Bullying; living with fear
A courageous Lolita Bosch speaks of her experiences as a victim of bullying in her novel ‘La ràbia' and hits out at the indifference of our society
“People stop me in the street to thank me for my book and it's moving.” It has taken Lolita Bosch almost 30 years to find the courage to talk about an experience that marked her forever as a teenager: from the age of 14 to 17 she was a victim of bullying. “It has been so hard to write about it because I didn't want to be seen as the writer who was bullied. But once I started, I could not stop.” Her novel “La Rabia”, Rage, (Amsterdam) won the Roc Boronat prize. “When I went to collect the prize I was trembling, it was such an intimate thing.”
Bosch asked people who had suffered or are suffering from bullying to come forward and speak to her and from there wrote a story that mixes fiction based on herself and the experiences of others, at times so shocking and that they ended in suicide. “We have helplines for victims of homophobia, gender violence, and not for bullying, but it is far more prevalent than we imagine: one in every four students is bullied, in all types of schools”. She says there is no particular profile of victim, but there is a constant: “The victim is blamed for being this or that, even in their immediate environment.” It often occurs in adolescence when youth becomes aware of their the bodies, and find themselves rejected. But in order to be considered harassment, it must continue for a long time.
Bosch believes that the protocol set down by the administration is completely inadequate. Teachers cannot be blamed entirely for ignoring the phenomenon but the institutions they work in can. Schools need to proudly display signs such as “Bully-free school”. But at the same time, that has to be true.