Shame, Blame and the Code of Silence

Shame and Blame - The Code of Silence, by Judy Kuczynski

Tina was a pretty, outgoing, friendly high school sophomore. In junior high, she had been in the "popular" group but in high school, she was the target of abuse and humiliation. Everyday she found a different threatening note on her locker. The day I saw it, it said "Die Bitch."

”Friends” would call her up and pretend to want to make amends. The next day they would announce at school how pitiful she was and what she had told them in confidence over the phone. The junior-senior prom that spring ended in disaster when a group of older girls surrounded her in the girls' restroom and spit on her and her silver prom dress. That summer a group of boys put a bomb in the family mailbox. It exploded and narrowly missed blinding her father when he went in to get the mail.

It is difficult to understand or explain the dynamics of the effects this situation had on the rest of us, Tina's family. As parents who tried to advocate for our daughter it was devastating to find no support from the school, from other adults, or from the healthcare establishment. No one had any answers or solutions.

Our attempts made her an even bigger target. Near the end, classmates told her that she would be killed if she didn't move. Tina became deeply depressed and developed physical symptoms including chronic insomnia and TMJ so severe that she could not talk. She frequently asked me why her friends hated her so much and what made her such an object of ridicule. I couldn't explain it to her. I couldn't fix it, nor could I give her what she needed to be able to not care and get on with her life without these old "friends."

At one point we took Tina out of school, intending to home school. Our intention was to give things a chance to cool down, for her classmates to look elsewhere for their drama and excitement or to find some other way to bond themselves together besides their daily crusade against our daughter.

While she was out of school she received a number of phone calls from the classroom. I overheard a number of these calls. I could hear the teacher lecturing while the one making the call was somewhere near the back of the room. In one of those calls she was asked if she was pregnant. Another time they wanted to know if it was true that she had tried to kill herself.

Tina wasn't the only one to develop physical symptoms. I also became clinically depressed. We both were put on antidepressants and we both went into counseling. I worried that she would try to hurt herself in attempt to make the pain stop.

The incident that finally convinced Tina to leave that school was when a female classmate, and a girl Tina did not know, came to the place Tina worked and physically attacked her, accusing her of having said something to some guy Tina did not know. Tina left that school before Christmas of her junior year and went to the local community college instead. She was 16.

A year later, when she would have been a senior in high school, she was killed in a car accident. Many of her old crowd expressed sadness over not being ableto explain to her why they had turned on her as they had. At her funeral, a number of them said that they had not been able to tell her they were sorry. To this day, even the bullies do not fully understand why they treated her with contempt. I certainly would like to understand it.

After Tina's death, I went back to school to earn a master's degree in professional counseling. As a registered nurse, I already knew something about the connection between depression and trauma but I needed to understand, to figure it out.

I found out that in adolescent peer groups there is overwhelming pressure to keep adults out. Peer aggression takes place in the social environment wherever children gather. It has been difficult to spot because these behaviors are covert and for the most part practiced in a kind of secret code. Even when adults ask some adolescents outright about things they have seen, adolescents are reluctant to confide in them. Their peer group has a great deal of power, power to make life miserable and at times impossible.

I found out that unwritten codes of conduct in our culture, such as the old saying about "sticks and stones," influence many American attitudes and behavior. One of the more powerful unwritten codes is a code of silence. The code of silence is a problem in most Westernized countries. According to Dr. Olweus, the renowned expert on peer abuse, the bully, the victim and any witnesses remain silent because there remains a stigma in our society against telling tales. A code of silence is also part of the protective boundaries established and enforced by peer groups, gangs and families. Group members are censored and threatened for violating the secrets of the inner workings of the group.

Isolation is an especially effective and subtle tool used to ensure that group members comply. This works to keep the group social system intact. It keeps outsiders out and it binds members in loyalty to the group.

Parents may be unaware of the extent of the problem in the lives of their children because kids don't always talk and parents often do not ask. Dan Olweus states that parents are often the last to know about this private shame in the lives of their children. The older the child, the less likely that child is to share this misery with parents.

Shame is attached to certain acts and attitudes. Among those postures is appearing to be a victim in any way. This is the same attitude that holds victims responsible in some way for being raped. When victims believe that no one can protect them from retaliation they see no reason to tell or report incidents committed against them. Victims become isolated when they believe that nothing can be done to change their situation. They become isolated, depressed, and filled with despair.

Shame and blame are also part of the code of silence. Tina stopped telling us what was happening. She did not want us to know how deeply she was hated. This shame and blame affect will influence parents as well. We may ask ourselves, what it is that makes our child so repulsive that he or she has become the target of contempt. Why can't he or she"just toughen up" or "ignore it?"

When parents try to advocate and the adults to whom they turn to imply that the child has somehow asked for it or for some reason deserves it, parents often choose to "toughen up" themselves. Parents blame themselves for overreacting and somehow making it difficult for the child to get past it. We struggled with this as well.

In 2001, researcher Tonja Nansel, of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, reported that there is not enough being done to prevent this form of violence in our schools. She believes that instead of being treated as a tragedy, bullying is accepted as a normal rite of passage in American culture.

In her 2003 book, The Bully, The Bullied and the Bystander, Barbara Colorosa, reported another study conducted in 2001 by the Kaiser Foundation, Nickelodeon TV and Children Now, in which three-quarters of preteens interviewed reported that bullying is a "regular occurrence at school and that it becomes even more pervasive as kids start high school." On the next page she said, "Research shows that parents and teachers greatly underestimate the frequency of bullying compared to student responses."

As parents, we are the only ones who will advocate for our children. As we learn more about this problem, we will come to understand that the shame and guilt belong to a society that turns the other way and blames the victim. We must speak out for change in our schools and in our society. We must empower ourselves to stand firm and to hold each other responsible to keep our children safe and to teach them how to respect and support each other. If we don't do it, who will? If we don't do it,what will happen to those we hold most dear? What will happen to our world?

It has now been over eight years since our daughter's death. Although she did not die by "bullycide," it could have easily happened just that way, had we not gotten her out of that abusive environment. My husband Ken, and I, are working hard to help parents understand the connective influences of blame, shame and the code of silence that prevents change in our schools. We never gave up trying to help Tina when she was with us, and now, we will never give up helping others trying to create positive changes in their schools.