Young girl stands up to her harasser, then forced to face her own teachers in court

After three hours sitting on the hard wooden bench, watching shackled and cuffed teenagers pass by in the custody of court officers, and hearing the waiting families discuss their grief, eleven year-old Sofie was led into the Juvenile Court in Barnstable. She was there to tell her story. And so she did.

“I believe you.”

This is what the judge was telling Sofie two weeks later on her return to his courtroom. She was standing next to the lawyer hired by the parents of the boy who had been harassing her in school for months. They sat on the opposite end of the courtroom bench where I sat. He was on the front bench.

From the very beginning of her year at her new school, she had been harassed by this boy. Early on, she asked him why he was doing this. He said, “I just had the feeling from the start about you.”

When she went to her teacher, Sofie was told that he was ADHD and sometimes forgot to take his medication.

This school has no guidance counselor, nor special education teacher. But, Sofie told me, her harasser performed well academically. His behavior evidently didn’t fit the school’s profile of a bully. Yet aware of ongoing problems, the school never informed me that my daughter was being put at risk like this.

Kicking her without provocation. Telling he she is fat (she’s about 10% under average for her age). Slapping her. Getting up during lessons to beatbox in her ear. Intimidating her off the sports field when she didn’t perform up to his standards. Threatening her that if she complained, he would tell the teachers she hit him. Physical and mental abuse.

Not any one thing would be considered harassment. But she was constantly having to deal with this malice again and again and again… and never knowing when or where it was going to come next. Three instances meets the state’s criteria for seeking relief.

In her affidavit to the court, requesting the harassment order, she laid it all out. Then restated verbally it to the judge all on her own in the middle of April. She had been out of school a week already. She talked about being anxious about returning to school after Christmas vacation. At the beginning of the school year, she was a solid A-/B+ student.

By April, she was getting C’s and D’s. She was losing sleep. She went to the doctor for stomach problems. And her weight was down. A letter from her therapist backed up the effects of the trouble she had been experiencing.

Outside, not permitted into the courtroom, were three witnesses. All three from her school. The coach who told me she couldn’t be everywhere and had multiple classes to supervise, and yet marked Sofie down for bad sportsmanship for arguing with this boy. This is the same girl who assists in teaching karate, and is now helping coach softball here in Chatham.

There was the head of the Lower School, who told first me, and then the therapist Sofie had seen about this harassment, “We see everything that goes on here. Nothing happens that we don’t see. There is no bullying at this school.” He went on to say Sofie was simply not fitting in, and suggesting that Sofie see the school’s non-resident psychologist. To address her problems. Pathologizing the victim.

And last of the three was her 5th grade teacher. At our last parent teacher conference this elderly woman could not remember what town Sofie lived in but managed to recall that she had had problems with some boy at her prior school. In response, I reminded her that the problem in 3rd grade was solved by moving Sofie to different classroom at Chatham Elementary School in 4th grade. But no amount of advocacy on my part seemed to make a difference at this school. Peace seemed to be more valued than making sure there was a positive environment within which everyone could learn.

By the time of the last incident, Sofie had long lost her confidence she could bring any problem to these three faculty members. How many times does making a kid say, “I’m sorry,” lose its meaning? They were plainly out of their depth with a boy who desperately needed help controlling his compulsive acting out.

The last straw was, sadly, after an incident that Sofie successfully managed on her own. Despite having told him three times already during the year, this boy began mocking her grandparents’ accent, concluding with the words, “And that is my Austrian accent criticism.” She deflected with a simple, “Gee… thanks.” Unsatisfied, he moved onto criticizing another boy’s schoolwork. At which point, Sofie told him to keep his nose out of other people’s business.

Somehow, these simple words caused him such distress, he ran to the boys room in tears. When their teacher came over to ask what had happened, Sofie told her. Her teacher told her, “You should have let me handle it.”

“But it was offensive,” Sofie countered.

Her teacher persisted, so strongly that Sofie had to sign out for the Girls Room. As she was leaving, a boy in the case asked what was wrong. Her teacher answered, “Oh, nothing. She’s just being a big baby.”

After Sofie told me what happened, we went to talk to the head of the school. She told her story calmly and clearly, just like she later did to the Clerk Magistrate of the Juvenile Court a week later, and then to the judge. The school told me they investigated, but the teacher denied saying anything like this. It was then I realized this school was completely in the dark as to what constitutes bullying these days. Even when she handled it effectively herself, she still couldn’t win, and was shamed for standing up for herself and her classmates.

So if the school would not protect her, she felt she had to ask the court for an order that would.

During this second hearing, Sofie stood her ground when the boy’s attorney badgered her with questions. She had already seen her three teachers enter the courthouse, and be escorted into a separate room by this attorney around the corned from us. We could hear them — the most unhostile witnesses imaginable –conferring with opposing counsel for over an hour. That they were subpoenaed is beside the point. Having failed to protect her, Sofie’s teachers had come to testify against her.

After Sofie finished stating her case, the judge said he didn’t need to have her teachers testify because he knew everything they said would be the exact opposite of what she was claiming. To put a fine point on it, the boy’s attorney said they would refute everything in her affidavit.

“I believe you.” That is what the judge said to Sofie. Even though he felt he couldn’t grant the order for lack of evidence then and there, he said he was leaving the door open should it arise. Upon her leaving the courtroom, he commended her again on her composure, saying one day she would make a fine attorney.

By that evening, Sofie was reading others’ accounts of bullying from years past at that very school. When one alumnus posted his dismay to the school’s Facebook page, the school blocked him. I was blocked. Others were blocked, too, who spoke up for Sofie.

But the very best note came a day later, in a letter from Stella Jade Wolf, a former student of that very same teacher of Sofie’s. Now an adult, Wolf recounted how a little over a decade ago at this school she was bullied from practically Day One. Having received a harassing note, Wolf brought it to this teacher – who destroyed it. The teacher would lie to the Wolf’s parents, dismissing any problems. When Wolf’s grades plummeted, this teacher suggested the girl had a learning disability.

Wolf is a now a teacher herself. She told Sofie that by speaking up about this teacher, it validated the suffering Wolf, the former 5th grader, went through. To follow up, this Wolf wrote to the head of the school to say that what she heard from Sofie was all-too-familiar to her own experience with this same teacher.

Then another alumnus wrote to the school and me, and without making judgments, offered her expertise as a guidance counselor on how the school can move forward on a more proactive anti-bullying program.

No reply has been forthcoming to date. No report on the head of school’s investigation into this incident, as required by state law, was provided to me.

The saddest part is that I had convinced Sofie that these things would never happen at this school. How could I be so sure? I graduated from this school in 1984, Student Council President and voted Most Likely To Succeed. The compassion and kindness I found there then is now missing, painfully so. I am an alumnus of Cape Cod Academy, and I am ashamed of my school.

Having lost its values, and then crudely attempting a cover-up, it is CCA in name only.

(Note: Sofie finished up 5th grade at the Laurel School in Brewster, where she was welcomed warmly, made many friends easily, and thrived academically.)