The protection of people with functional diversity has important gaps in all areas, social, educational, cultural, labor; in some of them, the lack of action protocols and the necessary training of professionals is alarming. There are also sectors in which the degree of victimization has increased and, consequently, measures to control aggressive behaviors have been relaxed and the institutional response is insufficient.
In some cases, as in situations of gender violence, it would seem that we are in the hands of a legislator who still conceives of people with disabilities as asexual beings and, under that criterion, the protection of women with disabilities, instead of contributing makes them more vulnerable to their safety.
In situations of bullying on students with disabilities - usually boys and girls with visible disabilities - intolerant environments and the lack of preventive resources for harassment, make them very vulnerable subjects and invest them with the unacceptable condition of invisibility. Children and adolescents with disabilities who are subject to bullying, and unlike other children who also suffer it, develop more easily one of the most harmful aspects of bullying: that of social contagion..
The bullying model especially influences individuals who passively attend to abuse, do not have a critical spirit, are insecure and count little for others. Some research has shown how this social contagion has caused some children with disabilities to also bully others. Later on we will return to this situation, let's say exceptional, from my own personal experience in working with children and adolescents at social risk.
All minors who are victims of bullying, whether or not they have a disability, usually have some depressive symptoms, in some cases severe and in others, although less dangerous for their personal integrity. We have all known of cases of bullying with dramatic endings, which have slipped through the fingers of parents and educators, who have arrived late and at the wrong time, and for which there has only been room for regrets.
In comparison with the rest of the population, minors with disabilities who suffer bullying at school, at school or in training and occupation centers, is, according to data published in different sources consulted to support what we present here (National Bullying prevention Center ), of one in three children with disabilities who experience bullying.
Children with disabilities (these very frequently) are scapegoats in school abuse among equals. For its part and in Spain, the research carried out by the State Program for Research, Prevention and Intervention against minors with intellectual or developmental disabilities), and despite the scarcity of data on the prevalence of school abuse in this population , point to what "minors with intellectual disabilities present a risk of being victims of abuse between 2 and 10 times higher than that of children and adolescents without intellectual disabilities".
A few months ago, during the past school year, at the request of the management of a school in my city, I participated in a bullying situation involving a girl in the sixth year of primary education. Defined as a person with borderline intelligence and with numerous curricular adaptations that had favored her school development, she was being teased and threatened by some of her classmates.
This situation was not sporadic, nor was it new. Like most children and adolescents with disabilities who experience bullying, the issue comes from afar and is directly related to their vulnerability. The very definition of the concept of borderline intelligence is already an obstacle, a semantic barrier that places these people in no man's land.
They are students that we classify too easily, arguing their cognitive difficulties, their lack of initiative, their limited capacity to generate rational mechanisms for the resolution of everyday situations, this pigeonhole without alternatives and the frequent psychomotor difficulties that accompany them, are used by bullies to abuse and cause helplessness.
Restlessness, uncertainty and feelings of inferiority were the girl's daily experiences at school. This reality was not adequately identified and parents and teachers easily attributed it wrongly to their disability. In some adults, there was even the belief of being faced with an assumption of victimization; namely, exaggerating the situation to get attention.
I must comment here that, as is the case with the ADHD label that is hastily posted on many children, the concept of victimization also carries an enormous risk of inattention to the child, when it is not derived from the problem to other out-of-school instances.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Torres, told me not too long ago that he was up to here (he pointed to his forehead with the gesture of the hand that we use to look away) of talented, curious and restless children referred for a diagnosis, which many hope will end with the drug treatment solution with methylphenidate, that claim to improve hyperactivity behavior and inattention.
To many it no longer seems such a good idea when - he continued telling me - you tell them that these treatments must be multimodal and, consequently, medication alone is not enough, requiring psychological intervention, family intervention and school intervention together. As with so many of our beliefs in biomedicine, we seek to eliminate the symptoms that cause us pain or discomfort.
For victimization, there is no drug that is worth it, but as with ADHD, if we make a mistake in the diagnosis, we run the risk of discovering a real abuse when it may be too late. We cannot ignore another of the less visible but equally pernicious characteristics that make the prevention and avoidance of school bullying more difficult: that of spectator behavior..
The spectator, that father / mother, that teacher or that student not involved, who looks the other way, an accomplice of passivity or ignorance of the environment, which contributes to putting the most fragile creatures at the feet of predators. In our case, the approach to the behavior of one and the other, the understanding in many cases that bullying is not harmless, the application of disciplinary measures, the development of family involvement actions of all those involved and the active collaboration of the teaching team, were sufficient measures to abort the bullying situation and preserve the adequate and adapted learning of the minor.
Being a victim of bullying is not a fortuitous or random event, it is not something that can happen to anyone, although many minors are involved in a situation of bullying. Suffering harassment, humiliation or mistreatment by peers depends on the vulnerability of each one, and the risk factors that could become a ram for this vulnerability. In the case of minors with disabilities, their rights are not always or not only violated by the “baddest in the class".
It happens that with the fragility of the disabled, we find previously attacked children acting as aggressors. At school and not just at school, people with disabilities are accessible targets on which to vent frustrations and contained anger. Among these minors, shy, withdrawn, with low self-esteem and unable to confront or retaliate when they are harassed, harassed or attacked, but who occasionally turn into bullies of peers with a disability, other students with disabilities can also be found . This is a reality that I have had the opportunity to see personally.
Working for the Can Baró Foundation, in Barcelona, a reception organization for children and adolescents at risk of social exclusion, who mostly came from unstructured families, some with intellectual disabilities, it was common to find yourself in front of the face of frustration, of the face of fear and mistrust. Gender violence, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, forced begging, coexistence with alcohol, drugs and prostitution, were some of the daily experiences of many of those children.
It was not less frequent that, in their way of relating, empathy lacked sense, empathy or that in some cases it invested them with a halo of cruelty. Mistreating a wounded pigeon in the yard, a young cat that appeared from nowhere, or a weaker companion was more of the same in his life experience. Fortunately, Can Baró not only changed many, but I would say that it saved some of them from a painful existence.
The lack of family care, the absence of loving experiences and the violation of children's rights are a breeding ground for school bullying and to continue ruining their lives. It is easy to guess that students with intellectual disabilities accumulated the highest number of bullying in that institution.
Times have changed a lot, institutions like that have no reason to exist today; However, bullying continues to be a reality in our schools and the most vulnerable and disabled students continue to suffer persecution, harassment and violence by their classmates..
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