Extreme Bullying: Hazing and Harassment [Video]

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Hazing commonly involves physically abusive, emotionally degrading and/or sexually violating acts that are used as a way to initiate a person into a group. This program examines the growing surge of hazing incidents at high schools around the country, and distinguishes between different types of hazing practiced by girls and boys alike—brutal social humiliations, tortuous physical endurance ceremonies, online cyberbullying and more. Viewers hear from nationally-prominent authors on the topic as well as real-life victims who share their harrowing stories. Teens may not realize that hazing is not a harmless “rite of passage” but instead can be a degrading, damaging and illegal assault. Program discusses the code of silence that often keeps witnesses and participants from coming forth to stop the abuse. Interviews offer words of support for hazing victims and those who may be drawn into participating.

Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

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it was bad enough where a friend of mine
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who was couple years older than me who
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was a great basketball players well
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didn’t play football a great athlete I
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didn’t like because he was just too
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nervous about well it could happen it
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could be one or two people let’s say on
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a football team who take it upon
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themselves to go after a new player and
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quote/unquote teach him precedents teach
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him his place they said you have nothing
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to worry about when you come up we have
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you back I took it as one of them I had
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played basketball with for a long time
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so I took it as if anything happens it’s
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not gonna happen to you you know you’re
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protected on under us so I said okay he
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thought that he had the coaches support
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he thought that the other fellows were
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going to see things to a certain point i
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sat there with the head coach and told
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him I don’t want to go to camp because
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of things that I’ve heard that go on a
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camp so for him to assure to not even
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question me when I say that and to
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assure me that I’ll be fine and send all
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these kids to come talk to me means as a
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coach myself means that you know what’s
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going on because of some kid said to me
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I don’t want to go in the locker room
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because I’m afraid what’s gonna happen
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to me if I don’t know what’s going on
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I’m gonna say well what are you afraid
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of like what’s gonna happen to you you
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didn’t expect that what could happen to
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you would change your life
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you didn’t expect other people to abuse
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you you didn’t expect to be a victim I
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mean you hear your you know I’m rugged
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I’m an athlete we went away to camp
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Hampshire it was the third afternoon
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that we were there that hasn’t happened
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each night
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something happened to one or two other
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kids I went down playing pool all the
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kids called me up I went up there and
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they two of the kids grabbed me pulled
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me in the other room there’s about 40
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kids and they’re just waiting for me
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with Matt you’re confused what went on
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in his mind
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geez I’m not measuring up is this normal
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how much longer will this go on maybe
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it’ll end in a few minutes
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actually it was able to break away and I
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ran away but a couple of kids that
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caught up to me when I went around the
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around the back so I could get out the
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door they carry me back in and they
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abused me different ways physically
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sexually and ultimately led to a lot of
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mental you know abuse as well as
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threatening me you know if you tell
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anyone will kill you like they treat her
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like it’s the military like they have to
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mentally break them to form them into
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something that they’re supposed to be to
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be on a football team or whatever to
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make him tougher hazing has gone from
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it’s come from being telling someone you
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go do this and you go do it on your own
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goodwill – you’re gonna do this and if
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you don’t want so we’re gonna make you
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just we’re gonna hold you down we’re
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gonna carry you we’re gonna we’re gonna
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beat you up we’re gonna do all these
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things it’s gone from carrying water to
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to this and it’s it’s that’s just a
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horrible thing these are really bad
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things and if we saw this happened to a
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female from a male we’d be outraged but
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we know the legal system would jump in
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with male-on-male it’s not even reported
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the same through uniform crime reports
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it’s listed in another category it’s not
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even listed at rate well everyone at
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school is just talking about
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people harassed me at school giving me a
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hard time because of everything that I
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went through and then I started fighting
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everyone in school that caused a lot of
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problems for me and I saw myself getting
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increasingly worse you know mentally in
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my decision-making I just said screw
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this I I can’t deal with this I can’t
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hold I can’t hold it in anymore
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you

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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