Videos of High School Student Bulling Shown on Internet

   Videos of a person, believed to be a student at the Hokkaido Prefectural Hakuryo Senior High School in Sapporo, being bullied have been leaked and shown on web sites, including YouTube, it was learned on Nov. 9, 2006. Complaints began rushing to the school in the morning of the same day. Similar calls began to pour in also to the board of education of the prefecture later on the day, making the officials busy answering the phone.

   There were two of those videoed scenes. One that was taken in a class room, and the other one that appeared to have been taken near a bust stop. Besides YouTube, they are likely to have been uploaded to a number of other internet sites.

Most Likely Taken By Bulliers

Videos of the bullying also shown on YouTube

   Shown in one of the scenes are a girl student talking violently to a boy student sitting with his head down. The girl student says something like, “Terribly in a bad position, aren’t you?” and “I don’t forget! Listen to me! Do you remember? Say something.” She also violently shakes the boy student. Laughter of a young man and a number of other people can be heard.

   The other scene is believed to have been taken near a bus stop on a street. In this, a young man wearing sunglasses tries to prevent a boy student, apparently the same boy who appeared in the first scene, from walking by grabbing the rucksack the student is carrying. The student tries to avoid the man’s doing and to escape. But the man stubbornly continues to pull the rucksack. When the student somehow manages to escape, another person who was taking the video of the scene shouts, “xxx is running away.” The man wearing the sunglasses then looks toward the camera showing a V-sign with his fingers. The person taking the video asks the man, “Did he hate us?” “Yeah, he ran a way,” the man says.

   Unless what were shown in the videos were staged, they must have been the examples of actual bulling. As the pictures shown on the video are coarse, it appears that the videos were taken with a mobile phone equipped with camera device. From the talking to each other of the persons appearing in the scenes, the videos were very likely to have been taken by the bullies. It is not known how the video scenes leaked and shown on the internet sites.

School Admits the Bulling

   Tens of threads related to the video scenes have been started on the internet forum 2channel. The names of the bullies in the video are mentioned in these threads. The maps of the Hakuryo Senior High School and the houses believed to be of the bullies are also exposed.

   A report carried by the Nov. 9, 2006 issue of the Mainichi newspaper quoted Toshiyuki Wakabayashi, Vice-principal of the high school as saying, “We thought that the bullying ended and kept an eye on what might follow. But, as the consequences were as they were, we regret we failed in taking measures in time.”

   The school authority thus admitted in effect that there was bullying and the videos were shown on the internet.

   J-Cast News also requested for interviews with the school and the board of education. But the persons in charge were apparently busy in coping with the matter and had not made any reply as of the evening of Nov. 9.