'Stop treating bullying as a rite of passage. Some don’t survive it'

 We owe these children something better than hand-wringing and hashtags after they’re gone.

A 12-year-old girl named Charlotte left behind a note before she died.

She asked her mother to tell her story so that no other child would suffer like she had.

She was smart, funny, loved by her family. And still, she felt so cornered by the relentless cruelty of her classmates, both online and in person, that she made a decision no child should even comprehend, let alone carry out.   

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A national quiet crisis, hiding in plain sight 

A few months later, a boy named Atreyu, just 13, followed her.

He had begged for help. His mother had filed complaints. He had been diagnosed with PTSD.

But the bullying didn’t stop. Not at school. Not on his phone. It chased him everywhere.

After he died, his mother, Clare McCann, did something almost unimaginable.

In her grief, in the rawest days after losing her child, she spoke. She shared her son’s story with heartbreaking honesty.

She described the love he had for sci-fi dreams, for cryogenics, for the idea of being brought back to life some day, in a better world. 

She should not have had to do that. No mother should have to turn the death of her child into a national wake-up call.

But she did. And we must listen.

These are not isolated tragedies. They are part of a pattern. A national quiet crisis, hiding in plain sight, fed by silence and delay.

Every parent who reads this knows the fear. The dread that your child might one day come home and say the words Charlotte said.

Or, worse – say nothing at all. 

Charlotte O’Brien tragically died by suicide in September 2024. Image: Supplied

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A moral emergency

We imagine bullying as playground taunts and mean nicknames. But what we’re seeing now is darker.

Social media has made cruelty a 24-hour performance.

Leaked images. Mocking posts. Accounts created to degrade children by name, with captions too vulgar to print.

And what kind of child does this? Usually, a child who’s been hurt too.

That’s the problem with bullying. It metastasises. It turns pain into power and makes torment contagious.

But the children on the receiving end? They carry it like a wound no one else can see.

It lives in their posture. In the quiet way they slip into rooms. In the tears they save until the bathroom stall. In the way they start to believe what they’re told, that they are ugly, that they are stupid, that they are less than human.

Some don’t survive it. 

And so, this is a plea. Not just to governments and school systems, but to every adult who ever loved a child.

We must stop treating bullying as a rite of passage and start treating it as a moral emergency. We owe these children something better than hand-wringing and hashtags after they’re gone.

The good news is, there are signs that we are finally listening.  

The NSW Department of Education, the Association of Independent Schools, and Catholic Schools NSW recently came together to sign a landmark anti-bullying statement of intent.

For the first time, the three major school systems are working together to prevent and respond to bullying in a unified way.

This isn’t just symbolic. It is real, co-ordinated action.

The Federal Government’s Anti-Bullying Rapid Review, led by respected experts Dr Charlotte Keating and Dr Jo Robinson, is now open to public submissions.

This is a chance for every parent, student, teacher, and survivor to speak. Lived experience must inform national policy.

Even more encouraging, the government’s decision to raise the social media age to 16, following the Let Them Be Kids campaign, is a brave and necessary move.

It acknowledges that tech companies will not protect our children, so we must.

At the same time, meaningful educational programs are planting the seeds of empathy.

One of the most promising is Click Against Hate, a free, curriculum-aligned digital platform that teaches students to recognise and reject hatred through interactive, engaging lessons. Requiring minimal teacher preparation, this groundbreaking initiative has already been adopted by hundreds of primary and secondary schools across Australia.

It empowers educators to foster inclusion, challenge bigotry, and build a culture of dignity and respect inside the classroom — and far beyond it.

But policy and programs alone are not enough.

We must change the culture. The quiet acceptance. The excuses. The tendency to look away.

That starts with naming the harm.

Charlotte’s mum Kelly crouches next to the casket at her funeral. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

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An alarm bell, not a shrug

Bullying is not just “kids being kids.” It is humiliation. It is isolation. It is dehumanisation. 

It is the teacher who ridicules a child for her weight in front of the class. It is the account that posts a child’s face with a pig emoji every day for a year. It is the student with Tourette’s who is followed to the car park, shoved, and told he should disappear.

It is every adult who knew and did nothing.

I spoke recently with a father who was bullied as a child and now has a daughter of his own. “I want her to know,” he said, “that silence is the bully’s weapon. That she can always speak. That she is never alone.” 

I think of that now. I think of Atreyu and Charlotte and Alex and Anzac. I think of the ones whose names we don’t know yet. And I think of the mothers who carry this grief in their bones and still find the courage to speak up, to protect other people’s children even after they’ve lost their own.

That kind of love should not be necessary. But it is.

And so, let us build a new standard. Let us become a country that values kindness as much as achievement. Let us teach our children that strength is not domination. It is compassion.

Let us treat every cruel message, every mocking post, every shove and slur as an alarm bell, not a shrug.

Because one day soon, another parent will get the call no parent should ever receive.

And when that happens, the question will not be whether we had the policies. It will be whether we paid attention in time. 

Let this be the moment we did.

Dr Dvir Abramovich is Chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission and the author of eight books. 

Originally published as 'Stop treating bullying as a rite of passage. Some don’t survive it'