Reign of terror shocks mother

By Bronwyn Sell

A chubby 8-year-old boy looks sadly at his knuckles as he talks quietly of the day seven boys set on him at school and smashed them with a rock.

"First all these boys came along. Then one of them pulled me down with all his mates.

"Hit me in the knuckles. Then hit me in the leg, with all his friends, then punched me in the face."

Then there was the time he was playing rugby on the school field.

"G. came on the field and pushed me over and kicked me in the back. I got angry and chased him and he ran away."

And today: "This boy and me were playing marbles. I won, but he said, 'Nah,' and he pushed me.

"He started getting all his friends, they started chasing me but they didn't get me. I'm not happy. But I'm not afraid of him."

The boy's mother has asked that he not be named, for fear the "reign of terror that's been his lot for a year" in his South Auckland primary school will get worse.

"I can't believe the brutality of it," she said.

"One time we both walked out of school and we were both crying, with our arms wrapped around each other."

She said her son had gone from friendly and confident to lonely and angry in a year, and she was fed up with trying to convince his school to help him.

"I don't want my son to be a statistic. I don't want to see him hang himself.

"Unless something is done, what is the future going to hold?

"I never want to see the day when our schools are like American schools.

"They're going to wait for a playground incident when a child is killed or really hurt, and then they'll do something."