Violence and Bullying: What happened to Sean Carter

I wrote yesterday about school abuse and before that about sexual abuse: Safety has been on my mind a lot and then one reads about a 14-year old boy on the spectrum, Sean Carter, who was severely beaten on his face and back. Sean's father, Ron Carter, claims that an organized gang in west Clacton is responsible, as reported in yesterday's Gazette (UK). Now Sean is

“.....literally frightened to leave the house.”

Mr Carter no longer wants to send Sean to school because he is too afraid. He hopes to move out of the area.

He said Sean had been tormented by his peers, who took advantage of his autism ever since he moved into a new class at the town’s Bishops Park College in September.

Dora has posted about violence and abuse and particularly noted the "complexity of power imbalances" in such situations. She and I have both posted about bullying -- it sounds as if this had happened to Sean prior to being beaten. What did or didn't school authorities do, if anything? Even if there were anti-bullying programs in place, these are not enough. As a commenter wrote yesterday on a post about school abuse and the call to form a group to create a new statewide policy on reporting abuse in the school system by Georgia governor Sonny Perdue:

It's not just that they help some but not enough, it's that those people who work for these agencies don't really have the opportunity to say how their agency is really failing. They end up protecting the agency by continuing to sacrifice the rights of the victims.

There are a lot of subtle as well as overt ways that staff members in these agencies are allowed to discourage those who have been abused from reporting it. It's important to remember that no matter what type of abuse it is, the victim first has to deal with their own shame. That's what abuse does. It makes the victim feel ashamed.

That means that the opportunity to report what has happened to them won't be enough. They need to be in an environment where they are encouraged and empowered.

Here's hoping that Sean can find a better place to live and attend school that is such an environment where he is "encouraged and empowered," and accepted.