the Burr-Bank and said ‘Get on your gut,’ and a girl walked on my back.” – Brett Corbett

Video of the incident, filmed by a student with a cell phone. shows students watching on the sidelines, some swearing at Corbett. He gets in the water, and a girl walks on his back.

The school told Brett Corbett’s mother that he took a dare, but after viewing the video footage on social media, she, like many others, disagrees, telling CBC.ca: “It wasn’t a dare. He was told if he didn’t get in, he would be thrown in, pushed in, and there was a lot of mocking and comments were made, so he felt he had no choice.”

This is a terrible story, for a few reasons:

• It shows just how mean kids can be, how cavalierly they’ll put one of their own in a completely degrading (not to mention physically dangerous) position.
• It puts on display the fact that some teens (not all of them, but some) obviously don’t seem to be able to empathize with others very well.
• It’s a completely disheartening example of how humans in groups don’t tend to go for help in these sorts of situations (potentially useful in further study of the Bystander Effect, especially in the age of cell phones.)

We should definitely be talking about stories like this and trying to find ways to make sure that they don’t happen in our schools, and there’s no shortage of people saying that about this story. But I feel like a lot of what people says misses a very important point, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

According to Left Out: Challenges Faced by Persons with Disabilities in Canadian Schools, in 2012 up to 33% of disabled people reported being bullied in school because of disability (rates varied by region and by gender) and up to 40% reported other students avoiding them or excluding them because of disability (again, rates varied by region and by gender).

It’s important to note this because Brett Corbert is disabled, and if I was supporting his family, I’d want to know from the school just how much that factored into this particular group’s decision to bully him the way they did. I’d want to know how many other disabled students in the school are reporting being bullying, and what kinds of bullying they’re experiencing. I’d want to find out if the staff are bullying disabled students, consciously or without realizing it, and whether they’re encouraging other staff or students to do the same (again, either consciously or without realizing it.)

I’d want to find out just how big this school’s ableism problem is, so that I could start the plan for tackling it.

And then I’d want the school administration and the school board to hear this:

Cape Breton – Victoria Regional Center for Education, Meet Me at Camera Three

It’s a travesty that Brett Corbett experienced this sort of bullying at his high school by his peers. Not only was it particularly physically dangerous as far as schoolyard bullying goes, it was particularly disturbing to read about light of the element of degradation present – bullying a student into lying on his stomach in a creek, with someone stepping on him, literally using him as an object to keep her from getting her feet wet. The creek’s water isn’t the only thing that’s chilling about this story.

No disabled student should be treated like this.

Check that – no student should be treated like this.

Part of this problem is most likely ableism, based on statistics, and you need to develop and implement a strategy to address bullying of disabled students in all schools in your Board. But when you’re speaking about this in public, you need to stress that it’s not just unacceptable that a disabled student was bullied this way at Glace Bay High School – it was unacceptable that this sort of bullying happened to a student at Glace Bay High School, period. Plenty of other secondary school students in Cape Breton–Victoria Regional Center for Education are vulnerable to bullying because of aspects of their identity over which they have no control, and how you handle this demonstrates how committed you are to making sure your schools are safe places for all students.

No student should have to experience what Brett Corbett did. Do not be the Board where students are allowed to degrade their peers in that way.

Do not be the Board that lets school administrators brush away this sort of thing with statements to families like, “He took a dare.” Even if it began that way (and bear in mind that Brett Corbett says it didn’t, and that the video of the incident seems to support his version of events), there’s a conversation that needs to had about what in your school’s culture says to students that it’s okay to literally step on each other, or to implicitly support that behaviour by standing by when they see it happen. Take a cue from the students in the school that have rallied around Brett Corbett and his family to let him know that if they had been there, they wouldn’t have just stood there.

Let the Corbett family know by your actions just how “unacceptable and very disappointing” you actually find the behaviour of the bullies in question.

This sort of thing shouldn’t happen again – to any student in your Board, ever.

Brett Corbett: Bottom Line

I’ve written about bullying before, and dealt with bullying in my work.

Generally, not very much shocks me anymore.

But I was disturbed by this, and…I can’t fit into into the box in my head that I’d like to. I wanted to write about it because I thought I’d at least feel a bit better if I did, but I don’t.

And I don’t know what to do with that.

CBC.ca reports that several students have apologized to Brett Corbert, but that he is still being bullied online.

All the best to Brett Corbett and his family. I wish for them peace around this, and a way forward.

The post Brett Corbett Used as Human Bridge by Schoolyard Bullies appeared first on Girl With The Cane.