WHEN Kate Wills was shoving one mate into a locker and body shaming others at secondary school, she didn’t class herself as a bully.
But her juvenile – and admittedly cruel – behaviour even pushed some members of her 15-strong girl group into therapy as adults.
“I’m embarrassed to admit it, but at school, I was a Mean Girl,” she penned in a poignant piece for the Daily Mail.
“From the age of 12, I was part of a 15-strong gang of girls who were known as ‘La Clique’, and we could be vicious when we decided there was someone we didn’t like.”
Among La Clique’s cruel actions were painfully trying to flatten one friend’s breast with a dictionary, making each other sit under tables and even attacking each other with hockey sticks once.
Kate revealed that savage name-calling and body shaming was commonplace in the girl gang – they just didn’t have a name for it when she was at school.
Reflecting as an adult, she believes she did these things as she was “filled with self-loathing and constantly anxious that she wasn’t pretty enough, clever enough or popular enough with boys”.
“It was probably these insecurities that made me act the way I did, desperate to fit in and not be cast out by the popular girls,” she penned.
“I was too terrified to speak up when we did something I knew was wrong, for fear of losing my status or having the pack turn on me.
“Barbs, cruel comments and name-calling were all part of the fun.
“Except it wasn’t fun.
“It must have been deeply traumatic and upsetting for those involved.
“I know at least one member of our group had therapy as an adult because of her experiences at our hands.
“I couldn’t believe it when she told me; I apologised tearfully but knew that the damage had already been done.”
According to Kate, La Clique are still friends but choose not to discuss their schooldays.
“We all agree it was deeply weird,” she said. “I’m sure, like me, they’d hate to think of themselves as the bully.
If your child is getting bullied, you should first make the school aware.
The first person to contact should be the class teacher, form tutor, head of year or house tutor, says NSPCC.
You and your child can seek further support from the National Bullying Helpline website and helpline. The helpline is open from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
You could also suggest that your child contact Childline. They can get in touch online or over the phone, and a trained counsellor will support them. They don’t have to give their name, and they can talk about anything that’s worrying them.
Online bullying can also be reported to the social media network where it has happened.
“I’ve since had plenty of therapy myself, and I hope it’s made me a kinder and more empathetic person.
“I’m thankful I went to school in the pre-Instagram age, as I dread to think what kind of devious cyber-bullying I would have got up to if we had been living online.
“And how the record of it would live forever, for everyone to see.”
According to research from the Department for Education looking at pupils in year 10, the most common form of bullying was name-calling.
And this happens all too commonly via text messages and social media.
What’s more, an eye-watering 40% of young people were bullied in the last 12 months.
Around one in five children aged 10 to 15 years in England and Wales experienced at least one type of online bullying behaviour in the year ending March 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics
That’s equivalent to 764,000 children.
Older children in the UK are more likely to be bullied on a screen than in person, Ofcom found.
