A letter

Occasionally we receive letters and emails from people we have worked with in the past thanking Bully free Zone for the work we have done to help them. We'd like to share them with you every so often so lets begin today with this one from a Girl we worked with a few years ago.

Dear BFZ,

I suffered from severe bullying consistently throughout high school. This started small with petty name calling, and pushing, but as it continued got worse and worse with each year. By the time I was in year 10 a group of girls had made a malicious website about me which was both racist and crude. This was passed around to everyone in my High School. Despite this the teachers didn`t manage to put an end to the abuse, and by year 11 a large group of pupils planned to follow me home and attack me. Although the incident happened just over four years ago, I still remember it as if it were yesterday. I was faced with the bullies alone, and had no choice but to fight back.

That experience was one of the most frightening ones of my life, to know that you one are almost against the entire school and that even your friends were too frightened to stand up for you. In defending myself one of the bullies ended up worse off than myself and took the matter to court. I hoped that this would be the end of the bullying and that the courts would see just how frightened I was but unfortunately I was wrongly convicted as they stated that I had defended myself “too much”. The bullying didn`t stop there either. When I returned to school I had to get escorted from lesson to lesson, eat my lunch alone, and even leave 10 minutes earlier to prevent them from attacking me again. One of the bullies stated that now I had a conviction I could never go on to college or be a lawyer like I had always dreamed of being.

I am telling you this story, as it was during this time that I was given a 3 months probation sentence and was working with a member of your team, Pete. I worked with Pete over a number of months and engaged in a number of different activities which allowed me time and space to be able to express myself, in the end I produced a poem called “I know” which has featured on the BFZ website.

Producing that piece of writing was very therapeutic for me and helped me to deal with my feelings. I will never forget how difficult those years of my life were, and how much BFZ helped me.

I am now studying Creative and Professional Writing in London and am about to go into my final year. I will never forget what you have done for me!

Yours Sincerely,

D