Here’s a video interview with Casey Heynes, giving his part of the story of how he was bullied:

Some key points here:

• The bullying had been going on for years.
• His bully in the video, Richard Gale, had been targeting him for weeks already before the incident.
• Casey didn’ t retaliate or fight back prior to this.

The question I want to ask all those “Violence never solves anything!” advocates is this:

How far should Casey have let things go before he was “justified” in fighting back?

Should he have let himself be bullied for years first? Check.

Should he have let it devolve to the point of physical violence? Check.

Should he have let it get to where they tie him up to induce psychological torture (if you haven’t been tied up against your will before as a child, shut up before you say something stupid…)? Check.

So what else should he have allowed to happen to him before you think he was justified in putting an end to the bullying?

The school, the parents or other children sure didn’t stop the bullies. So the only person who could do something was Casey himself. And he did. Which I applaud him for. It takes a lot of guts to finally fight back, especially if you’ve been victimized for years. Here’s hoping this incident and the wave of sympathy he’s getting now serves him as an important life lesson: nobody will stand up for you if you don’t stand up for yourself first.

A quick note to the ‘violence is always wrong.” crowd: my question was rhetorical, no need to respond. You wouldn’t understand anyway.

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Here’s an update on the post I did on the big kid getting bullied. Turns out the video went viral and the news got interested:

First of, kuddos to the bully’s mother for saying her boy did wrong and deserved what he got. As a parent, this is real hard because your children are your blood. It’s hard to see the bad in them. So the mom deserves credit for saying so. She may have been doing her best to raise her children well and as all parents know, it’s not as easy as it may look from the outside. Sometimes, you fail even though you did everything you could.

She says he’s being punished dis-proportionally now because the video is all over the web, that her boy is only a child. I understand that’s how she feels but disagree. Here’s why: [Read more…]

Before I go on about how the big kid, Casey Heynes, reacts to getting bullied one too many times, some caveats:

• I wasn’t there, neither were you; so we don’t have the background, nor the context to this video.  Which means that all we say about this is speculation and interpretation.
• That means we can only go on what we see in this video and base our conclusions on limited data.
• Which in turn means we can be totally wrong about those conclusions; you, me and everybody who comments here.
• So take let’s stick to opinions and not qualify anything we say here as facts. Unless you were there or know the kids involved, opinion is all you can offer.

That said, here’s the video:

A couple of things stand out:

• The big kid is just standing there. He doesn’t seem all that combative at first.
• The bully is looking for trouble.  He smacks a solid punch into the big kid’s face for (apparently) no reason.
• Casey takes the first punch. He blocks the second. He only retaliates when the bully keeps jabbing him in the gut.

If it were my kid, I’d congratulate him for standing up for himself. The bully took his chances and it ended badly for him: from the way he landed and was limping, it looks like a trip to the ER is in order. I have no sympathy for bullies, so tough titty said the kitty.

Had my kid been doing the bullying, he’d get his ass handed to him when he came home. Because I taught him better than that. If he thinks it’s OK to bully people, he’ll get a taste of that by yours truly. Just to show how it feels to be helpless.

Which brings me to another point: Turns out the Casey got suspended for this.

Which his a crying shame if we’re reading the video correctly and he was in fact being bullied continuously as the description on Facebook says.

Modern society seems to have a totally distorted view of violence and what it is for. Back in the day when I was young and big hair was still in fashion, my dad would have kicked my ass for being a bully. And made me go apologize to the kid for doing so, limping in a cast and all. It’s beyond me that the educational system fails to address this and punishes the wrong kid. What more proof than this video do they need that the big kid didn’t start the dance? And then they blame him for finishing it? I guess I’m getting old because the world is making less and less sense to me.

 

OK, “Rant-mode” off now. :-)

UPDATE: Here’s part two of “Big kid gets bullied one too many times.”

UPDATE: Here’s part three in which Casey Heynes speaks out on video about being bullied..