Bullying and Mobbing in Schools and Workplaces

By Adrian Sparlac

Considering the fact that bullying and mobbing in schools and workplaces has become a worldwide problem where tens of million people are getting hurt, many of them marked for life and even lose their lives mainly because most societies from across the world failed to protect its people, the present book is a great eye-opener on this very important matter. The uniqueness of this book lies in the author’s attempt to make a very accurate X-ray of the degrading world society, from which bullying, cyberbullying and mobbing spring. We believe that the democracy of today’s societies has moved too far away from the ethical and moral values that underlie a healthy society and this is the cause of all iniquities. That is why, in almost all countries, issues such as bullying, cyberbullying, and mobbing are only symptomatically addressed. However, let us not lose hope because there are also a couple of countries that have impressive results because they approach issues very effectively from an ethical and moral point of view. All of this is described in the contents of this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398467309

Adrian Sparlac

Adrian Spârlac is the author of Essay on the Classification of Human Traditional Senses and Alzheimer’s Return to Functionality. The worldwide social problems caused by bullying, cyberbullying and mobbing in schools and workplaces that makes tenths of millions of victims around the globe per year made him write this fascinating and intriguing piece of work in an original manner. But what really triggered him was the tremendous sufferings he saw in some of the victims described in this book. The author wrote this book in the spirit of the ancient  Getae, the fairest and bravest of the Thracian people as described by Herodotus, the father of history.

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About the Author

Adrian Spârlac is the author of Essay on the Classification of Human Traditional Senses and Alzheimer’s Return to Functionality. The worldwide social problems caused by bullying, cyberbullying and mobbing in schools and workplaces that makes tenths of millions of victims around the globe per year made him write this fascinating and intriguing piece of work in an original manner. But what really triggered him was the tremendous sufferings he saw in some of the victims described in this book. The author wrote this book in the spirit of the ancient Getae, the fairest and bravest of the Thracian people as described by Herodotus, the father of history.

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to express his gratitude and special thanks to his parents and Daniela from BeSocial Events Inc, Toronto Canada for their encouragements and support who made possible writing this book.

Copyright Information ©

Adrian Spârlac 2022

The right of Adrian Spârlac to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398467293 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398467309 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those who fight for others, whistle blowers and those who have suffered or will suffer in school or in the workplace because of the behaviour of their colleagues, managers or both expressed by the phenomena known as bullying, cyber bullying and mobbing.

Justice without power is empty, but power without justice is pure violence.

Miyamoto Musashi

One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalised and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.

MICHAEL J. FOX

Introduction

This book is dedicated to those who fight for others and all those who have suffered or will suffer in school or in the workplace because of the behaviour of their colleagues, managers or both; expressed by the phenomena known as bullying and mobbing. The reason we approach this matter is that psychoterror in schools and at work is unfortunately a worldwide phenomenon that each of us has encountered in certain situations in one form or another and that more and more people have not only suffered mentally but also physically due to the emotional abuse to which they were subjected in institutions with usually incompetent management. It is very important to mention that incompetent management creates the climate conducive to bullying, harassment of any kind and mobbing in the workplace where often even managers are those who resort to unethical and immoral methods acting unfairly towards some subordinates, usually people with a higher level of understanding than their own. Usually the victims are people who possess special qualities, such as high intelligence, creativity, integrity, competence, dedication.¹ So people of great value to a society.

We hope that this book can contribute to raising public awareness of bullying and mobbing and thus lead to an improved climate in schools or the workplace for healthy activities. We will show during this piece of work what mobbing, bullying and their repercussions on the psyche and physique of victims in time mean. At the same time, we will describe some real cases from Dutch schools and workplaces, and we will try to explain the causes of the inefficiency of measures against bullying and mobbing in those institutions. At the same time we will approach the inefficiency of the victim’s medical/psychological help, a particularly serious problem given that between 250,000 and 350,000 people a year are systematically harassed at work according to statistics conducted by the CNV union and the University of Twente in 2012 (Pesten op de werkvloer). Four years later in 2016 there were half a million people harassed at work and in 50% of cases it was caused by managers (Pesten op de werkvloer). We will also pay special attention to the victims of mobbing as a result of whistleblowing actions. These people do not enjoy adequate protection from the Dutch state, one of the causes being the legislative system that is not well developed in this regard as it should be like in UK, USA, Sweden, and other countries, for example. We wonder why? At the same time, we will make a brief foray on bullying in schools and how this phenomenon is approached when there are situations like this. At the same time, we would like to mention one very important thing, namely that the actions of bullying and mobbing can culminate in serious bodily injuries or even loss of life. There are victims who will eventually resort to suicide or mass murder, usually because of aggressors at work or even in educational institutions. Some of these victims may resort to mass killings directed against their own society as a result of its defective social policy but also to the lack of adequate professional help. It should be noted that there are three climates that make it possible for bullying and mobbing to occur when they have shortcomings in terms of morality, justice, ethics and spirituality. These are; the social, family and institutional climate that we will describe during this book.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

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Davenport NZ, Schwartz RD and Elliott GP – Mobbing, Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace↩︎

Chapter 1

The Climate Conducive to the

Development of Bullying and

Mobbing

"The world suffers a lot.

Not because of the violence of bad people.

But because of the silence of good people."

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

1.1 The Social Climate

We have chosen to begin this chapter with a wise quote from the Grand French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I (1769–1821), one of the greatest military commanders of all time. And from this point of view we see that the Great Albert Einstein (1879–1955), one of the greatest scientists in human history, thought the same. They tell us that the world suffers a lot but not because of the violence of bad people but because of the silence of good people. Well, let’s take a look at the words of these great personalities. Most of the time, in certain situations of aggression, when a person needs help, merely no one intervenes. Here we bring to our reader’s attention a case that shook the world but not by the violence itself but by the passivity of witnesses to that terrible scene

in 1964 when a 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was raped and killed one morning in the Queens neighbourhood from New York. According to the then reports of the famous New York Times, 38 people (according to other sources even 49) watched what was happening for more than half an hour without anyone intervening.² Another unfortunate event happened on 13 October 2021 when a woman was raped in the subway in Philadelphia by an individual in front of the passengers. Police and video camera reports showed that at least ten people were watching without doing anything. Moreover, the video images showed that no man present at the scene above took the time to call the police, but rather took pictures or filmed the rape. Eventually the rape was stopped by a police officer who was not on duty and called 911 when he saw what was happening.³ But what about the past or events in the USA, from which we regret to note that nothing was learned considering the events of 27 September 2019 when a potential Mexican investor who intended to buy the football club Roda JC Kerkrade in the Netherlands, was kicked out of the stadium against his will by a group of fans and the most terrible thing was that a group of ten policemen and bodyguards present at this scene did absolutely nothing to jump in to help Garcia de la Vega the potential future owner of the club. Moreover, it can be seen from the video images how this man asks for the help of the bodyguard and the latter turns his head elsewhere, pretending that he does not understand. We mention that the group of fans was smaller than the number of police officers present and yet the police did not intervene. (Video footage in the link below).⁴ Very rarely are the cases in which an assaulted person is helped by eyewitnesses of these kind of events at that moment but even then it takes a long time but the cops from the scene related above from whom help was expected pretended not to understand the word help, which in Dutch language means exactly the same thus reflects the harsh reality. But when help comes unexpectedly, the one who jumps to the rescue doing his duty as a very good citizen or model citizen showing his courage, risks being punished by the Dutch justice for the fact that he physically approached the respective perpetrators. Apparently, it is much easier for the Dutch police to catch, deal with and convict an honest man than a bad one. And here we report an incident that happened in March 2003 when a salesman and a bodyguard of an Albert Heijn supermarket branch in the eastern part of Amsterdam using physical force, detained two shoplifters, one of whom managed to escape.

However, these two brave citizens were convicted by the Dutch court for bodily injury and had to pay a fine of 300 euros. However, this fine was eventually paid by Prince Bernhard, then the father of Queen Beatrix, who was very outraged by the sentence given by the Dutch judiciary rule on this case.⁵ However, these things create a very delicate issue that has repercussions on people’s self-confidence that makes them not react so that they are not going to be the ones to be punished when they intervene. Schematically, things are as follows considering the above reports … police or law enforcement do not intervene in critical situations, although they are paid for it, and if other citizens do so, they risk being punished practically for jumping to someone’s aid, which is especially serious because it can undermine the noble intention to help someone in future.

We do not have to excel in mathematics to notice that good people are far more numerous than bad ones which should make them stronger, and by that, to give them the courage to intervene when one of their peers is in a critical situation in the face of an aggressor or an injustice. Now we ask ourselves what are the phenomena? One of them has been studied in detail and through social experiments by several specialists in which it has been shown that when several people witness a certain scene where a person needs help, it takes a long time for someone to intervene.

Why? Because eyewitnesses are waiting for someone other than themselves to intervene. This phenomenon is called the bystander effect in psychology. The higher the number of bystanders, the lower the chance of someone intervening.

This is due to several factors such as:

the ambiguity of what is happening

dissemination of responsibility

assessment of the consequences

fear of consequences

The ambiguity of what is happening refers to the fact that the events that take place are not clear enough to the bystander and that he does not know whether to intervene or not.

The diffusion or dissemination of responsibility refers to the fact that individual responsibility decreases so much that it is left to the discretion of another and then the driving impulses become null.

Assessing and fear of consequences are the most complex factors because the individual assesses the degree of risk, so what he himself has to lose from his intervention. The more he himself has to lose (the possibility of being molested or injured as a result of the possible altercation), the lower the chances of intervention. Here we must make the following statement, namely that we do not suggest to people to have reckless actions in which they themselves may become victims.

They must act when after a correct assessment of the danger they are confident enough that they can decongest the problem by an appropriate act in accordance with their possibilities, excluding the fact that they are simply a bystander and doing nothing to help the victim in those moments.

Also the fear of consequences, for example, after his intervention helping the victim, he may be the one in trouble with the authorities as we have shown in the above cases, so consequently in this case the chances of intervening decrease dramatically.

Going deeper into the reasons behind this exacerbated latency of people’s passivity, we find that it is the insecurity and self-doubt of the individual that in certain doses triggers his fear and makes him hesitant or even cowardly. The great Aristotle (384–322 BC), the professor of Alexander the Great, said one time: "Nothing in this world is done without courage.