‘It broke my heart’: Toronto mother says school failed to protect her son from violent bully

A classroom is seen at an elementary school in Toronto on Tuesday, January 9, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

A Toronto mother says she was forced to pull her son from classes after his school failed to protect him from a violent bully and the process to transfer him to another school dragged on for weeks.

Gailon Richards is a mother of six who said she enrolled all of her children, whom CTV News is not naming, at a Toronto District School Board school in Rexdale after moving to the area last year.

But shortly after the school year started, so too did the problems.

Richards said that on Sept. 17, her five-year-old daughter came home with noticeable red marks on her cheek. She learned that another student had scratched her near the eye, and although her daughter reported the incident to a teacher at the time, Richards said the school did not contact her.

“The next day, I went to them to find out what happened, because my daughter was hurt. No one told me what happened. She told me what happened. But I want to hear from the adults that were involved,” she said in an interview.

That preceded a series of alleged incidents that would occur over the next month involving her eight-year-old son, who Richards said was the victim of at least five acts of bullying at the school.

It was a rainy Oct. 25 day, and Richards said her son and his Grade 3 class were indoors for recess due to the weather. At one point, she said, the students were left unattended and her son became involved in an altercation with another student.

“He was sitting down, the student that’s been bullying him took something from him. He tried getting it back. The student smashed his head on the metal part of the whiteboard in the classroom,” Richards recalled.

“(He said) it was bleeding, and I asked, ‘Did you go get help? Did anyone help you?’ He said, ‘No, Mama, there was nobody there…it was just hurting so bad, I didn’t know what to do,’” Richards said, bursting into tears. “No one noticed anything. And it broke my heart, knowing that he’s over there, in pain, and nobody even took the time to look at him to see if he was okay.”

Richards said she got her son a tetanus shot after the incident as a precaution and reported it to the principal and vice principal, who she said assured her that they would investigate. However, she said that “nothing came out of” that investigation.

Days later, Richards said she received a call from the vice principal stating that her son had been hurt in an incident involving the same student, in which she said he was “lured” outside during recess and viciously attacked.

“(He went) outside under the impression that they wanted to be his friend, they were going to play with him because, again, he’s new at the school. He doesn’t have any friends, and I explained this to them (the school’s administration), which makes him an easy target.

“While they were on the ground playing ‘animal,’ the other student and his friends stomped on his head. They kicked him in the chest multiple times and in the stomach when he was on the ground. When he finally got up, he went and got help and they took him to the office,” she said. Richards said the incident was labelled “rough play” by the school’s administrators.

Richards filed a police report following the two incidents. Toronto police confirmed to CTV News Toronto that they investigated, but no charges were laid due to the age of the parties involved.

CTV News has reviewed photos which appear to show her children’s injuries.

‘No one has been held accountable’

Emails viewed by CTV News Toronto show that Richards had been in touch with the school’s administrators, as well as the superintendent, to try and address the situation since late September.

However, in her words, the ongoing correspondence did little to resolve the issues and she said the school wasn’t able to provide her with any concrete steps in writing that gave her confidence in her children’s care.

That led her to take her son out of school a week before the Christmas break.

“I decided to take him out of school because I saw how it was affecting him mentally as well. I feel like he shouldn’t have to wake up in the morning feeling scared to go to school, not knowing if (the bully) is going to pick on him or beat him up today or not.”

In a statement to CTV News, a spokesperson for the TDSB said: “All reports of bullying are taken seriously by school administration and investigated thoroughly.”

The board said the details of this case could not be shared due to its privacy policies. It did not say whether it was able to corroborate the allegations made by Richards.

Richards said her son had been learning from home since mid-December as she sought to transfer him to a new school but said the process had stalled. Feeling left without options, she said she contacted CTV News to bring her son’s story into the public eye.

She said that shortly after CTV News Toronto reached out to the school board on Jan. 14, she received an “unexpected” phone call from the principal.

“The tone was noticeably different trying to express concern for my son and asking which school I would like him transferred to, followed by an email indicating that documentation and next steps would now be sent,” Richards said in an email.

Richards’ son started at the new school on Tuesday, and while she’s happy and hoping for a better experience this time around, she said she’s still confused by the lack of care her children, and her concerns, were shown.

“It’s very hard to understand why, when this happened under school supervision, no one has been held accountable,” she said.

“And what hurts me the most is that when I brought my concerns to them, instead of addressing them, they were minimized. I was given attitude and dirty looks like, ‘What are you doing here?’ Pretty much feeling like I’m wasting their time. I’m wrong for sticking up for my child. I felt unheard at every level, and instead of responsibility, again, I experienced dismissal, defensiveness and delayed responses.”

‘If nothing’s being done, then this school is not living up to its responsibility. Period.’

The TDSB’s policies allow for discretionary student transfers. The criteria for such transfers include “students involved in incidents that require a compassionate transfer” and “students (victim or aggressor) involved in incidents in which their continued presence in the school may create a potentially unsafe situation.”

The policy states that it “is the responsibility of the home school to find a suitable transfer placement for the student.”

Debra Pepler is a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University whose work has focused on aggression and victimization among children and adolescents, particularly in school settings.

From 2008 to 2012, she sat on Ontario’s Safe Schools Action Team, which helped to inform the province’s current legislation on bullying.

“It’s very clear in the legislation that the first responsibility of a school is to keep children safe… and the second responsibility is to educate children. And so, if a child is being victimized, that child is simply not safe for all sorts of reasons,” she said.

Pepler, who is not involved in Richards’ case, said schools are required by law to step in when a child is being bullied and must do something to stop it.

“If nothing’s being done, then this school is not living up to its responsibility. Period.”

While Richards said she felt she was left with no other choice but to transfer her child out of the school, Pepler said that should only be done as a “last resort,” as the bully’s behaviour is likely to go unchecked.

“The children who are doing the bullying need a lot of help to understand that using your power aggressively with others is not acceptable. And you know, how are they going to move into caring relationships in a workplace, in a home, in an intimate relationship, if they learn that using power aggressively gets them what they want and gets them attention?”

As such, she said it’s important for schools to address incidents of bullying through education rather than punishment, to educate bullies and bystanders that the behaviour is unacceptable while providing a “circle of support” for the child that’s being victimized.

“There’s so many things that schools can do that aren’t punitive, like it’s not sitting a child on a bench for two hours that’s going to solve the problem, it’s helping them learn how to shift their interest and eagerness for power through positive situations.”