Prison and very high fines to punish bullies. France promises a crackdown on school bullying: the bill presented by the deputy MoDem Erwan Balanant provides for the establishment of a real criminal offence to punish those responsible for harassment in the classroom. “If we tolerate violence in school, we anchor it to the development of children and therefore we install it in the society of the next decades,” explained the parliamentarian.
In France, one in ten children is bullied and, since the beginning of the year, about twenty students have committed suicide because they were targeted by their classmates, according to an estimate by the Hugo association.
The principle that prompted Balanant to think of a law against school bullying is that “a young employee in a company is now better protected than a student in a high school. We need to define a ban. And, together, there must be a preventive component essential in terms of bullying “.
Harassment at school will be punished with imprisonment from three to 10 years (when the victim is induced to commit suicide or attempted suicide) and with a fine of 45 to 150 thousand euros. As an alternative measure to detention, a path of “empowerment in school life” is envisaged.
The bill also includes one specific training for doctors, nurses and psychologists. And it acknowledges “the fact that school bullying is not just among students,” but may also, more rarely, be the responsibility of an adult, as Balanant noted.
According to experts, providing for a specific crime could facilitate the presentation of complaints. Provided, however, also, of a better one police training, “Which today sometimes tends to minimize the facts reported to them by the victims”, explains the lawyer Gauthier Lecocq, interviewed by la-croix.com. “And also on condition of speed up the completion of investigations. The handling of a case sometimes takes six or eight months, a period during which the child or young person continues to suffer harassment, sometimes with dramatic consequences.
Other stories of Vanity Fair that might interest you:
Bullying, a mother’s story: “My son’s hidden nightmare”
Against bullying, with children
How and why you become a bully: a study seeks explanations
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