Kaiden Shupe, then eight years old, revealed to have been intimidated and shoved by his schoolmate in 2013. After Kaiden shared his traumatic experiences to his mom, Ashley Shupe sent a letter to her then second-grader son's teacher. Ashley followed up with a second letter after Kaiden's bullying complaints never ceased.
Ashley pleaded with school authorities to keep Kaiden and the other student away from each other. However, the mom claimed that the school authorities still allowed the two to be around each other for recess time. Just the previous month, Kaiden said that his torturer threw a basketball on his face which subsequently caused it to be bruised.
The last incident was the last straw for Ashley. The mom got Kaiden out of school right away. Afterwards, she reported the incident to the cops. The education board in Dickson then received an attorney's letter. Yahoo! Parenting reported that Ashley sued the Dickson County Board of Education for $300,000 compensatory damages after having done nothing to protect her son from bullies.
Ashley shared in an interview with WZTV in Nashville that, "The emotional and terrible abuse that this child [has endured] has affected him tremendously. I won't send him back until I feel that he's safe and protected."
Kaiden is just one of the many kids that have become victims of bullying. BBC.com reported that kids who have been bullied carry on the emotional burdens up until adulthood. The media publication cited health, occupations, and relationships in adulthood are at risk for bullied kids.
Moreover, the scary fact is that experts foresee bullied kids to likely grow to become criminals. Bullied kids were defined as "easily provoked, low in self-esteem, poor at understanding social cues, and unpopular with peers," according to BBC.
These children are believed to have risks for developing mental and physical illnesses compared with other kids. Additionally, the article revealed that bullied youngsters have higher tendencies to be overweight, drop out of school, lose jobs, and have no friends by the time they are in their mid-twenties.
University of Warwick's Professor Kieter Wolke acknowledged the gravity of bullying. He said,"We cannot continue to dismiss bullying as a harmless, almost inevitable, part of growing up. We need to change this mindset and acknowledge this as a serious problem for both the individual and the country as a whole; the effects are long-lasting and significant."
At 50 years old, bullied kids might still live through the emotional trauma of being harassed, according to a study in King's College of London and reported in BBC.
