A gay teenager has detailed the abuse he has weathered from his high school bullies. (Stock photograph by Elements Envato)
A gay teen in Beijing, China, told his teachers of the daily torment he faced from high school bullies. They told him to tolerate it or drop out, he claims.
The anonymous Beijing Water Conservancy School student explained how bullies would force him to watch pornographic videos, strip him naked as they filmed and sprayed mosquito repellent on his genitals.
When the 16-year-old reported the abuse to school officials late last year, they responded with indifference, he claimed.
Instead, they implored him to be more “tolerant” of his bullies or drop out altogether, according to local outlet Sixth Tone,
“Is it ridiculous?” the student wrote in one message to an educator. “The saddest thing is that you just want me to tolerate it.”
As a result of the bullying, he was diagnosed with depression in February this year.
The litany of abuse the pupil suffered ranged from students forcing him to masturbate while they filmed him to stealing his personal belongings.
One pupil, he claimed, would threaten to fight him every day. Others would humiliate him by stripping him, taking his clothing when he showered at school.
Bullies would lob bruising words and insults at him, calling him “disgusting”, while some would even share footage of them abusing him to one another in a group chat.
His teachers, meanwhile, were “blind” to the abuse he suffered, the teen said.
In one text message to a teacher, the victim asked how he should respond to the “harmful behaviour”.
“I give up,” he wrote, claiming that the educator told him before that the bullies are “just children, his classmates of five years”.
The teacher, however, is said to have told him that if he felt unable to make it through his next few years of school, he should leave school entirely. “You have the right to choose,” they reportedly said.
A representative of the Beijing Water Conservancy School told Sixth Tone that administrators have launched an investigation into the bullying. They neither confirmed nor denied the student’s allegations.
Eight of the bullies, the outlet said, have been punished amid the allegations by having to write out passages from the school’s code of conduct every week for one month.