I am 22 and I live in New Zealand. The bullying (and sexual harassment) I witnessed at school, and the bullying my brothers received almost never got dealt with by the teachers – even after the student complained. The student being bullied was not adequately protected at all, usually nothing was done to prevent the bullying.

In one class the teacher expected me (at age 14) to be the one to stop a group of guys from sexually harrassing a classmate who had Down Syndrome (the teacher had divided us into groups and the groups were sent to different classrooms to work on our projects). The teacher knew of the bullying that had been going on, yet totally abandoned our group, and didn’t supervise or visit our group at all during our ‘lessons’. The teacher was a sweet woman who had no authority over her students, and took/demanded no no respect either.