By Natasha Adeleye
Aisha is a 12-year-old girl who has been cyber-bullied by two boys from her school online. She was texting with her friends when she received some nasty comments about the way dresses and looks. But she decided that she was going to ignore the rude comments as they would go away eventually.
As the nasty comments never went away, she decided to tell her mum about what was going on but her mum told her that if she would wait another couple of days or weeks that the bullying would stop, so obviously she did as her mum said. After a few weeks, the bullying never stopped so she went to tell her mum again, this time her mum told her to text the boys and tell them to stop or else she would report them to the police and or the school. So, the bullying stopped for a while so everything went back to normal.
Aisha went to school the next day as she thought everything was alright. As she got into school, she got these dirty looks from the boys that had been sending her mean things. As she went on with her day, she would get an occasional snitch whispered into her ear, although it made her sad, she was also a little happy she told her mum about what happened as the texts had stopped. It was now break, and she was playing with her friends when the two boys came up to her, one screaming ‘’hey snitch’’ while the other screamed ‘’why are you such a snitch.’’ Aisha felt scared and like she had to run to the nearest teacher, but she was too scared to move so the boys took the opportunity and started pulling on her hijab and telling her to show them her hair and things that were not appropriate. At this point, Aisha was crying and pleading for them to stop but as they thought they were superior to her they didn’t. When Aisha got home, she told her mum what had happened that day.
This time her mum followed her to school the next day and spoke with her teachers about what had been going on for the last month and how it was not fair for the kids to judge her daughter on something that she did not get to decide, as she was not old enough to pick the religion she wanted to follow and how they had asked them to stop sending and asking for inappropriate things but they refused to do so. She also said that she was aware that this was not the first time that this had happened, that this has happened to other people too and how it is not right to judge someone like that. This was a recurring matter that has happened repeatedly, how those kids and adults get shamed about the way they look and it can lead to things like depression, anxiety, and fear.