Bullies making life a nightmare

IT'S every pupil's worst nightmare. To be singled out by the school bullies who for years make your life a living hell.

Last year in the North West ChildLine received a massive 1,227 calls from children terrorised by playground bullies.

"It is a massive problem," said a spokesperson for ChildLine who have launched a nationwide campaign to highlight the problem.

"Victims have a traumatic time and the bullying can have long term effects."

Lorna, now 26, is one of those victims.

Her life is still wrecked today by damage done by school bullies over a decade ago.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, she constantly touches her face and fidgets as if the presence of someone near to her own age makes sitting still impossible.

"I'm a freak," she said, her cute features creasing. "I cannot stand to look at people who must think I'm horrible."

It was a massive admission. In just a few brief words she had summed up the wreckage reaped by her cowardly contemporaries all those years ago.

Lorna, originally from Mellor, feels ugly and worthless as a result of the cruel abuse she suffered for five years

Her distorted image of herself makes her unable to acknowledge her nature. Witty, perceptive, sensitive and, surprising of all, forgiving. Especially to the school bullies who were her reason for wanting to end her life not so long ago.

"I don't want to end up bitter and twisted. I forgave them to move on with my life." She knows her haunting memories of being laughed at, teased and verbally and physically abused will never go away. But coming to terms with her emotions surrounding her school life help her embrace the future.

From the very beginning she was singled out as an easy target for a bullying gang of boys and girls at her secondary school.

"I was very small and thin. I think it was my vulnerability that made me a target. I never said anything for them not to like me."

She endured endless taunts on the daily eight mile bus trip home and cried herself to sleep every night.

"I was so humiliated by those people. They took all my friends from me. I felt very lonely and frightened.

"They called me names, pushed me. They used to pelt me with food while I was sat on the front of the bus crying. They would do things like filling my shoes with water. I was too frightened to stand up to them.

"I use to wish I was a tortoise so that I could hibernate for months on end. Life wasn't worth living. It was awful."

Asthmatic Lorna recalled the time when she collapsed after the bullies forced her to run the 800 metres.

Too terrified to tell her parents or teacher of the abuse, she played truant 90 days a year preferring to wander lonely canal banks and back streets rather than face the bullies.

Her schoolwork suffered and she failed all but one of her exams.

Her mum Jean said: "She was terrified of going into town with me at weekends for fear of meeting them.

"She was bubbly and full of life but once she started secondary school she stopped enjoying life."

To be noticed is to be a potential target for bullies. That is Lorna's policy on life even now.

She avoids people her own age and can't identify with them anyway. She has few friends and when she does occasionally go out she prefers to sit in the corner of a quiet pub.

"I get pains in my chest and get short of breath if I'm in a crowd," she said. Her trauma at school was compounded by a home life dominated by an aggressive father.

"I was constantly told to shut up. He even put the dog down and gave us the cremation certificate.

"I couldn't go home or go to school. I was very depressed. I eventually told my mum about the bullies. She used to hide me under the bed so that I didn't have to go to school. If my dad had found out he would have made me go."

Lorna, who has a three year old son, said: "Nobody knows how much damage bullying does. I'm 26 now and I still haven't forgotten it all. It doesn't just ruin school, it ruins all your life.

"I'm still wary of people. Still conscious of myself. I've been a nervous person since leaving school. It was a living nightmare.

"Youngsters being bullied need to tell an adult and schools need a set programme to deal with bullies."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.