Ugh. Every bullying case is the same. The kid being bullied is focused on as the cause of the problem and none of the guilty kids suffer any consequences. If there is any acknowledgment of the fault being with anyone else than the bullied kid, it takes the shape of a "conflict between" the kids, as if all parties are at fault. I was bullied and it was like that. It's terrible to say, but I can almost sympathise a bit with those school shooters; the heat of a thousand suns boiling inside of you.
3) Ever seen a movie where the hero is bullied as a kid? It's bullshit. The movies portray it wrong. It's more like the Indian caste system. You are an inferior being and the popular kids in your school see it as their job to humiliate you and put you in your place, and even the "middle" students join in, because they follow the leader, and that's when you lose all faith in humanity. "Either I'm a piece of shit, or these people are all evil motherfuckers."
4) Being bullied makes you question the sanity of your fellow human beings HARD. You can't help but become a skeptic and a cynic. You've felt the physical and psychological harm that perfectly ordinary people are capable of inflicting, and you begin to fear all people. You're worried that they'll turn on you. That any minute now, your office colleagues will rudely remind you of which caste you belong to. They look as normal as your classmates did, and they fucked you up, and so can anyone else.
5) Nobody's here to read this right now, but it needs to be said. Got school age kids? I'll bet my left arm that at least one of them has been at least complicit in bullying without intervening, and that they don't even count it as bullying, "because that guy/chick is dumb anyway and he/she deserves it". See, kids don't count it as bullying if it's someone nobody likes. BUT THAT'S EXACTLY IT! That's the classic victim. That's how they justify it.
@sdm Well, I hope whatever you're doing is effective. Most of what I experienced happened out of eye/earshot of the teacher.
@thor I have a daughter who starts school next year. As a victim of bullying myself, you can bet that I'll be weary of exactly what you're describing.
@rzr Please do remember that the majority of children don't get bullied; they allow bullying to happen or participate in it, often because they are trying to stay in good graces with the dominant kids. I don't know what a parent of a bullied kid could possibly do in such a situation. Most interventions just make it worse. I suspect that the sad truth is that moving your kid to a different school as soon as subtle hints of trouble are detected is often the only viable solution.
2) People don't understand what it's like. They don't get how shitty it makes your life. And the ones who did it? They don't even fucking remember what they did. That's how insignificant you were to them. Enormous pain inflicted and wounds that are still healing, and they have forgotten it. Treated like dirt. Whenever I read about a bullying victim committing suicide, I feel the rage boiling up. The unfairness of it all. The inept adults. The cruel nightmarish children.