(Excerpt of footage from "Tom Brown's Schooldays", young boys fighting)
PREFECT: Brown and Flashman are fighting Sir.
STEPHEN FRY: So I can see, do you know why?
PREFECT: Something to do with young Arthur sir, you know, the new boy. Shall I go and stop it?
STEPHEN FRY: No.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The bully, embodied so memorably by the odious Flashman in the Victorian novel, "Tom Brown's Schooldays", is back with a vengeance.
Boy: Tom are you alright?
Flashman: All's fair in love and war.
(End of Excerpt)
(Excerpt of footage from online video of children fighting)
Reporter: Today there are still fist-fights, knuckle-dusters, and schoolyard brawls.
(End of Excerpt)
TOMAS HENDERSON: Everyone was hanging around there um watching me making bets who would win.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But bullies have new weapons of choice, mobile phones, YouTube, cyberspace. Flashman, nowadays, is just as likely to ambush his victims from behind a computer screen as he is to come out and fight in the real world.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Isn't sending threatening messages bullying behaviour?
SHANE GERADA: Well yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And you sent him threatening messages?
SHANE GERADA: Well doesn't everybody?
SUSAN MCLEAN, CYBER-SAFETY ADVISOR: By virtue of technology the bully not only follows you home but is invited into your house and if you allow technology in, your children's bedroom, into your child's bedroom, the one place that they should be safe.
(Excerpt of footage from funeral procession)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Bullying can kill. Perpetrators and victims alike will often conceal it, with potentially dreadful consequences.
(End of Excerpt)
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: We always assumed our child was home with us and he's safe, he's in his bedroom and he can't get hurt. But we seriously failed as parents on that one, seriously.
MICHAEL CARR-GREGG, ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGIST: I would like someone to take the lead on what I consider to be the most important public health issue impacting on adolescent mental health in Australia today.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tonight on Four Corners, an age-old problem requiring new solutions.
(On Screen Text: The Bullies' Playground, Reporter: Quentin McDermott)
ELIJAH VETMA (reading letter): My name is Elijah, I'm a 12-year-old in year seven and I have Tourettes and Aspergers Syndrome. Tourettes is a disorder that makes me do uncontrollable tics some being noises and some being movements. At school nearly every day I'm teased and laughed at.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Elijah Vetma is in Year eight, and he's a battle-scarred survivor of four years of bullying which started in year three at primary school.
ELIJAH VETMA: Everyone started teasing me and everything.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And what did they do, what, did they call you names?
ELIJAH VETMA: Yeah they called me names, they like, like they say I have germs or something like kids do and they wouldn't let me play with them really.
JAN VETMA, MOTHER: No one wanted to sit next to him. They used to spray him if he walked past. Disinfect themselves or spray themselves and and spray him like as if he's a germ.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: For Elijah, the daily trip to school became an ordeal, and his time at primary school an unhappy one.
ELIJAH VETMA: Usually I used to walk around the schoolyards.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Just on your own?
ELIJAH VETMA: Yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And did you feel very left out, very lonely?
ELIJAH VETMA: Yeah I really felt lonely.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Like many bullying victims, Elijah Vetma fought back. But his parents say the teachers at his primary school were unsupportive, and failed to take his medical condition into account.
JAN VETMA, MOTHER: One teacher said well you know all kids tease, all kids you know tease its just part of being a kid.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So was it a struggle to get the school and the Department to acknowledge.
MICK VETMA, FATHER: A four year struggle.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: That he was being bullied?
MICK VETMA, FATHER: A four year struggle.
TORI MATTHEWS-OSMAN: At this very minute there's a girl sitting alone in the cubicle in the girls' toilets. She's sitting there with her lunch on her lap, with tears pouring down her cheeks.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Not far from Elijah Vetma's home outside Melbourne lives Tori Matthews-Osman.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Do you remember a time at primary school when you weren't bullied?
TORI MATTHEWS-OSMAN: Not really, it went through pretty much all of primary school. Like it would stop and start every few weeks or something but it went on for pretty much the whole time.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Even schools with anti-bullying policies in place don't always recognise bullying when it happens, or deal with it effectively.
TORI MATTHEWS-OSMAN: They just said to ignore them and act as if they don't exist sort of thing, and it was so hard because they did exist and they were always there and they were always in my classes, and there was nothing I could really do about it.
MICHAEL CARR-GREGG, ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGIST: Most of the policies that schools come up with basically, they don't involve the young people in the drafting of those policies so there's no ownership by the young people. Secondly, whatever policies they come up with, they're not backed up by the curriculum, so there's no reinforcement.
Thirdly, you find there's very little professional staff development for the teachers so that they're not on board either. So you've actually got a failure, a fundamental failure right there in the implementation phase.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tori Matthews-Osman has taken matters into her own hands. She now talks to parents and student groups about her own experience.
TORI MATTHEWS-OSMAN: It was kind of like primary school was my own personal hell, designed to torture me, at least that's what it felt like to me, knowing what the events of each day would be, the non-stop bullying.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: For her, going public has been cathartic. As part of her presentation, Tori reads a short story she has written about a girl who resorts to self-harm after being attacked, and seeing the attack posted on YouTube.
TORI MATTHEWS-OSMAN: Her attackers are the so-called 'It' people, also known as the populars, the girls do some really horrible things, like throwing food and bottles at her and then, the boys will film it all and post it on YouTube for the world to see and laugh at.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Studies suggest that almost one in five school children are bullied by their peers, and that victims often feel unprotected and unsupported at school. It's shocking to see these figures borne out in real life.
After Tori spoke to this class at her new school in Geelong, Four Corners asked for anyone who had been bullied to come forward and tell their story. Twelve kids volunteered.
STEVEN, STUDENT: Well I just get called fat, and I get called a nerd 'cause I like to go on the computers at lunchtime. I get called a loser, just about anything you could think of.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And that happens now?
STEVEN, STUDENT: That's happened since about grade two in primary school up till now.
GABBI, STUDENT: Well, I used to get called names, things got thrown at me, like any name you could mention, I would get called it, mostly for my weight, and I couldn't really do anything about it because if I told the teachers, I would get picked on even more for being a dibber-dobber, whatever you want to call it.
TRAVIS, STUDENT: Well every year since about grade two I've been bullied, practically the same as Steven, I've been called fat, overweight, nerd.
(Travis covers his face with his hands)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: OK, I don't want you to, I don't want to upset you, ok? Is bullying something that all of you guys are aware of?
STUDENTS: Yeah, yup, yup.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And if you see it happening, what do you do?
STEVEN, STUDENT: Try and stop it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Children who feel trapped and isolated by bullies can sometimes do desperate things. Elijah Vetma's mum and dad were shaken to the core after learning how depressed he had become.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: You discovered that he, he was actually thinking of harming himself.
JAN VETMA, MOTHER: Yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tell me about that?
JAN VETMA, MOTHER: Um, look I talked to him, because he you know he that was a quite depressive time and I said look if you ever you know want to do something harmful to yourself you know, you would tell mummy wouldn't you and and he just didn't really say anything.
And I said, have you? And he said yes. And I said well if you were going to kill yourself how would you do it? And he said he'd jump off the, jump off the balcony.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What did you say to him when he said that?
JAN VETMA, MOTHER: I just said you're not going to that are you Elijah? And he said no not now and I just cuddled him.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Like Tori Matthews-Osman, Elijah Vetma thought it would help to go public with his story. At his mother's suggestion, he wrote a letter to his local newspaper, describing the bullying he had suffered.
ELIJAH VETMA (reading from letter): I have feelings of sadness, anger, and confusion inside being alone and hated.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Elijah's letter sent shockwaves through the Geelong community. But it had a happy consequence, children at another school wrote to him, sending words of encouragement and support. Many had themselves been bullied.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT (to Elijah Vetma): How did that make you feel?
ELIJAH VETMA: Great, because I knew that I was actually helping people.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Mmm, so you were giving them a bit of support, a bit of courage to actually stand up for themselves?
ELIJAH VETMA: Mmm.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And did it make you feel you weren't alone in being bullied, as well?
ELIJAH VETMA: Yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: After changing schools, Elijah is still occasionally teased, but far less than before. He has new friends and is now taking self-defence classes.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT (to Elijah Vetma): Elijah, would you say that you're happy at school, or sad or anxious? How would you describe it?
ELIJAH VETMA: I'm happy. Pretty happy.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Suicidal thoughts can start at a frighteningly young age. And bullying can trigger them. Young Tom Henderson was still at kindergarten, when he contemplated killing himself.
TOMAS HENDERSON: I told mum one day that um, I was upset and I wanted to be dead, I'd rather be dead instead of go to the school.
SARA HENDERSON, MOTHER: For me this was out of the blue. I was so shocked because I didn't even think, I didn't think that he had a concept of death. He was you know at that age. So for him to say that, that he wanted to be dead was absolutely devastating.
PROFESSOR DONNA CROSS, EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY: There are many effects from bullying. Probably the most significant are mental health problems, so, much higher levels of depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, self harming behaviours, but also there are physical harms.
Children are, are much more likely to be ah have their physical health affected as a result of persistent bullying and of course academic harms.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tom's plea for help was a portent of things to come. The following year he suffered the first in a series of attacks.
TOMAS HENDERSON: My friend Matthew and I were under a tree just having some lunch and a group of boys came over and started throwing sticks at us and calling us gay, cause we were eating together and so we got in this whole stick throwing thing and then my sister got a stick from for me and I turned around to throw it and as I threw it, a stick flew into my eye.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Did the teachers help? Did they rush to his help?
SARA HENDERSON, MOTHER: Um no, he was actually punished. He was sat on the mat for the afternoon because, because he'd retaliated. He'd thrown sticks back so he had to sit on the time out mat even though he was very sick and complained of being sick, but he was told to stop drawing attention to himself.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tom was concussed and nearly blinded in the attack, and doctors have warned that he may still lose his sight in one eye. He also developed serious psychological problems. He started having nightmares and panic attacks.
Sara Henderson moved her children to another school, but even then the bullying didn't stop.
SARA HENDERSON, MOTHER: Again it was a group of older boys. They wore steel capped boots to school and routinely told Tomas that they were going to kick his head in and called him terrible names, just terrible names.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: This time, the bullying came to a head on the soccer field.
SARA HENDERSON, MOTHER: As Tomas went past one of the boys there was a soccer ball on the ground and he kicked it.
TOMAS HENDERSON: I was just playing around and, and kicked it away and he then pushed me to the ground and I had a cut going up my arm and shoulder right there and then, then I got up and walked over to him and said don't ever touch me again or I'll punch you and 'cause he was holding the ball he threw it at me and said, go on then, punched me and then pushed me to the ground and kicked me.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What had the teachers told him after this attack?
SARA HENDERSON, MOTHER: Um it was his fault. He shouldn't have kicked the soccer ball. He was antagonising and basically he was in trouble again.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: By now Tom had been diagnosed with childhood depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
TOMAS HENDERSON: I hated school and I didn't want to go and I ended up faking that I was sick and yeah, I yeah, was.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Just to get out of going to school?
TOMAS HENDERSON: Yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Despairing at the lack of support being offered to her child, Sara Henderson took Tom and his twin sister Aria out of school. She is now home-schooling her kids and wishes she had done so years ago.
SARA HENDERSON, MOTHER: I love my kids. I sent them to school to get educated, not to be brutalised.
TOMAS HENDERSON: I'm going to stay home-schooled, I'm not going back to school 'cause I have my friends and yeah, I didn't make friends like this at a normal school, so yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So you've got good friends now?
TOMAS HENDERSON: Yeah, I've got good friends. They call me up, I call them up, we go, we go out playing together and yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And no more bullying?
TOMAS HENDERSON: No more bullying. Not one of us bully each other.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Involving kids in implementing a school's anti-bullying policy can help it to work. On Sydney's North Shore, Seaforth primary school has had its own share of problems with bullying in the past.
MARCUS, SEAFORTH PRIMARY STUDENT: Once I got bullied when I was in kindy, and the bully kept doing it, it was very serious, he was swearing and he actually went out of bounds and did that kind of stuff, and unfortunately he got a yellow card.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: At Seaforth, the drive to change the existing system came from parents who were concerned that the school's approach to bullying was too ad-hoc, and too focused on disciplining bullies, rather than solving the problem.
RICHARD DUNCAN, PARENT: So the system was deficient in that it didn't have in place the steps necessary to help the victim and help the perpetrator of the crime to be able to, kiss and make up and change. And that's a key factor, change behaviour.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: With the parents' help, the school started to involve the pupils, by encouraging a system of peer pressure, to root out bullying behaviour. And they recruited an anti-bullying crusader.
CAROLYN, SEAFORTH PRIMARY STUDENT: Captain Seaforth is a cartoon character and if you get bullied then you write out a form and it says who you are, what's the bully's name and what they've done, who's the teacher on duty and the date and stuff, and then you put the form in a box and the box gets emptied regularly.
Then the teachers read it and if they think it's actually bullying then they'll have a talk to you and the person who bullied you and stuff.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Alright, now is it a good thing? Has it helped with the problem of bullying?
CAROLYN, SEAFORTH PRIMARY STUDENT: Yes.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: After young Marcus attended a meeting with his bully, the matter was resolved.
MARCUS, SEAFORTH PRIMARY STUDENT: He admitted that he did do it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So he admitted that he did it. And did he apologise?
MARCUS, SEAFORTH PRIMARY STUDENT: Yes, he said I won't do it again.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And has he done it again?
MARCUS, SEAFORTH PRIMARY STUDENT: Ah, no.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What are the evidence based strategies for changing bullying behaviour?
MICHAEL CARR-GREGG, ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGIST: Well the most popular one is a technique called shared concern which is a structured approach whereby you speak with the bully, you basically get the bully to understand the implications of what they're doing and then you go back and back and back and you make sure that the bullying behaviour ceases.
What we've found is that in two out of three cases where shared concern is used, the bullying behaviour will stop.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: If the schoolyard is still the bullies' traditional playground, now it is shifting into cyberspace. Much of the bullying that takes place today occurs, not at school, but online, and its victims are usually at home when it happens, apparently safe with their families.
PROFESSOR DONNA CROSS, EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY: About 10 per cent of young people are reporting that they've been cyber-bullied recently. It's an interesting phenomenon because we think that many children don't tell that they're cyber-bullied for fear that they'll lose access to technology. Their greatest fear is that ah if they tell their mum or dad that their mum or dad will stop them from being online and not being online is like not being connected to their friends at all.
MICHAEL CARR-GREGG, ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGIST: Young people come home and they disappear behind a sort of an emotional firewall called MSN and the sorts of things that go on, on Facebook and MSN, basically are as bad if not worse than the school yard stuff.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: At Genazzano Catholic girls' school in Melbourne, cyber-bullying is taken seriously. One Genazzano pupil, at her previous school, was horrified to learn that a website had been set up to vilify her.
CHIARA, GENEZZANO STUDENT: All the stuff that was on the website, was all stuff about my coloured skin and things like that, just really bad racist comments that everyone had posted about me, and then there was a picture and just things just pointing to the picture and saying very bad things.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Today Susan McLean, a former police officer specialising in cyber-safety, is warning these girls about the dangers of cyberspace. No detail is spared.
SUSAN MCLEAN, CYBER-SAFETY ADVISOR: And I say this, as a young female growing up now, you are more at risk with getting yourself into trouble than any other generation before you. I know of a young girl that went to a party, and when she woke the next morning, in a strange boy's bed, naked, she was covered in writing, black texter writing, along her naked body, that said, soon to be on YouTube.
I cannot implore you enough to be particularly careful. The internet, shhh ladies, is the new toilet door. It is used to spread rumours, and to be mean, nasty and horrible, and to make comments about people behind their back, knowing full well it will get back to them, and it will upset them.
SUSAN MCLEAN, CYBER-SAFETY ADVISOR (to Quentin McDermott): It is worse than face to face bullying because if you think back, in a schoolyard if you were bullied you could at least know that at 3.30 you could go home and you could be safe. By virtue of technology the bully not only follows you home but is invited into your house and if you allow technology in your children's bedroom, into your child's bedroom, the one place that they should be safe.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Jordyn Taylor is a victim of cyber-bullying, but not a typical one, she was school captain at her primary school when a group of girls picked on her.
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: Two girls did something wrong, they graffiti'd some walls which they shouldn't have done, and I told the teachers with three other of my friends, and they got angry at me and they sort of started emailing me.
They were death threats sort of. They said that they'd come and bring a knife to my house and stab me through the night. Which wasn't very nice. And they called me names and things like that.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Jordyn's school arranged a face-to-face meeting with her bullies, but it didn't resolve the argument.
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: After the meeting I then got bullied by them face to face. So that didn't help at all, it just made it a whole lot worse
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What kind of names did they call you?
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: Well they swore at me and called me the b-word and said that I was fat and ugly and I was a cow and that all, they shouldn't be, that I was awful and no one should be friends with me and things like that.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: How did that make you feel about yourself?
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: Well it made me really self-conscious and I still don't feel that good about myself now and I was fine, I was happy with the way I looked, and now I still stress about it sometimes.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So it damaged your self-esteem?
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: Yeah, big time, which I didn't need.
PROFESSOR DONNA CROSS, EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY: Young people say to us through our surveys that schools often deal with this issue quite simplistically and that they're bringing the two children who've been involved in the bullying behaviour together and make one apologise to the other and then they perceive it's all fixed, but it's much deeper than that.
The child who's done the bullying needs to get support in learning different ways to behave before they're even brought back in front of the child who's who they've bullied. And the child who's been bullied needs lots of help and support to be able to face that person in a positive way so that it doesn't just increase the overall trauma, otherwise they'll never tell us.
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: This is the first email I received from them.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Jordyn's school had failed her, and she turned for help instead to someone in her own age-group, one of Australia's brightest young cyberspace experts, Tom Wood.
TOM WOOD, CYBERSPACE EXPERT: From those emails, did you try and block or delete them? What did you do?
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: After the first night of these emails, which was the only night I received them, they stopped, so I didn't really have to block anyone or delete them or anything.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tom Wood is just 17, but has already made his mark in cyberspace.
TOM WOOD, CYBERSPACE EXPERT: In late 2007 I was able to disable the Federal Government's filters for computers that they released under their $84-million NetAlert program, which ah, which ah was quite amazing. And yeah last year I showed how MySpace, how people can get into people's MySpace accounts by tricking them into revealing their passwords.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Tom now writes a column for Girlfriend Magazine and devotes his spare time to helping teenagers to be safe online and guard themselves against cyber-bullying.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What are the golden rules for kids to follow?
Tom Wood: Don't respond, first of all. Block and delete the bully from the website or service. Save the evidence for future reference if it's ever needed in court or if it's taken to an authority. And most importantly report the abuse to the administrator because they will then delete the content and punish the perpetrator in some way.
And finally, tell someone you trust, yeah, like a teacher or parent or friend, and if you think its necessary take it to the police because it's a criminal activity.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: For Jordyn Taylor, the trauma of cyber-bullying is still fresh. Only recently the online threats started again.
JORDYN TAYLOR, STUDENT: This year I got through messages saying that you're fat and ugly and all those things again and swearing at me. And at first I thought it was a joke because I was good friends with this girl and so I said, that's enough now, I get the joke, ha ha ha.
And then she was like, it's not a joke, and that's when she told me that I should go suicide and jump off a bridge. And that if I didn't do it, she'd do it for me.
MICHAEL CARR-GREGG, ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGIST: If you are bullied you're three times more likely to be depressed. There are standard short, medium and long term impacts of bullying that we see over and over again and they would include really poor self esteem, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, self harm, eating disorders and of course in very rare cases suicide.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So bullying can kill?
MICHAEL CARR-GREGG, ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGIST: There's no question in my mind that if the circumstances are right, if the predisposing vulnerabilities are there that can happen.
(Excerpt of photographs of Allem Halkic and friends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Allem Halkic was popular, self-confident and good-looking. He was 17-years-old, and starting year 12 at high school.
(End of Excerpt)
(Excerpt of video footage of Allen Halkic and friends)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: As an only child, he was doted on by his parents, and he was part of a close-knit circle of friends who hailed from the same part of Melbourne where Allem grew up, Altona Meadows. In his spare time, he would often play poker with his mates.
(End of Excerpt)
THANH BUI, FRIEND: He was always fun-loving, never had a grudge against anyone, just always happy, always had a smile on his face. Loved his iPod and his Metallica, and really loved his poker.
MONICA SHAW, FRIEND: Allem was always so happy, you would never suspect any sort of depression. There was never actually a time when he looks unhappy. He's always smiling and so we're just all in shock and disbelief.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: From a young age, Allem would talk to his many friends on the web.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: I always used to hear these beeps come out of the room. And I'd come in and I'd say to Allem, well what are all these screens popping up, and he goes, they're all my friends. And I'd say to Allem, how are you talking to all these people at once, I said. He goes, he used to say to me, he goes you wouldn't understand 'cause you're just too old. So um.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Ali and Dina Halkic are typical of most parents, they had little idea what kind of life their son was living in cyberspace.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: Allem lived three lives. He had his life as a child to a mother and father and grandparents and uncles and family and friends which were totally, totally happy with him. Then he had his social structure with his friends at school and the mateships and the girls and the boys and the parties and the nightlife and all these type of things.
We had that covered as a family. But the third one and the one that finally took my son's life was this imaginary world where you interact with um, 10, 15 people. If we'd be sleeping, he'd be able to log on and go in and we always assumed our child was home with us and he's safe, he's in his bedroom and he can't get hurt. But um, we seriously failed as parents on that one, seriously.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: According to Allem's family and friends, his downhill path began when a close friendship he had struck up with this young man, Shane Gerada, soured after an argument over a girl.
MONICA SHAW, FRIEND: He apologised instantly when they had this sort of disagreement, but this other friend just wouldn't accept his apology, he just sort of said, no I don't want to hear it, like that's it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: You've built a reputation on never giving second chances to friends who cross you or challenge you and that this is what it says on your MySpace page, is that right?
SHANE GERADA: Yeah well depending who it is, I'll give them a second chance. On the way, I've been stuffed around that many times, I'm not going to keep on taking it.
But with Allem obviously 'cause he was my best mate I tried to forgive him which he didn't accept, and when he tried to do it to me, I did it back to him, so he could see how it feels. And obviously it did hurt him and he told me it hurt him. So, yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: As the tension between the two young men escalated, things started to turn ugly for Allem. Shane Gerada, who was three years older than Allem Halkic, tried to get contacts of his to gang up on Allem, and sent this message to one of them.
(On Screen Graphic of online message)
It refers to Allem Halkic as a "kalb" or "dog", and says, "When you get back we're going to smash that kalb."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Did Allem take those threats seriously?
THANH BUI, FRIEND: No, not really.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Did they upset him? Did they make him anxious?
THANH BUI, FRIEND: Yeah, he was towards the end, the last in December, in January he became really anxious and then I, I asked him every time we went out I'd go, I'd go oh how was your day? How are you? Is you know, is Shane making you feel uncomfortable? And he'd be a bit anxious and deny it but I knew he was.
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: I think deep down now when I look back he was very, very concerned about this person that was bullying him, his former friend. And I think he was even more worried that the word was spreading on the internet because he'd spend a lot of time on there like I could actually hear him on the keyboard.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: Yeah.
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: Like anger typing, which was.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: See, this, once again, this is the hardest thing for me to understand, it's like he was home and he was dealing with these people. He was home and dealing with the conflict.
We didn't see any physical being in front of us that was pushing him or antagonising him or infuriate him, we didn't see any of that you know, and this is why I'm so, so angry with myself.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: In late January Allem and his friends went back to school. Soon afterwards, he received another text from Shane Gerada.
(Excerpt of footage of mobile phone message)
Part of this message read: "I'm gonna hit you and trust me the boys at ur school who you think ur so cool with fkn hate you. Don't be surprised if you get hit sum time soon."
(End of Excerpt)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Shane Gerada says he sent this threat because Allem Halkic had told a mutual friend about disparaging comments Shane was making about her. He then took it one step further. He knew Allem had been seeing a local girl, who already had a boyfriend.
The boyfriend had a reputation for violence. Shane tracked the boyfriend down on MySpace and told him about his girlfriend's affair with Allem.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT (to Shane Gerada): You wanted to get your own back?
SHANE GERADA: Give him shit, yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: You wanted to get your revenge?
SHANE GERADA: Yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Allem's friends think you're a bully. Are you a bully?
SHANE GERADA: No. They like, Allem, Allem is the type, like I always kept him out of trouble type of thing, like.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But isn't sending threatening messages bullying behaviour?
SHANE GERADA: Well yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And you sent him threatening messages?
SHANE GERADA: Well doesn't everybody?
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: I don't think so.
SHANE GERADA: Well if you, I'm sure when you were young you argued too, I'm sure you sent abusive messages.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Well um, I'm asking you whether you think your sending him threatening messages was bullying behaviour on your part?
SHANE GERADA: Well if that's the meaning of classifying bullying, then yeah.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: On the night of Wednesday February the fourth, this year, all seemed normal in the Halkic household. Allem and his parents had dinner together, then he went with his mate Thanh Bui to their friend Monica's house.
THANH BUI, FRIEND: We were playing with Monica's little sisters. We were teaching them poker and just having a little fun. He was giggling and everything. They were calling him his older brother, we love you, and he just looked really happy.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Allem had school the next day and got home at around 10.30. Nothing seemed amiss.
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: We heard him grab a bag of chips a can of coke which he usually does to have a snack, I mean that was a few hours after dinner, um went in his room, shut the door and ah, we heard him laughing didn't we, he was, we heard him laughing about something and, and Ali was about to get up to say look you need to turn everything off, and you know you've got school.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: Quarter to 12.
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: You've got to go to school; it was about quarter to 12.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: Yeah.
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: And um.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER: Our boy just walked out of our life.
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: And the alarm went off the next morning at 6:30 to go to work like a normal night and um (inaudible) normal morning and woke up, and saw his door was open and he was gone, he was gone.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Allem Halkic's movements that night, who he spoke to and what was said, are not yet clear. A police investigation is underway. It is known that at 1.10am he rang Shane Gerada for a long talk.
SHANE GERADA: We spoke about everything, you know like I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have done this, he shouldn't have done that, we sorted absolutely everything out. And he, the last question was, are we best mates?
And I said, yeah, we were best mates even though we were fighting, we still classified each other as best mates. I go, nothing's going to change. And he was like, so then, I'll ring you back in five minutes 'cause my phone's ringing.
I said, alright. And, so I waited about I think a few minutes and nothing happened, no, no phone call back, so I fell asleep. And then when I woke up in the morning I had the one message and five missed calls from him.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What did the message say?
SHANE GERADA: Um, Shane, please answer your phone. You might not give a f*** but I need you, I really need you to help me, answer your phone tomorrow.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: If you'd just made it up and you were best mates, why was he sending you a message saying you might not give a f*** about me?
SHANE GERADA: Well the way I see it, cause the message was after the five missed calls or a few of the missed calls, so I'm thinking cause I didn't answer his phone calls he must've thought I was still against him.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Allem Halkic's friends dispute this version of events. Monica Shaw says Allem called her later that night about the threats he was receiving.
MONICA SHAW, FRIEND: I just said you know Allem, don't do anything that's stupid, just stay home.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But he didn't stay home. At around 4.30am a friend dropped him off at a petrol station, and he walked away towards the Westgate Bridge. In the early hours of Thursday morning, his body was found at the foot of the bridge, a suicide note was found on his bed at home.
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: There was a note left on his bed and it had um, dear mum and dad, I'm sorry it had to end this way, I'm a coward, I'm going to hit, hurt the people I love so much, you're the best parents a kid could ask for, I love you both and he had Westgate, Westgate 2:30 am 5th of February and he signed it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Allem's family and friends firmly believe that the bullying and threats he received, triggered his decision to take his own life.
(Looking at Shane Gerada's tattoos)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: That's your Mum.
SHANE GERADA: That's Mum's name, Dad's name.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: And on your back, can I have a look? So that's RIP Allem Halkic, 08/09/91 to 05/02/09.
Reporter: Why do you think he died?
SHANE GERADA: Well every, probably a build up of things. I don't believe, like what I said to him, he, I know it was serious but he knew I would never touch him. And he pretty much told me that, he goes I know you would never touch me, Shane.
So he knew like, it doesn't matter what I said to him, I was, I wasn't going to go with it. It was just a threat kind of thing and that was it.
(Excerpt of footage of rally at Westgate Bridge)
DANIEL HEFFERNAN, FRIEND (addressing rally): He made so many people laugh and cry at the same time. He was our angel. Rest in peace brother.
FEMALE FRIEND (addressing rally): It has been over three weeks now since our dear Allem cracked under the pressure of teenage bullying, and the pain isn't letting up. Allem has touched many people. They say that God takes the good ones, well now he has the best.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Three weeks after his death, the family and friends of Allem Halkic staged a rally under the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne. They were there to farewell the young man, and to draw attention to the increasing dangers of cyber-bullying.
ALI HALKIC, FATHER (addressing rally): There's a new word that I've created for this, it's a new drug, and the new drug is cyberspace. Cyberspace to us has taken our child. People are out there to pry into our private lives, abuse the privilege, and make a fantastic tool of knowledge into a tool of death.
(End of Excerpt)
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The families of those who are bullied in cyberspace want schools, governments and law enforcement authorities to take a long, hard look at the problem, and how to curb it. In Australia now, around 10 per cent of children say they are cyber-bullied. In the UK, 25 per cent. In the United States, 50 per cent.
PROFESSOR DONNA CROSS, EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY: We need to make sure that parents are communicating with their children around cyber space, that parents know where their children are going, that they have regular conversations, they sit online with them, perhaps they even join some of the same websites as their, their children are so that they can see what are potential hazards, but also see what young people enjoy in this space and why they can't live without it.
MONICA SHAW, FRIEND: I'd like to see more safety precautions on the internet, as well as parents being more aware and perhaps looking more into what their kids are doing on the internet, and also for you know teens and stuff to be more aware of what they're posting on their profiles and how much information they're giving people.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What would your advice be to other parents?
DINA HALKIC, MOTHER: They need to um, so watch over their children while they're on the internet. Get them to talk about who they're talking to and what they're talking about. Just to sit there with them and and understand what they do and the subjects they talk about. And if they sense anything, they need to have their child open up to them.
(Excerpt of footage of Ali and Dina Halkic at Allem Halkic's grave)
(End of Excerpt)