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Haunted By His Past As A Bully, He Apologized To His Victims — 60 Years Later (wbur.org)

 

For many, the memories of being bullied as a child — or bullying — linger through adulthood. But how many people take action?

It took nearly 60 years, but Chicago-area resident Bruce Smit decided to seek out the two little girls he tormented as a child at Monee Elementary School. And it turned out that the sisters, Lorraine O'Kelly and Kathleen Rys, still live in the area, and were willing to meet with him.

The trio — the bully and the bullied — join Here & Now's Robin Young to talk about the lifelong consequences of bullying, and the significance of the apology.

On how the experience of being bullied remains tender years later

Lorraine O'Kelly: "It still hurts till today. You never forget what happened, even though you know we're older now and we put it in the past. But the memories are there forever."

Kathleen Rys: "I think it impacted in the way that, it's hard for me to make friends today. It's hard for me to get close to somebody. I feel like I don't belong. Even today I feel this way."

On Bruce's apology

"I think it's a blessing that we did get a chance for one person, in the whole entire school, to come forward and say that he's sorry, which is wonderful for us. I think it brings us some peace that we never had. We buried this, and we never told anybody about it in our family. ... There's nobody that would even notice anything was going on, or look our way. So we would come home from school and we would just be by ourselves, and never mentioned it to nobody. It brings peace to us that someone actually could come forward and admit that they did this to us."

To listen to the audio and read more of Here & Now's article, please click here.

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Ann,

I appreciate your empathy for the victims of bullying.  I think that there is also a need to understand the underlying causes of bullying, and to hold accountable the adults who fail to intervene when children are being victimized. 

Have you seen "Paper Tigers"?  I love the teenage boy who says, "I was the big bully kind of kid."  Once you understand his life story you see that he was suffering as well. 

Take care!

Debbie 
Deborah Bock, Anchorage, Alaska

Having been bullied at a young age, I can't help thinking, 1), did he really think a couple of flower bouquets would do the trick?, 2), what's in it for him?, and, 3), what took him so long?  Too little, too late, if you ask me...

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