Shocking footage of a Kelowna teen being swarmed and beaten unconscious last Friday is conjuring up painful memories for one Lower Mainland mother.
Carol Todd is reflecting on her painful past and tells 1130 NewsRadio that her daughter Amanda was subject to a similar attack just months before she took her own life on Oct. 10, 2012.
“It happened to Amanda in 2012 and this is 2024 and we’re still 12 years down the road and things like this are still happening,” explained Todd. “Amanda was at school one day and she was lured out of her school and what was waiting for her was 50 of her peers plus one girl who was the assaulter. It’s a forgotten piece, but in my mind, I get emotional thinking about it because I remember the day I got a phone call from her that said she had just been beaten up, in her words, but it was a full-blown assault.”
“The assault was what funneled her down the rabbit hole even more.”
She adds the girls involved in that assault were handed a one-week suspension from class.
Todd has seen the video out of Kelowna, which was being widely shared on social media.
“The first words, well, I can’t say them [in this interview]. It’s horrific. It’s devastating. Traumatic. And all I could think of was what this young person, who’s being victimized, what she’s going to go through in her healing process. It was like, ‘OMFG. I can’t believe this is happening.’ I watched it a couple of times because ‘Was I really seeing that the first time?’ And it was true.”
She doesn’t understand why this behaviour is so persistent despite so much education and public campaigns about anti-bullying.
“It makes my heart really sad to know that have we not done a good enough job as parents and educators teaching kids about how to respect others. How to avoid situations like that.”
Todd is also calling out bystanders in cases such as this.
“If you were a bystander and you were watching and you were laughing, you were just as guilty as the assaulter, in my opinion.”
Todd doesn’t want to label all young people as being bad seeds but feels more than ever, something has to change.
“It truly hurts the heart when you see kids and so many of them cheering and [taking] video and yelling support for the person who was assaulting. That to me, as a parent, as an adult, as an educator, it just appalls me.”
Todd is also likening the case out of Kelowna to that of Reena Virk’s killing on Vancouver Island in 1997 — but with phones.
“Where’s the compassion? Where’s the sense of responsibility? Where is the sense of knowing something like this isn’t right, so you need to report it to prevent it from happening. I hope this is a lesson to all of us,” she said.
“The conversation needs to continue and it’s not just one Pink Shirt Day a year, it’s a 365-day conversation and that’s what I’ve been talking about. The bullying. The cyberbullying. This has to be an ongoing conversation with all. We need to include community members. We need to include law enforcement. We need the governments to talk about it more and not candy-coat it.”
She’s encouraging parents to discuss the video from Kelowna with their children who are at least 11 years old.
“It has to be watched. As parents, we have a responsibility to have those conversations. ‘What would you do?’ Bring scenarios into play so kids know what is right or wrong, just from our conversations. We should have a spidey sense of what’s going on in our kids’ lives, even on their social media platforms because I bet you this was all organized using communication in an app of some kind. Be cognizant of changes in behaviour. There’s all these things that would give us warning signs that we need to be aware.”
Todd adds she’s been in touch with and has offered support to the victim’s family in Kelowna.
She’s also encouraging parents and students to use online tools like the B.C. government website Erase (hyperlink here), where students can anonymously flag concerns.
The attack on the teen in Kelowna took place last Friday night at a local park. Her father tells 1130 NewsRadio she was lured there by a friend. The RCMP says there are five main suspects — three have been arrested.