Parents Have Significant Role To Play In Standing Up Against Bullies

(Niagara At Large is pleased to post the following remarks by Joan Wiley, delivered at an Oct. 14 vigil, held in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario for young people across this continent – many of them gay or perceived to be gay – who have committed suicide due to bullying.)

By Joan Wiley

I’m a parent.

Like most, if not all, of you in this crowd tonight, I was heartbroken recently as a steady stream of media reports gave details of youth who were driven to suicide as a result of bullying. All because these students were gay or perceived to be gay.

I cannot imagine the bleak despair and utter hopelessness a young person must experience to step off a bridge, pull a trigger or slip a noose around his or her neck. And I can’t imagine the horror of being the parents who receive the devastating news that their child is dead.

The young people we are remembering tonight are just the tip of the iceberg of homophobic and transphobic-related suicides. I read an appalling statistic the other day – that every six hours, a young person in the LGBTQ community in America takes his or her life because of bullying. Every six hours. That works out to more than 1,400 deaths a year. Not much, one might say, given the size of the student population in the United States.

But let’s put it in perspective. The District School Board of Niagara has about 14,000 students enrolled in its high schools – those 1,400 deaths represent one in 10 students within our system. Or put another way, the combined student population of several of our smaller high schools in Niagara would be entirely wiped out.

If left-handed children were taking their own lives at this rate, there would be immediate intervention. Why are our lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, questioning and intersex children considered to be of such little worth?

We parents have a significant role to play. For one, we must push, and push hard, for institutions to be held accountable when our bullied children reach out for help only to find that backs are turned or eyes are averted. Most importantly, we must hug our children and tell them, from the bottom of our hearts, that they are loved unconditionally, valued, accepted, respected, celebrated and irreplaceable. And we must do this as often as we can.

Because we know the terrible consequences if we don’t.

Joan Wiley is a resident of St. Catharines, Ontario.

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