When 15-year-old Amber moved to a new school in Queensland, the bullying started almost immediately.
The threats and bullying were relentless.
After suffering death threats and even physical attacks from her peers, Amber was hospitalised for three months after becoming malnourished as a result of severe anxiety and depression.
Mamamia’s daily news podcast The Quicky will get you up to speed on what you need to know today.
Earlier this week, the severity of the bullying on Amber was exposed. In a disturbing video from Snapchat that has since been shared widely online, two of Amber’s former school friends egged on the teenage girl to kill herself in a horrific act of bullying.
“If I f*cking see you Amber, you are gonna probably drown,” one of the girls said in the video.
“Everyone f*cking hates you and everyone wants to kill you,” one girl yells in the video.
The other girl then threatened to stomp on Amber.
Now, Amber’s parents Michelle and Aaron Panozza are demanding greater action on bullying.
“If that was my children on that video, I would probably take them to the police station myself, because that’s unacceptable behaviour,” Michelle told A Current Affair.
Michelle and Aaron, who moved from Melbourne to Queensland four years ago, have been forced to move their daughter to three different schools.
Each time the moved her, the bullying continued to become worse.
"There had been boys that had been saying some quite vile things to her, and then one day they just decided that they'd come up and slap her legs as hard as they could, and as you can see from the photos there's welt marks and hand marks," Amber's mum said.
Although Amber's parents complained to the school about the bullying, they weren't told how the boys would be punished for their act of violence.
With no other options, Michelle and Aaron have since pulled their daughter out of school.
"The premier needs to back up her words and provide some kind of avenue for parents like us to pursue to help us with this cause," Michelle added.
The eSafety Office is the world's first legislated cyberbullying complaints scheme for Australian children under the age of 18. To report cyber bullying, visit their website here.
Top Comments
A boy tried to bully my son physically. He was much smaller than my son, but we taught our boys not to get physical.
After the second incident my husband and I confronted the boy outside school in front of his dad and said. You have now been warned if you touch our son again, he will fight back and we will lay a charge with the police. My husband made sure my son now how to defend himself after the incident. The school contacted us and tried to threaten us for approaching the boy. We said his dad was with him and we meant every word. The boy backed down and that settled it.
Bullies respond best to strength.
Sending you lots of love Amber
As a teacher, my advice is to go to the police and file charges. The punishments that schools can hand out are too soft and these kids need to understand that what they are doing is illegal.