Dagupan hotline saves victims of bullying

DAGUPAN CITY – Incidents of bullying were prevalent among high school students in this coastal city in Pangasinan province in the last three years, a social welfare officer said.

Despite this, the city had resolved most of the cases before these could worsen, said Ma. Trizia dela Cruz, project evaluation officer of the City Social Welfare and Development Office.

Since 2015, when the city government launched its anti-bullying hotline, about 100 incidents were reported, including those that took place in neighboring towns.

Verbal abuse

“The most common form is verbal bullying among adolescents, maybe because this is the stage where they become conscious of their physical appearance,” said Dela Cruz, who also serves as the main person of the city government’s anti-bullying campaign.

She said bullies usually resort to calling their victims not by their names, but by their physical characteristics.

More than half of the cases involved high school students, she said, adding that among grade school pupils, bullying incidents were triggered by the things that they brought to school such as school supplies and toys.

“We consider this physical bullying (when a bully takes another kid’s toy),” Dela Cruz said.

Other Pangasinan towns and cities struggled to address bullying incidents in their communities.

Mechanism

In Mangaldan town, a 19-year-old student died after he was reportedly beaten up by fellow students last week. Police have filed homicide charges against the suspects, whose ages range from 19 to 22.

Unlike in other places, city officials said they had successfully set up a mechanism to address the problem.

“We launched [the hotline] because bullying is not a joke. Once it is repeated … the child suffers,” Mayor Belen Fernandez said.

She cited the case of a boy who used to have missing front teeth. She said the boy endured name-calling in school. “When he reached high school with a new denture, he was still bullied by his classmates by calling him ‘pustiso’ (false teeth),” she said.

When the boy complained through the hotline, the city’s anti-bullying team immediately sprang into action. “Now, the bully and the bullied child are now best friends,” Fernandez said.

Victims

Dela Cruz said: “We believe that bullies are victims of their own circumstances and after a series of sessions, we talk to the parents because in most cases, the personality and behavior of the children that they show in school result from how they are treated at home,” she said.

According to her, it usually takes months before a case is resolved, depending on the children’s coping mechanisms and the trauma that they experienced.

“We want to see the main cause. It would be useless if you’re going to address the bullying incident alone,” Dela Cruz said.