Four children, 3 boys and a girl all aged 14, were arrested in Alicante for allegedly bullying a classmate via social networks and with their mobile phones.
According to the National Police the life of the young girl was a living hell as she was subjected to all sorts of humiliation and insults, both face to face and in the presence of other children. They even created a false profile of her which they spread amongst her colleagues, piling on her even further misery.
Initially the girl maintained her silence but little by little, as her despair increased, she found that she could take no more as she suffered a breakdown in school. Her situation was quickly uncovered as she divulged everything that she had been enduring for months. Her parents reacted immediately and quickly changed her school so that their daughter could regain some sort of normalcy. But even then the alleged harassers continued their practices.
The parents then denounced the culprits to the National Police, whose specialists from the Provincial Police Brigade opened an investigation into the case.
Investigations led to the identification of those responsible for bullying with, according to police sources, all four accused arrested during the middle of last month. They were immediately made available to the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office where both disciplinary and re-education measures are presently being discussed.
A spokeswoman for the Alicante Provincial Police, Marta Garcia, said, “These kinds of situations cannot be allowed in a civilised society. Not a single child should suffer from issues of bullying.”
García said that the bullying began last year “with humiliations and insults,” but the victim did not say anything as she chose to suffer in silence. “The problem is that with new technologies the harassment lasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and unless the victim complains to a parent or a friend we don’t know that it’s taking place” she said.
The agent said that the Police have been working on a Plan for School Coexistence for five years, which includes talks to students about bullying and risks linked to the Mobile and Social Networks in which Minors are made aware that what they do on the internet can have serious consequences in daily life.
