How can a 14yo hope to survive the cyberbully plague?

The Time's Up movement, with women taking the lead, exposes the complete ineptitude of governments and laws to protect victims of bullying

Amy "Dolly" Jayne Everett. Picture: Bev Lacey

BULLYING, cyber or otherwise, ruins lives, at a high cost to our nation.

It is only another facet of an epidemic of violence, endemic in our culture and globally prolific in all levels of society and business.

The "Time's Up" movement, with women taking the lead, exposes the complete ineptitude of governments and laws to protect victims of corporate and personal bullying.

The State Government cannot legislate against bullying with guaranteed success.

Government laws and policies have failed to curb domestic [or relationship] violence, which will only change through education from the bottom up. It cannot be underestimated that bullying is another euphemism for assault, be it verbal or otherwise. Call it like it is!

Perpetrators are usually known to their victims, often coerced into a conspiracy of silence, perpetuating the abuse.

While ever courts are more than lenient on perpetrators, with laws protecting the rights of bullies, it sends a clear message to victims: don't expect change any day soon.

Fourteen year-old "Dolly" Everett lived in a third millennium world, where a world-wide internet audience, including her own peer group, has the ability to manipulate innocents with impunity and anonymity.

It has been culturally condoned, after centuries of lacking formidable challenges at grassroots level, in every society. The silence is deafening.

Families are a microcosm of the wider world.

Children are our most vulnerable citizens.

If governments and courts fail to contain it, how could a 14 year-old hope to survive this plague?

E. Rowe,

Marcoola