JACKSONVILLE Bully attorney

By definition, a bully is a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people. Psychology Today attributes the bullying behavior to lack of parenting at an early age and “…not handling well…the normal aggression of two-year-olds.” On the other side, the victims might be sought out and targeted for having a lack of assertiveness.

With the World Wide Web connecting us all with one touch of the mouse, bullying has reached a much larger audience, and that humiliation of the victim bares an increasing amount of weight.

New method of cyberbullying includes the sharing of menacing gossips, embarrassing photos and even video tapes of the instances of bullying violence.

Florida Law protects victims from bullies by allowing them to file an Injunction for Protection, sometime called a “Protective Order” which does not allow the aggressor to come within 500 feet of the victim, or contact the victim in anyway. Protecting the victims family, if needed, is also an option.

There are several types of Injunctions that protect us from bullies. The one used for youth bullying cases would be the Repeat Violence Injunction. If the offender has a history of two or more instances of violence, this would apply. We have successfully argued that only one act of violence is necessary for children.

• 1 of every 4 children is more than occasionally cyber-bullied
• More than 25 million families are currently traumatized by bullying in the U.S. today
• When polled, 98% of students indicated that they want teachers to intervene
• According to a 2011 Harvard School of Health Study, male bullies are nearly four times as likely as non-bullies to grow up to physically or sexually abuse their female partners
• In schools where there are anti bullying programs, bullying is reduced by 50%
• Bullying was a factor in 2/3 of the 37 school shootings reviewed by the US Secret Service
• Recent bullying studies have found that schools that had a more intense bullying atmosphere, passing rates on standardized tests in such subjects as algebra, earth science and world history were 3 to 6% lower
• For more articles on bullying, see www.solutionsforbullying.com 

For more statistics and current legislative info, see https://bullypolice.org, https://safeyouth.gov andhttps://bullying.gov.

* Statistics from ‘Team Up To Stop Bullying’ and Sears