Learn the Consequences of Bullying

Hello, my name is Laurent Cousineau and I have been a victim of severe bullying from around 2004 to 2012. I was bullied in elementary school (grade six), all of high school and all of CEGEP (CEGEP is between high school and university in the Quebec educational system).

The most severe bullying I have faced took place in high school from 2005 to 2010. Also, most of the bullying I faced in the years after high school (while in CEGEP) was from people who knew me from high school.

During high school, I was a victim of psychological, verbal and physical violence. Regarding physical violence, I have been pushed, punched, hit, kicked and so on many times. I was probably insulted hundreds of times while in high school. I remember at one point counting all the different people who bullied me and it was at least 20. I was insulted for being very skinny, bad at sports, having an “accent in English and French”, and for having a French name (although my name is French I’m actually 25% French Canadian, 25% Belgian, and 50% Italian but I was labelled as a French person in my high school).

Unfortunately for me, there was a lot of discrimination against Francophones (or people perceived to be Francophones) in my high school. It’s important to note that discrimination is a form of bullying especially when it consists of insulting someone many times and using physical violence against them.

In addition to being bullied by at least 20 students over my time in high school, I was also bullied by teachers. The most traumatic thing that happened to me during my years in high school was when an English teacher in grade 10 organized a “roast” after I insulted a bully back. In the roast, I sat on a stool for a couple of minutes in front of the whole class while one of the meanest bullies insulted me for a couple of minutes. That was quite psychologically damaging. However, this was not the only time I was psychologically hurt by teachers in front of the whole class.

Overall, the bullying over the years caused me to have complex post-traumatic stress disorder and it worsened my OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).

In this class, I will also talk about the solutions to bullying and the many myths about it.