It is a terrible reality that hits Aisling O’Neill like a sledgehammer multiple times a day. It is the realisation that her 16-year-old daughter, Mia, will never be coming back. The pain is fiercely raw and she still can barely believe it.

Just nine weeks ago, on September 6, Mia took her own life. She had been relentlessly bullied since she was just 10 years old. Much of the abuse was racial in nature. The beautiful child dreamed of being a make-up artist, and for some in the village of Newport, Co Tipperary, the fact that she was mixed-race was enough to rain down a torrent of hatred. She enduring bullying in person and online.

The bullies – whom Mia named in a letter prior to her death – called her ‘nigger’, ‘fat’, ‘ugly’ and ‘monkey’ and more. They told her she had Aids and should “go home” to Africa.

“I saw the devastating impact it had on my child with my own eyes,” her mother says. “It completely destroyed her confidence. She became a shell of herself. And no matter what we tried to do to help make it stop, it wouldn’t and she just couldn’t take it any more.”

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In June, Mia attempted suicide – but was unsuccessful. “She started talking to me about what she wanted me to do for her funeral. I pleaded with her not to think like that, to see that she had an amazing life ahead of her. I said ‘Please don’t do this to me – I’m your mother, I love you’. But she was in such a bad place that she saw no other way.”

The spectre of bullying has been in the public eye of late. Joe Duffy’s Liveline devoted much of its programming this week to the subject and the testimonies of those who have been bullied – and that of their anguished parents – will leave a lasting memory to those who listened in.

Bullying was also foremost in much of the reporting on last week’s sentencing of Boy A and Boy B for the horrific killing of 14-year-old Co Kildare schoolgirl Ana Kriégel. Since starting secondary school, she had been subjected to an unceasing wave of bullying – much of it online. In a disturbing footnote, many of her bullies were older children who barely knew her.

And, this week, research by the LGBTI+ youth services organisation, BeLonG To, showed that homophobic and transphobic abuse remains rife in Irish schools. Some 77pc of LGBTI+ students have experienced verbal harassment based on their sexual orientation, gender or gender expression, while 11pc have been physically assaulted.

“Despite the progress made in Ireland in recent times, there is still a huge amount of bullying being experienced in schools,” says director Moninne Griffith, “and it’s not just LGBT teens who are experiencing it. Gay and trans-taunting is being directed at anyone who isn’t seen to fit in.”

Studies show that roughly one in five children in secondary school have suffered at the hands of bullies, and since the advent of smartphone technology some 10 years ago, cyberbullying has become a central component of the bullying endured. A pan-European study indicates that Ireland – along with the UK – has the highest per capita levels of online bullying among teenagers.

Wanting to fit in

Furthermore, a study of 1,000 Irish second-level students last year showed that almost half of them had witnessed bullying in school at least once in the preceding 12 months.

For child and family psychologist Joanna Fortune, the victim can suffer horrendous long-term ramifications. “It can take a terrible toll and we’ve seen some very sad cases of children taking their own lives as a result.”

In the course of her everyday work, Fortune sees the impact for herself. “It is very distressing both for the person being bullied and for their parents, too, because they can feel powerless, especially when cyberbullying is factored in.”

She advises parents to let their children know that they can tell them anything and she says that if your child tells you they are being bullied, to try to act as calmly as possible. “An emotional reaction is understandable,” she says, “but you have to help your child feel that you are in control and the situation is going to improve.

“They fear that we, as parents, are going to jump in two feet first and say, ‘I’m going into the school and I’m going to tackle this and I’m going to call their parents’ and that’s terrifying for the teenager who already feels on the outside when all they want is to fit in and be the same as everyone else.”

Listening to our children is key, she says. “We need to truly listen and then reflect back what they say. It gives them a chance to correct the narrative and us a chance to collect our thoughts.

“And then you say the very important question: is there something you would like me to do about this? And if they say ‘no’, you say, ‘I hear that and I’m going to leave you to deal with it for the next few days and then I’m coming back to you to talk about it again’.

“If at that stage nothing has improved or it’s escalated, then you have to say, ‘As the parent in charge, I have to do something about this because it’s not okay for you to be treated this way. Everyone has a right to a peaceful time in school’.”

She says the first port of call should be the school itself. “They are obliged to have an anti-bullying policy in place,” she says. “So ask to see it and calmly tell them what has been happening to your child.” If the situation hasn’t improved within a week or two, she advises another meeting.

“Always exhaust the avenues available to you first. Give the school an opportunity to fix it. If the policy is in place, it shouldn’t take long to enact it. If you’re unhappy with the response, you go to the Department of Education who have oversight on this and you make your complaint known. You have access to the Ombudsman for Children, too.

“If you see your young person is in acute emotional distress, you absolutely bring them to your GP, explain what’s happening, and you seek a referral to the child and adolescent mental health services.”

Building confidence

Pat Forde, a Limerick-based martial arts instructor, has been working with bullied children for 13 years. The founder of Stop the Bully, he endeavours to help grow their confidence and assertiveness, tools he believes that can help provide armoury when it comes to dealing with their tormentors.

And he says the reaction of the parent is vital when it comes to stopping the problem. “Sometimes parents will have a very emotional reaction and will have done things rashly themselves that might have made the problem worse, like arguing with other parents about it. Keep a cool head as much as you can and be prepared to work with the school. Sometimes people are too quick to point their finger at the school and say, ‘You have to fix it’.”

And yet, Forde has also been struck by the number of parents who don’t think to go to the school to have the problem addressed. “Sometimes people wonder, ‘Is it okay to talk to the school about it?’ Of course it is. These are the people who are minding the kids during the day. It gives the school a chance to keep an eye on the situation.”

He urges parents to give kids resilience skills to help manage the stress caused by bullying – and to put distractions in place for their child. “I’ve seen cases where the bullying takes over completely,” he says. “You want the child going into school, looking at the positive things. I saw this with a large Dublin school recently where everything was being blown out of proportion where it had got a bit too dramatic. There was this huge tension that should have been defused.”

But he has also encountered bullying in which physical abuse was present that necessitated the gardaí getting involved. “When it gets as serious as that, having guards come into a school can put a marker down,” he says. “It’s a pity that it sometimes has to come to that, but it does.”

Sophie – not her real name – is in the final year of a degree course at UCD but memory of the bullying she experienced in her secondary school is ever-present. “I’ve been to see the college counsellor quite a bit,” the 22-year-old says, “and it’s helped me, because over the past 18 months or so it’s really hit home what I went through. I’d sort of suppressed it in my first couple of years at college, but I started to get flashbacks then.”

Sophie attended an all-girls school and the problems began for her in Transition Year. “I looked a bit babyish for the first few years in school, but sort of matured the summer after the Junior Cert,” she says. “Then a week or two into the new term, one of the girls – a sort of leader in the class – started calling me ‘hoe’ for no reason and the name just stuck. And then they’d use other names – ‘slut’, ‘slapper’ – and it just cut me up.”

And, soon, the name-calling went online. “What really got to me was the moment when screen-shots from a WhatsApp group were sent to my Snapchat. All these girls were talking about me, saying I was trying to be with all the guys in the boys school nearby.

“They were talking about my appearance – really horrible stuff. It was devastating. I was in my room and I just cried all night. My mum and dad were asking me why I wouldn’t come down and I said I was sick. I managed to convince them of that. Even though I have always been close to them, I felt ashamed, like I had done something wrong to bring this upon myself.”

Weeks later, Sophie eventually confided in her mother. “She was so upset about it. I could see it in her face. She went into the school the next day – not the morning time, because I didn’t want them to see her with me – and spoke to the principal and the principal spoke to me and said that they had a zero-tolerance attitude to bullying and would make sure it didn’t happen again.

“She meant well, but it didn’t stop – it just changed. They didn’t say ‘hoe’ or ‘slut’ to my face: they just blanked me. And when I say ‘they’, I mean virtually everyone in the class. One of the really horrible ones was always organising parties and trips to town and she’d name everyone in the class that she wanted to come and never my name.”

One positive was the end of unwelcome emails from anonymous accounts and vile Snapchat messages. “But they were still talking about me online,” Sophie says, “because one of the few people in the class who would talk to me, told me and showed me some of the stuff.”

The torment ended almost as suddenly as it began. “I was dreading going into Sixth Year. I just wanted to be finished school and in college. But it basically stopped happening when I started back. Everyone seemed to have grown up and were thinking about the Leaving Cert. I’ve never felt such relief in my life, although I kept thinking it might start again – but it never did.”

But she says it continues to affect her. “It’s made me very body conscious,” she says. “I dress conservatively and I think it’s a direct response to being called those names. Maybe part of me wondered if I deserved it. And some of those bullies are at this college, too – I cross the road if I see them.”

Older, and wiser, she urges teens to tell their parents or a grown-up they trust. “Don’t allow yourself to be alone. That’s what the bullies want.”

Across the country, in Co Tipperary, Aisling O’Neill is having to cope with the loss of her first-born child. She is angry that the country’s creaking child mental health services failed Mia and she has set up a foundation in her daughter’s honour which aims to provide a safe space for children aged 12 to 18 in a building located in Newport.

“This will be our first Christmas without her,” she says. “It breaks my heart. But I have two other children [three and 11] to look after and I have to do that, but Mia will always be with us in spirit. She was such a kind, sweet, caring girl. It’s so wrong that she was bullied to her death.”

John Boland’s TV review of ‘The Ana Kriégel Murder: A Young Life Lost’, see Page 16

For more information and help:

The National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre (ABC) is a research centre in DCU Institute of Education: www.antibullyingcentre.ie

Parentline offers advice on all parenting matters: www.parentline.ie

More on Pat Forde at www.stopthebully.ie

Bullying in numbers

20-25pc

Studies show that between one in five and one in four Irish children have experienced bullying in secondary school. A Unicef study last year showed that 28pc of Irish children have been bullied at least once in the previous three years

9pc

Proportion of 15-year-olds who have experienced cyberbullying – one of the highest rates in the EU

77pc

Proportion of LGBTI+ teens who have been verbally abused due to their sexual orientation, according to a poll published this week

46pc

Percentage of second-level school children who have witnessed bullying, according to a survey last year.

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