Tag Archives: school bullying

$1M judgment for racially bullied special education student

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In a victory for bullied school students that was aided in part by the Obama administration, a federal court of appeals has upheld a million dollar verdict that had been appealed by a New York state school district. It must now pay for the deliberate indifference that it exhibited as one of its students endured years of racial harassment. The Obama administration contributed to the case by filing a friend of the court brief, arguing on behalf of the lower court’s decision and that school districts can be found financially liable when they fail to take action reasonable efforts to end known student-to-student harassment.

Read the rest of my article here.

The intersection of religion, free speech, and anti-bullying efforts

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The First Amendment guarantees that public school students have the right to free speech. It also gives them the right to practice their religion. But when does a student’s right to express his personal religious beliefs go too far and cross the line into bullying?

Read the rest of the excellent article on the intersection between the First Amendment and student speech here.

Categorizing the new face of cyberbullying

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Today, children are not able to escape from bullying the way they were able to in the past. When I was growing up, the moment you reached home, the bullying stopped. Unfortunately, that is not the case for our children today. In the Internet age, the abuse shoveled upon targets can escalate at home and often dwarfs the bullying they receive at school.

What are the various types of bullying that occurs online?

Flaming: Flames are angry, rude arguments that occur online. It is typically a string of rude, hostile messages that frequently contain vulgarities.

Denigration:  This is the “dissing” someone online by spreading rumors or posting false information.

Outing and trickery: This is when embarrassing, private information is disseminated online. The private information is sometimes obtained through trickery, which is why the definitions are combined here.

Impersonation: This occurs when someone pretends to be someone else and posts material which is damaging to that person’s reputation.

Exclusion: This is a very typical mean girls action in which a person is intentionally excluded from an online group.

Online polls: This is when a polling type question is used hurtfully to encourage others to talk badly and/or speculate about a target. Poll questions such as “How many sexually transmitted diseases do you think Emily has?” will be posted for people at the school to respond to.

Cyberstalking: Here, a person creates fear in their target by sending offensive messages and engaging in harmful online activities.

Text barrages: This is where a single target is literally besieged by text messages night and day. Sometimes multiple classmates will agree to deluge the target with a near ceaseless torrent of hatred and foul comments.

If your child is being assaulted at home or at school by bullying, please contact the Law Office of Gregory R. Branch for help.  714 856-1166 or email at gregorybranch@edrightsadvocate.com

How to Bully Proof your Child

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I am excited to announce a new project my wife Michele Branch, MFT, and I have started to help address school bullying. “How to Bully Proof your Child” is now on Facebook. We would really appreciate anyone who wants to stand against school bullying going to our page and liking it. On the site we will keep people informed on current bullying issues, help educate parents as to what they can do to combat school bullying, and provide a forum for like-minded people who want to see bullying eradicated. If you want to join our cause, click here.

An unexpected victim of bullying

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 As followers of my blog know, I have always had an interest in bullying law and protecting our children from bullying. Over the course of writing about school bullying, I have too often had to write about teen suicides for which the victims claimed that the cause was incessant bullying at school. All these stories are tragic enough to break anyone’s heart. Here though, is another tragic aspect to the costs of bullying for our society.  Read the story of what bullying can do here.