On 2 oct. 2009, at 08:39, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> Think about it. Are kids really going to report rape or molestation?
And neighbors are not either. For different reasons obviously.
> When I said it was common, I was basing this on the very large
> proportion of people I know who have described such incidents to me.
> None of these people ever brought charges.
I can believe that. In Japan, where violence in school is pretty much an institution, I hear of very few cases where charges are brought, if any. The latest one (although it was about young adults, but the context was similar to cases with younger people) was a kid beaten to death by his club mates in a kendo practice. There is also the case of this young sumo player who was beaten to death by his school mates and his teacher and all that was discovered only because the father asked for an official autopsy (which is not automatic here).
Cases of "ijime" (the word for bullying here) are so common nobody cares anymore. My wife was a victim of ijime for years (pretty much from the end of primary school to the end of high school) and she still feels the trauma.
Jean-Christophe Helary