Look at the face above. It’s of 13 year old Nadin Khoury who you’d think — or hope — would be a young teen who despite the economy or any other issues swirling around would be happy about the possibilities for the future. In fact, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, he has thought about the future: he wants to be a Marine. Instead, he’d go to school worried about the immediate future and was allegedly brutally bullied by what police call a “wolf pack” of bullies.
A wolf pack perhaps a few IQ points less bright than a wolf. Since they videotaped the assault.
Good for Khoury.
Good for justice.
Good for sending as message to adults and educators about why there must be zero tolerance of bullying. Good to send a message to teens that there are consequences.
But bad for the bullying pack since they will face some extremely stiff legal consequences, given the high profile nature of the case, if convicted. Here are some details from the Daily News (this is their photo as well on this post):
THE CELL-PHONE video confiscated by Upper Darby police lasts only seven minutes, but to 13-year-old Nadin Khoury, it was the longest seven minutes of his life.
In a Jan. 11 bullying incident that led to six arrests yesterday, teenage boys can be seen dragging Nadin across the snow-covered ground like a deer carcass, then jamming him upside down into a tree.
His screams for mercy only emboldened the seven students of Upper Darby High School’s Opportunity Center, or “thugs,” as Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood called them yesterday as they were being processed on kidnapping and assault charges.
“Seven on one,” Chitwood said yesterday. “That’s a wolf pack.”
The student holding the camera phone laughs maniacally as Nadin falls from the tree and attempts to escape by running through the Park Lane East apartment complex. They chase him down – then use his coat to hang his limp body on a 7-foot-high spiked fence post.
“The back of his head could have went into that spear-like top of the fence,” Chitwood said. “He could have been impaled.”
Outraged by the incident, Upper Darby police brass responded yesterday morning by sending officers to the Opportunity Center to arrest six of the alleged perpetrators, ages 13 to 17. They were hauled out in handcuffs and put in a police wagon. Police are searching for a seventh person they believe was involved.
Here’s the Today Show’s report on the incident which contains part of the video:
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Another TV report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqYKn94gocs
And another one also featuring parts of the bullies’ video. Note that this is an earlier one where the victim’s identity is kept secret. (I suspect this case will end with criminal and civil consequences for the accused bully pack).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYfQWxRKII
BACKGROUND NOTE: Bullying is a huge problem in schools and most educators realize it. Many elementary, middle and junior high schools pay for entertainer/educators to come in and do assemblies with anti-bullying teams (I’ve done some myself), have student mediator mechanisms in place or hammer it into students that a) if they are bullied they must tell someone (tell an adult, tell a teacher, tell a parent or another kid but tell someone) b) schools do not tolerate bullying and the older you get the greater the consequences are (teasing can become harassment and bullying can become assault), c) cyberspace bullying can be as bad as physical bullying, d) if they watch bullying and don’t try to stop it or report it they are part of the problem. With older kids, schools sometimes specifically ask a presenter to mention that some students who are bullied don’t want to live or become violent towards a school. It is now widely recognized that school bullying is not just the problem of the kid being bullied. The consequences can erupt later on many fronts…ending in “collateral damage.”
In this case, the group of bullies — people can be bolder in groups of mobs — have their session recorded for posterity (and the legal system). The schools and courts will see and use this as a textbook case they can point to which means the students allegedly involved — if convicted — will rue the day they thought it would be amusing to pick on a smaller student, physically abuse him and threaten him.
If you hear a sound in coming months, it’ll be the sound of a book being thrown at the students involved if they are convicted. Get ready to hear the sound.
A loud sound.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.