Amazon Bullycide Book Page Category:  Education/Training Publisher: BeWrite Books ISBN-10:  0952912120 Pages: 282 Copyright: Jan 10 2011 ISBN-13: 9781906609979 This is the book that identified, named and exposed 'bullycide' ... a previously secret syndrome of bully-associated child suicide claiming countless young lives in our schoolyards. Launched in 2001 to rave reviews in the world media, this is the book that launched  a thousand scholarly studies, positive changes in government, police and education authority police, countless newspaper and magazine articles, TV and radio documentaries and discussions, hundreds of websites ... and sparked an international campaign against bullying. This second edition was released by BeWrite Books in paperback and all ebook formats in 2011. Includes full photo-file. Excerpt Chapter 1 Strawberry Fields Forever The story of Stephen Shepherd. Britain's first recorded bullycide. Let me take you down 'cos I'm going to strawberry fields, nothing is real. Nothing to get hung about. Strawberry fields forever. John Lennon Stephen Shepherd walked alone. His longest lonely walk took him a lifetime. He never came home. Stephen lay down in the faraway strawberry fields where he had spent the only happy day of his eleven short years on earth ... and he stayed in Strawberry Fields Forever. John Lennon had written the song a few weeks before. Then Stephen died and made the words mean more than the Beatle, writing of a Salvation Army home for lost boys a few miles from the scene of Stephen's death, could ever have imagined. Stephen willed himself to death and became Britain's first recorded bullycide. A cruel January night in 1967, it was, with rain whipping. He'd tossed away his sodden shoes. The chill nibbled like rats. And he was all but blind without the cheap wire-rimmed National Health specs he had discarded on his ten-mile trek. He'd made sure he would see no more terrible tomorrows. He stood and shivered in the moonless black where his nightmares and dreams would finally meet. Then he lay in the lee of a drainage ditch and his nightmare faded. We can only hope his sweet dream of peace began that night; that he did not suffer long before sleep overcame him. It was fifty-one days before a wayward dog found what the bitter northern winter and the creeping things had left of Britain's first bullycide. No one will ever know if it took merciful hours or painful days of agony for Stephen to find the solace his young heart craved. He was an intelligent lad was Stephen. He knew that in England they laughed at a town called Wigan. It isn't by the sea but they'd tell you it had a pier. George Formby's Dad was innocently to blame for that. His famous film star son with the toothy grin and the ukulele - born a stone's throw from Stephen's two-up-two-down - made it England's private joke. Stephen knew that even in Wigan folks needed a joke of their own and laughed at the huddle of scruffy terraces next door at Higher Ince where he lived. They called the stinking, smoking slag tips there The Black Alps. That was the Wiganer's giggle. He knew that in Higher Ince there was Rose Bridge Secondary Modern School where he suffered his days. In one direction, the bus could take you to posh Hindley and Abram Grammar. The bus going the other way reached even posher Wigan Grammar School. Cost you tuppence if you had it. But Rose Bridge was where the sons of rag and bone collectors and blue-scarred pit men studied for unemployment or worse. If Rose Bridge was a joke for Incers it was a bad one because the school was better than most in poverty-stricken Lancashire. But there was one joke left at the bottom of the pile. At Rose Bridge School they laughed at this frail eleven-year-old boy called Stephen Shepherd in clinic specs and baggy Rupert Bear pants. Stephen was the fag end of jokes. At just after four on a sweaty June day he had a right to feel he was the only one in the whole country who wasn't laughing. He was hobbling the couple of hundred yards home to Granny Nelly's in Brook Street. He wore battered football boots with some heel studs missing. His walking shoes were strung around his neck by their laces, reeking and soggy from the classmates who'd peed in them while he was on the playing field. They'd kicked him around a bit. Par for the course for Stephen at the end of a school day. But this time his left arm felt funny. It was heavy and he couldn't move his fingers. It was numb and didn't hurt much now so he could still manage the big toothy grin Granny Nelly expected when she opened the door to say his tea was ready. Beans on toast again. She told him to wash his hands. But he couldn't. His left arm hung limp and trying to lift it with his right hand shot bolts of agony from wrist to shoulder. Granny Nelly heard his hiss of pain. Gently, she peeled off his denim jacket and yellow shirt. She ran thick, washerwoman fingers over his pale skin. "Well. Ast go t'bottom of ower stairs! It's broke," she said. "Flippin' broke. Tha's bin fightin'." "Playing football, Granny," Stephen told her. "Tackle, like." They didn't talk much on the two big double-decker cherry-red Wigan Corporation buses they had to take to reach the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary up Wigan Lane where the fancy people lived and where they played bowls on their manicured green. They didn't need to. Granny Nelly knew he hadn't been fighting and Stephen knew the broken bone had nothing to do with a football game where he was never allowed near the ball. It had started as it had almost daily for as long as he could remember. First, the piss slopping in his shoes. Then the bell after games to ring the end of the school day and the start of his torment. Always it began with the same three lads. Same age as Stephen. Not much bigger. Food wasn't all it might have been in Higher Ince back in 1967. Nobody was that much bigger than anyone else on a staple diet of chips and soggy meat and tater pies. Parental separation was rare too. So the taunts began with jibes about his parents, living in separate houses in the same little town. The fact that he had to live with old Granny Nelly and so did his dad. Mum Theresa, who lived round the corner, and his father, Andrew, had gone their separate ways. Stephen didn't know why they were apart but it would be typical for him to have assumed it was somehow his fault. Then the bully boys would poke fun at his limp, the souvenir of an old accident when he'd been hit by a bus whilst biking over the road in terror from a stranger who'd approached him near the local park. Uneven Stephen. They would tug at his yellow-checked pants and finger-jab his skinny chest. They'd call him "specky" and "matchstick man". His slightly buck teeth didn't help him as they'd helped Formby. Sometimes the torment would come to blows. Stephen didn't often fight. Stephen was fought. It was all part of his life. Like jam butties for dinner and the cinema treat once a week. This time was little different from the others. They'd snatched away his glasses so that the ring of faces around him became a blur like a crowd picture where everyone moved just as the shutter clicked. He couldn't tell where the punches and kicks were coming from, how many kids had joined the fun. Then something hard struck him just below his left elbow. He'd never hurt like that before. He dropped to the gritty ground and groped for his specs with his good hand. When he found them and slipped them on he could see that he was now alone. Soon the grubby plaster cast put on at the infirmary was covered like a toilet wall with smudged schoolboy graffiti. Even in his pain Stephen was a figure of fun. Even his broken arm was a joke. Stephen's one school pal was Stanley Holland, son of a rag collector with a donkey and cart. Stan had done well for himself. He bought a big house in a smart residential area. But he didn't feel comfortable there and he brought his wife and two children back to a new home a hop, skip and a jump from where he and Stephen had lived as kids. Stan has the heart of a fine father, not only to his own children, but to the kids he coaches football whenever he can snatch time from his busy work schedule. "Stephen didn't cry or shout. He never stood up for himself. Never complained to teachers or his family. So it was like the others thought he had no feelings. He was fair game for a ragging. Maybe if he'd just bawled or hit out occasionally? I would have. I was the same size as him. I was in loads of fights and always gave as good as I got. But ... well ... Stephen wasn't me. "We talked about it sometimes, all the insults and the thumpings, kickings and things. He said he wasn't bothered. He said it had always been like that for him. And I used to leave it at that. You're no psychologist as a kid. I know now that Stephen was bothered. "He needed help. Ince was a tough old place in those days. You didn't go whingeing about bullies. Anyway, if you did say anything you'd only be told to stand up for yourself. Folks in Ince wouldn't have understood a lad who just couldn't do that. "See, we were the result of two generations of world wars. We weren't supposed to do anything but fight back when our backs were against the wall. Our folks didn't understand that things had changed. It's not people you should fight, it's war itself. There wasn't a lot of help for the likes of Stephen in a hard town like Ince. I wonder if there's any real help even today." Stephen's cast came off a few weeks later. He'd stuck to his football injury tale. But it was nonsense. There was no injury on the field. Everybody at school knew he'd taken another good thrashing. One of the lads had whacked him with a length of wood in the playground after school. Just for a laugh. For Stephen, the incident was soon forgotten, merging with the hundreds of other bully attacks he'd suffered for as long as he could recall. There seemed only one thing he wanted to remember. "It was a day out picking strawberries in some fields at a little village called Newburgh ten or so miles away, near Parbold," Stanley told me. "A local Cub mistress had invited him because there were a couple of spare seats on the coach. He made three bob for the day's work, fifteen pence in today's money. He never stopped talking about it. Said it was the only happy day he'd ever had. I remember he'd even got a bit of a suntan on his face. He used to go on and on about that day. "Looking back, I suppose it must have been the one day in his life when he wasn't scared to death of a bully gang. Not looking over his shoulder. Just picking strawberries couldn't in itself account for how special that day was to him." Even now Ince is in denial and Stan, like many others - in spite of police findings, his own childhood memories and the words of an investigative coroner which confirm that Stephen was bullied to death - sometimes feels unsure of whether Stephen was a real bullycide or the sad victim of a child murderer. Many I've spoken with feel more comfortable with a murder theory or accidental death. Anything but bullycide. The Cub mistress, Elsie Wilkinson, is seventy-five now and almost blind. But she sees the past with crystal clarity and is another who cannot forget Stephen Shepherd's face: "I'd known him a long time," she says. "He'd stand there alone at the back of the Cub hall. That day in the strawberry fields was the first time I'd ever seen him happy, ever seen his lovely smile. I wanted the clocks to stop. For his sake I didn't want the day to end. Next I heard of him he was dead in those very fields." Stephen would pay only one more visit to the strawberry fields of Newburgh, and he'd find a more permanent escape from torment. Stan would find himself playing a gruesome role ... that of Stephen Shepherd himself. Granny Nelly is long gone now. But Stephen's Auntie Marjory Jolly is a lively old dear with a teenage haircut and a smile that curls and sparkles like the local River Douglas did when it was still clear and pretty and pregnant with flashing fish. She has almost psychic sensitivity and a long memory. "He used to come to my house a lot for his tea. He'd have bruises or maybe I'd have to stitch up a rip in his clothes. "But boys will be boys. I just put it down to scrapping. I did a lot of scrapping myself as a kid. That was Wigan. Tough. Nothing wrong with it if it doesn't go too far. Nothing wrong with it if you're sticking up for yourself like I did. "We didn't know, you see. We didn't know Stephen wasn't a scrapper. He was a victim. The signs were there all right. We just didn't read them properly. Like he'd hardly got any friends. He hated going to school even though he'd spend his nights alone in his room reading and reading and reading like a scholar. He loved to study. He hated school. Not the lessons, we know now, but the times in between. "Tell you summat: I always felt there was going to be a tragic death close to me and mine. I'm like that. I can sense these things. I just never saw in my mind's eye that it was going to be little Stephen who would leave us. "He only went out once a week. Always to the pictures. And always on his own. I should have known. We all should have known. But, well, we didn't". Marjory's husband, Jimmy, remembers Stephen and talks fondly of the wee man who walked alone. His forceful local accent paints vividly coloured pictures of a child in torment. Weekends for Stephen, he told me, were strolls along the mucky towpaths of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, lock-spanning and whispering shy hellos to fishermen with as much chance of a catch as Stephen had of happiness. Sometimes they were solitary climbs over the Black Alps with a dog-eared library paperback stuffed into his hip pocket. He'd carefully hide from other boys scrambling with giggles and mud-caked boots or clogs, from Walter Hurst's cloggers shop, up the heaps of grey industrial spoil. But, come Monday, there was no hiding place from the terror waiting for Stephen at school. Day after day he took his punishment, then grieved in silence for his life. Until he could endure no more. It was four in the afternoon of 25 January 1967. The usual gang was waiting as he crept out of school. The thumps, kicks and insults fell. He found Stanley Holland and, with tears streaking the grime on his cheeks, whispered: "I have said a prayer to God. Why do I have to live like this? If I do I must kill myself." He limped to the home of Granny Nelly and begged his three shillings (fifteen pence) weekly pocket money from his father. He left behind the last book he had been reading, "Stephen's Secret Trail". It's now out of print and my extensive search produced no old copies which might give a hint as to how it may have touched Stephen's troubled soul at that time. Only the title suggests a clue. At 5:15pm he set out to walk the two miles to Wigan's Court Cinema. He sat through the early showing of, ironically, The Agony and the Ecstasy, the story of Michelangelo's own suffering and suicide. Afterwards in the pouring rain he took his long, lonely walk back to the strawberry fields. Stephen's own Secret Trail. He was never seen alive again. Old time copper Detective Chief Superintendent Harold Prescott found the missing child report on his desk less than twenty-four hours after Stephen's disappearance had been reported and, with the horrific Moors Murders he'd worked on fresh in his mind, he launched the biggest murder hunt in the history of Lancashire County Police. Stephen may still have been alive when Prescott picked up the file, shivering, or mercifully unconscious in his isolated, waterlogged ditch as hundreds of police swept into action. But school bullies and strawberry fields were the last things on the minds of Prescott and his huge search team. Ex-bobby Wally Woods - first cop on the scene when Stephen was found and now retired - told me: "There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Stephen had been abducted. Probably murdered. I don't remember anyone asking much about his school life. Even if we'd known about the bullying, well, 'sticks and stones' and all that - "No. We were sure we had another perverted child killer on our hands. We expected to find a body with marks of violence." Granny Nelly's little house in Brook Street was crammed when Stephen's disappearance was reported. His estranged parents had arrived and arranged themselves at opposite ends of a worn couch. Uniformed and plain-clothed police were sitting or standing where they could. One, a young policewoman, was fighting back tears, I well recall. Local reporters and photographers made tea for everyone and tried not to get in the way. Press, police and the local community were on the same team in those days. Only when the uniforms left did Stephen's mother, Theresa, break down. Only I was with her, a young cub reporter, stirring the sugar into her cup and shyly holding her hand. Then she wanted to talk. To talk and talk, as if by word-walking through his life she could conjure her son back into that stuffy, scruffy little room. "He had to live round the corner with his granny. It wasn't because I wanted him to. I loved him. But there's only two beds at our house and there was his sister, our Christine. Then me and his dad had decided to separate. It was better for Stephen with Granny Nelly where his father had gone to live. I saw him every day. I mean, it's just down the street isn't it? "He was a nice little lad, you know. Fun at home. Wouldn't hurt a fly." She gave me her only photograph of Stephen. It hangs on my wall and is reproduced in the picture file of our book. She used the words "loved" and "was". He'd not been missing long by this stage. But Theresa, a pretty young lass in those days, had a mother's instinct and already thought of Stephen in the past tense. In a dozen later interviews she never showed any real expectation of his being found alive. She would sit, thin and pale, neatly dressed and drinking cup after cup of tea, waiting for the news she knew would one day arrive and allow her heart to finally break. That first day of the hunt was low key in comparison to what was to come, confined to cops interviewing friends, family and neighbours. But on day two police were sure they had a major crime on their hands. Extra men were drafted in from the nearby boroughs of Widnes, Bolton, Leigh and Chorley. A two-mile stretch of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal was drained and its foul, black bed hand-searched for clues which might have been hiding in the muck among the rusted bike frames and sacks of rotting, drowned kittens. Sixty dog handlers scoured slag tips and wasteland as frogmen from Warrington fumbled in the filthy, chill waters of canals, lakes, and deep pit flashes. By Sunday, 200 police, joined by hundreds of local civilian volunteers, were combing Wigan inch-by-inch and coming up with nothing. On Monday a special task force from the Regional Crime Squad visited schools in the area and interviewed teachers and children about Stephen's life and habits. Nobody brought up the fact that he'd lived in terror of bullying. It didn't occur to them to mention something as workaday as schoolyard scraps and catcalling. The search area was widened to take in surrounding towns and parklands. More than 8,000 people were interviewed. Six had seen a boy answering Stephen's description at the Court Cinema the night of his disappearance. Several other supposed sightings were checked and ruled out. A single anonymous letter - postmarked Bolton - turned out to be a cruel hoax. As the murder hunt reached huge proportions, so did national media interest and the little town of Higher Ince was besieged by reporters, photographers, TV, and radio crews. For the first time in its history, Ince became a familiar place name nationwide. Detective Chief Superintendent Harold Prescott, who died recently, knew the value of intensive press coverage. "As long as you lads are here," he told us reporters at one of his daily press conferences, "I've got an extra fifty million detectives in Britain looking out for this young feller." There was always a tidbit for the press. Something to keep the kettle boiling, as the late DCS Prescott used to put it. One day the tidbit was Stephen's pal, Stanley Holland. He was to star in the first ever reconstruction in British police history of a missing person's last steps. A stroke of police genius. "I was only twelve," Stan said. "I didn't know what the heck was going on. I remember feeling a bit like a film star with all the attention and the cameras. But I think I knew something bloody serious was about. They told me I might be able to help them find my friend. How was I to know they really thought he was dead?" Police kitted Stanley out as Stephen's double: an identical blue denim jacket buttoned, as always, to the throat, the blue pants with their yellow check, the scuffed black shoes. His brown tousled hair was similar to the missing boy's as were his borrowed spectacles. At precisely 5:15pm on Wednesday, the same time Stephen had left his father's house seven days before, they walked him through the streets to Wigan and the Court Cinema. It was like the local Whitsun church parade. Only silent. And a little more holy. Local folks lined the curbs and in Stanley's wake followed scores of pressmen, TV cameramen, and the merely curious. It was meant to jog memories. It didn't. No one (least of all the neighbours, who'd always said 'hope for the best' standing around the local pitheads after an underground explosion) admitted the secret feeling that Stanley was retreading footsteps to a grave. Next, the local Wigan Observer weekly newspaper was called in to superimpose a school photograph of Stephen's face onto a picture of Stanley's Stephen-dressed body, a tricky technique in those days. Scissors and glue and a lot of darkroom work. It was colourised, circulated to news media and turned into posters to be plastered for miles around. Even on trains and buses. But DCS Prescott and his massive search squad was getting no closer to the strawberry fields of Newburgh. The school bullies who had caused all of this were innocently, like most of the other local kids, lapping up what to them was a free circus. As a rule, not much happened in the Ince of the sixties. A schoolboy joke was that they used to watch the traffic lights change at Ince Bar crossroads for a bit of excitement come Saturday night. Those were the days when "Beyond Our Ken" for half an hour on Sunday radio was looked forward to the whole week through. Broke dads used to tell their wives they were "going to t'bar". They didn't mean a drinking bar. They meant Ince Bar, the local bus stop. It had a bench where they could sit and chew the fat. No money for anything better. One of Stephen's bullies was thirteen at the time. He's a man with his own family to care for now. He doesn't want to be named but told me "It was a long, long time ago. I sometimes wonder if what I think I remember is what actually happened or what I've made up in my own head since. The guilt, you know? And what folks have told me over the years. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say I was blameless. I was part of it all. But back then, well, I was just one of the lads. Ribbing was what we did. Thumping and that. I was bullied myself lots of times. It was water off a duck's back to me. I suppose I thought it was the same with Stephen. By the time I found out that wasn't the way of things, it was too late to say sorry. "Stephen was a nice boy. Quiet like. But he was a bit different, what with his mam and dad being split up and his limp and those daft specs and Bugs Bunny teeth. Lads always pick on kids like that - different kids. We used them to make us feel bigger, like. To prove we're better. Show off to the girls maybe. Could be we were a bit frightened of people who were different. We didn't analyse it too much. Hey, I didn't even know the word 'analyse' then. Bet my teachers didn't either! "My own dad used to tell me to fight back when I was bullied. But what happened to Stephen changed me. I've never told my own kids to stand up and fight. I'd say to them, 'tell me about it'. We could maybe all have a chat with the kid doing the bullying. I'd get them to try to make a friend of him. Turn the bully into a protector. "A lot of folks around here think that way since Stephen died. Ince used to be a tough town. All hard-cases. Our dads would tell us about clog fights with a couple of lads in shorts kicking shit out of each other's shins with their clog irons. Sometimes they'd sharpen them on curbstones and there'd be blood everywhere. The winner was the one left standing. They called it 'porrin'. Our dads would laugh about it. Ince was tough. We were proud of it. Sick, eh? "What happened to Stephen made us all think again. I see the kids coming out of Rose Bridge School now, laughing and chatting. Friends like. It's like my own schooldays when I was a bit of a bully boy were from another century. Like so long ago when they hanged toddlers for pinching bread. That remote. "Aye, we called Stephen names and bashed him up sometimes. We didn't know any better. "I'll tell you something strange. You remember Stephen telling Stan Holland that he'd prayed to God to ask why his life was miserable? Well he also told him God had answered and promised that the hand that struck him would be broken, and one of the gang broke his arm in a games class the day after Stephen disappeared." Another local boy, Billy Green, was the same age as Stephen when he disappeared. He's in his forties now and told me: "He was different from the rest, you see, shy, timid, withdrawn, little and with those round specs and the teeth. He stood out from the gang. It made him an obvious target. "I didn't have anything against him personally. I was one of the lads. Even I had a fight with him shortly before he went missing. That time, though, he did fight back. He might even have got the better of me. It was so long ago the memory's dim." Theresa, Stephen's mother, lives a few miles now from where Stephen was born. She had a new husband in her life but has been widowed for six years. Almost from birth, the aches in her heart have been chronic. Through another family member, she found I was writing this book and asked me to call her. She said, whispering as she might in a confessional, as though she somehow carried some blame: "I've been trying to fight it all out of my mind. But you can't do that. Those terrible days, waiting for the inevitable, are always with me. I relive them every moment of my life. They are as much a part of my being as my arms and legs. "I would give anything for this not to have happened to my boy. But it did. Please, please ask people to give value to his life - short as it was. Tell them to do something to stop this thing happening again and again. Tell them Stephen wants people to learn from what he had to do. That would be at least a little comfort. Tell them to read your book. I never will. I couldn't face reliving it all again. Tell the others ... tell them to read it." Sister Christine was a couple of years younger than Stephen when he died. Now living in nearby Hindley with husband Frank, she says: "Back in those days nobody told us kids what was going on really. The whole episode is a kind of kaleidoscope of confusion in my memory. "Shepherd was an unusual name in Ince. I remember them catcalling Stephen 'Ba-ba' and 'go look after your sheep', 'Bo-Peep' and that kind of thing. "But now I know most of the truth (I had sent her the results of my research - the first time she'd seen the stark truth in black and white) and it hurts me deeply. Something has got to be done to save our other Stephen Shepherds. Our brothers and sisters and sons and daughters are just too precious to sweep this bullycide thing under the mat." Like so many who have suffered a bullycide loss in the family, Christine turned to youth work as a career. Even husband Frank has become a Scoutmaster. She said: "It's got to be more than just coincidence that I decided to dedicate my life to children and young people. I suppose I carried some guilt. You see, my training and experience now means that I believe I could have saved Stephen's life if I'd known then what I know now about children like him. "As it was, I used to see him beaten up by other lads and, even though I was younger, and a girl at that, I'd just jump on the bigger ones' backs and try to pull them off. In a way I suppose I'm still doing the same thing for others only in a more sophisticated, effective way. I've always been on the side of the underdog and I can honestly say I've effected changes which have helped save at least two children from bullycide in my time as a youth worker. Two Stephens if you like. So, in a way, his value is already showing through his little sister. His sacrifice hasn't been entirely in vain. "Way back when Stephen was missing I was going through hell. I loved him. He was always good and fun to me even if he did once turn my doll's pram into a trolley cart. Mum insisted I go to school over that awful period. She thought it would help take my mind off things. But almost every step I took on the way I'd pass posters demanding 'have you seen this boy?' and the picture was that of my own brother! "After he was found dead I just couldn't believe it. I suppose I was in shock, denial. I kept thinking I could see him in the street. I used to pray that he would speak to me. Then, one day, it was as though he really did. It was uncanny and most probably helped me make the decision to take up youth work. It was about ten years after he died. Now I feel, when I pick up his photograph, that I can look him in the eye without that overwhelming sense of guilt. "I was bullied myself after Stephen died, not because of his death but because of ... well ... something. Maybe because I had a dyslexia problem, maybe something else. I came from a very poor family and that was good target material too. But does there have to be a reason? "I used to cry every night. I couldn't understand what was happening to my life. I suppose it made me even closer to Stephen subconsciously. But I got over the bullying. I became what they called 'The Cock of the School' - the best scrapper - and people started to leave me alone. But that's not the only way of dealing with the problem, of course. "I teach my own two children and those I work with how to discover respect for each other and self-esteem, self-worth. I work on their backgrounds and make a major point of highlighting the positive things in their lives. I even teach self-counseling so that children can work out many problems for themselves. "So often a child in danger of suicide because of bullying has many other problems, whether it be trouble at home, drug-taking or some kind of physical difference. But bullying is the pinnacle. It's bullying that can eventually kill." Christine added: "In my experience both in what I have been through as a child and later through my experience as a youth worker, I feel it is very important to listen to children and young people. You can listen but not really hear unless you believe in their right to be heard. When I was a child growing up in Ince, you were to be seen and not heard. Today we should believe that children and young people have a voice and a right to feel proud of themselves. "In a way I suppose one of the differences between my brother and me was that, deep down, I liked myself. It is very hard to like yourself when bullies are constantly putting you down. Having a name like Shepherd didn't help. I was called names like 'Sheppy' and kids would call 'go mind your sheep.' 'What's wrong with that?' I would hear adults say: 'Sticks and stones'. Well, a lot is wrong with name-calling as any bully survivor will tell you. You lose self-esteem bit by bit. You lose your self. "I remember waiting in fear as each child in class had to read out a passage from a book. It was almost unbearable. Unlike my brother, I had difficulty with reading and spelling. The ridicule I suffered from teachers and children is still with me today. "In my work with young people now I always encourage them to write. But I always make a point of telling them that their spelling isn't important. "A child needs to feel proud of himself and needs to like himself. Unlike Stephen, I always knew I was a strong person. There were times when I had to struggle to remember this to reach my goals and ambitions. Help sometimes comes in strange ways. I remember a teacher who could see through me - the young girl who was hurting but headstrong and acting older than her years. She took me on one side and told me I didn't need to pretend with her. She not only listened, she even heard my language as crying out for help. "I know as a young person I needed to listen to who was around me and be prepared to help. I needed to learn to trust and to look for that special person. They were always there, I found. I was able to help myself because of love for myself - the way forward was open. "That's why I was guilty over Stephen's death. I felt for a long time that I could have saved him. I knew his qualities. He didn't. He needed to be made to recognise them. It's vital to know and to like yourself. I know this now. I didn't see it that clearly at just ten years of age." After my conversations with Stephen's remaining nearest and dearest, there was a family conference in Ince to discuss my proposed words for use here in this book. Christine told me the family was hopeful that, at last, through Bullycide: Death at Playtime, Stephen was to be done some justice. Stephen's memorial service at the Elim Four Square Church in Wigan, just a stone's throw from where he was last seen alive, was packed. I was there as a reporter and invited mourner - it was my day off from the local press agency. The tiny coffin containing Stephen's few remains was buried in Gidlow cemetery a few miles away in the town of Standish. Family poverty at the time precluded a gravestone. Years later they could not even find his resting place. I found it for them only with help from a council worker in the huge graveyard many, many years later. The grave-digger wrote the plot number on a scrap of toilet paper (no insult intended. He was a man of deep feeling but he was busy burying the 300th victim of Wigan 'flu that day in March 1999 and he hadn't the time to search for a notepad). Stephen Shepherd: No: R/C 21 380. The framed toilet paper tombstone is a treasured keepsake. At his burial site there was no name, no flowers, just an overturned plastic pot filled with weeds. It now sits on my desk. It's growing a single strawberry plant. Sister Christine, her husband, Frank, and Stephen's mother, Theresa, have now clubbed their savings for a headstone. Nothing ever worked for Stephen Shepherd. Nothing had been tried by those in authority who should have known his plight. He lay in his cherished strawberry field as police searched in vain for clues to a murderous pervert who never existed in the accepted criminal sense. It was left to chance to solve the mystery of his disappearance. An early afternoon stroll around the fields near his country home by council roadworker David Edgeley culminated in his retriever dog making a gruesome discovery. He told me: "He was sniffing around. You know what retrievers are like. Well, he'd climbed down into a ditch at the side of the field. I knew it would be mucky and I could just see what the reaction would be if I brought him home trailing mud onto the clean lino. "I went to the ditch and called to him to come to heel. I saw he was sniffing at something. Something like a pile of dirty old rags. I looked closer. I knew. I just knew I was looking at a decomposed body. It was the most horrible sight. I don't mind telling you I was ill right there and then. "I was only twenty-three. I'd never seen anything like that before. I called off the dog and ran to the Red Lion pub in Newburgh village where they had a phone. It was only half a mile or so away. I called the police." PC Wally Woods answered the call at his station in nearby Parbold. He rushed to the scene. Looking into the ditch he could make out the checked trousers and blue jacket of the boy a whole county's police force, the second biggest in the land, had been seeking for fifty-one days. "There wasn't much left of him. A few strands of clothing. I won't describe the rest. It's too upsetting. He'd been there a long time, you see, in that ditch. He was flat on his stomach. I didn't have to see his face," PC Woods told me hours after the discovery. Minutes later, shortly after 3:00pm, the sleepy stone village of Newburgh was stiff with blue uniforms. Stephen was face down in the five-foot-deep ditch, partly hidden by brambles. Police trampled the bare strawberry fields searching for his shoes and spectacles. They were never found. Local folks think he had tossed them away, burning his bridges, determined to go through with his tragic resolve. His remains were taken to a mortuary a few miles away at Ormskirk General Hospital where Home Office pathologist Dr Charles St Hill began a painstaking post-mortem examination. Theresa, Granny Nelly, and Stephen's father did not have to suffer looking at what little was left of Stephen. They identified him by scraps of his clothing. Police set up a control centre at Woodcock Hall, the home of a local councillor, and immediately DCS Prescott held a press conference. "We are treating this as a serious crime and the Murder Squad has been called in," he announced. Everyone in the village was quizzed that same afternoon. Scores of police combed the fields. Children were warned to stay indoors. Press arrived in noisy droves and police turned a blind eye to the long hours being kept at the local pub where reporters, police and weary search-volunteers compared notes and swapped pints. The hue and cry for Stephen's killer was never louder. But the hunt, though more vigorous than any old hand had ever seen, was short. It was soon after midnight when Prescott again entered the Red Lion. Journalists who'd being queuing impatiently for the landlord's only phone fell silent. A chair was pushed forward and Prescott slumped into it, exhausted. The detective accepted a pint of best bitter from Jeff Barnes, the local freelance reporter and my boss at the time, tossed his sopping wet green trilby hat onto a table and said softly: "It's all over." He'd just got news from pathologist St Hill. No signs of violence on the body. Probable cause of death: exposure. So the police file was closed and, after a standing-room-only funeral opposite the cinema where he'd watched his last film, The Agony and the Ecstasy, a story of suffering and suicide, Stephen was borne to his final resting place. Past the hospital where his broken arm had been set, the long cortege reverently carried his coffin to an unmarked grave in Gidlow Cemetery four miles away. Exactly one year later, Jeff Barnes and I chanced upon each other at Stephen's graveside. We each carried flowers and in our embarrassment simply nodded a greeting before leaving. Cub reporter as I was then, I understood that Stephen's story hadn't ended in the Red Lion with the revelation that he had not been murdered. That's when it started. That's when this book's first sentence was drafted. It took the wisdom and nit-picking tenacity of South Lancashire Coroner Ronald A Lloyd to get to the truth and to winkle out the horror story of Stephen's life. Lloyd would never have used the word "bullycide". That would not have been his style. Professionally, he was a guarded man, a bureaucrat of the Old School who permitted himself little obvious emotion in court. Retired now, he does not want to be interviewed for this story, his son tells me. Too upsetting he said. Perhaps not even Lloyd, who faced a lifetime of needless death and horror, can forget Stephen Shepherd. But I was there when, after a seven-man jury in a stark Ormskirk courtroom returned its 'misadventure' verdict, stern Coroner Lloyd could not hold back these emotional words: "This was the tragedy of an unhappy child who recollected one particular place where he had spent perhaps the happiest day of his life and in his unhappiness decided to go back to that spot." He then recorded the only verdict available to him or any other coroner: Misadventure. Cause of death: Exposure. They didn't have bullycide in those days. Coroners still don't have that option today. Even Moors-murder-hardened Prescott, the man who predicted "bloody good killing weather" to me in the Liverpool Press Club the day before Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe went on his rampage of butchery, the detective who believed to the last that Stephen had been murdered, was forced to admit in open coroner's court: "Evidence has now emerged. Because of his physique, timidity and spectacles, Stephen was subjected to jibes and bullying. A most unhappy boy. I no longer suspect foul play." He hung his bare head, clasping his trademark trilby in his hands out of respect, and mumbled again the words, almost as though he felt guilty himself: "I no longer suspect foul play." He could and probably wanted to add: "not in the accepted criminal sense I have always been guided by." The words spoken in that dusty courtroom spoke of bullycide. Stephen is the first victim we can identify. He is by no means the last. Tim Field comments: Stephen was a typical victim. Poor eyesight, thick glasses, stuck-out teeth, shy, and scrawny. Different. But look beyond the stereotype and we find a respectful, sensitive young man who loved to study but who hated school. As our subsequent survivor stories testify, many targets of bullying recover from their abusive ordeal and lead fulfilling and successful lives, often bringing about change and touching the lives of many. Every bullycide robs society of a gentle, valuable and productive person. Most targets of bullying like to study but are prevented from doing so by daily uninhibited violence and aggression. Bullying is a type of thuggery which even today is still ignored or dismissed by many in authority, some of whom may be the childhood bullies described in these pages. And bullying doesn't stop when school is over. The bullies interpret inaction by those in charge as approval; uninterest, denial and inaction is tantamount to condoning their violence. As other stories in this book show, whilst Stephen lived in an impoverished area, social circumstances are not a significant factor in who gets bullied. Although Stephen's parents were separated, this often-identified target trait has little relevance. Many bullycides come from stable families. However, separation and divorce are periods of instability and uncertainty for children who become especially vulnerable at such times. In Stephen's case, separation and divorce were less common than they are today and the subject was taboo. Whatever the circumstances, vulnerability is a major attractant to bullies. Stephen was just different. The bullies nicknamed him "Uneven Stephen" because of his limp. Derogatory names repeated ad nauseum are a favourite taunt of maladjusted aggressors. Most targets of bullying are "different". Physically Stephen was not imbued with strength which he could have used to overcome violence with violence. Targets of bullying are not like that. They know in their heart from an early age that the way to resolve conflict is not by fighting but through dialogue and negotiation. Their mature interpersonal understanding is unfortunately suffused with naivety, for they also expect the responsible adults to know and understand that too. This mistaken expectation often leads to disaster. Targets of bullying almost always have a low propensity to violence. Bullies sense this and recognise that the child they pick on is not going to turn around and thump them. Should that happen, the cowardly side of the bully reveals itself; the bully runs straight to teacher for protection before returning to feed on easier prey. To overcome their innate cowardice, bullies may form gangs. Some children are happy to join in and indulge their taste for violence; other children join in for justified fear of otherwise becoming a target. When subsequently challenged, justifications abound: "It (his looks) made him an obvious target". The cowardly nature is also apparent: "We used them to make us feel bigger like." Bullies and their supporters know their behaviour is wrong. Most would probably prefer not to have to act like this but the bully or bullies at the centre have no qualms. The education culture highlights the difference between children who are aggressive and those who are not. Rewards and distinctions tend to go to the former. Like many children, Stephen suffered the indignity of being forced to play school football but was never allowed near the ball because the game was not his forte. The attitude towards non-athletic pupils was one of exclusion, ridicule and failure rather than one of inclusion, nurture and achievement. Many adults relate stories of abuse by PE teachers who would impose indignities upon their unfortunate and vulnerable charges as a precursor for administering corporal punishment with the frequency of a compulsive abuser. The British education system has often excluded those children who did not heap honours on their school through sporting prowess. This mindset may have waned in recent years but the change in attitudes has come about through a decline in resources for sporting activities rather than recognition of the inappropriateness of this mentality. Violence in the pit town where Stephen lived was a common occurrence. Fights were part and parcel of growing up in the harsh socioeconomic conditions at that time. Those with the strongest appetite for violence prevailed. Eventually the bullies broke Stephen's arm. If an adult is assaulted and suffers bodily injury or damage to possessions, the perpetrator will be arrested and charged with a criminal offence. A child committing the same offence during school hours in Stephen's day would have been overlooked. Violence towards children by other children was, and still often is, written off as "scrapping", "boisterousness", "boys will be boys", and so on. This discrepancy between society's treatment of violence towards adults and violence towards children is still apparent; corporal punishment, often an excuse for institutionalised sexual abuse, was only outlawed in the UK in 1999, over a century after parliament outlawed violence against animals. Corporal punishment is still condoned and encouraged in many countries, including some states in the allegedly civilized USA. When Stephen decided he could take no more and embarked on that fateful walk, the authorities could only think he had been murdered; there was a strong need to ascribe blame to someone evil who could be identified, arrested, vilified and punished. That Stephen had been driven to murder himself was not in the collective consciousness at that time. Many people today are still unable to grasp the depth of despair that drives people to constructively dismiss themselves from this incarnation. Denial is ever present, from the guilty party who is directly responsible to the witnesses and bystanders who watch and observe but who take no action. Stephen tried to ignore the bullying, tried not to make a fuss. What would people have done, anyway? In many cases, once parents become involved and the bullies are challenged, the bullying gets worse. When a child dies from bullycide, the family is devastated. The cherished son or daughter on whom the family has lavished so much time, energy and love is irreplaceably gone, denied the opportunity of a long fulfilling life. The community's investment in a valued member of society is wasted and society is denied its dividend. Parents describe a gaping hole in their lives; Stephen's grandmother died of a broken heart. "I think she died a little every day", a sibling reported in another case years later having borne the memory of her mother's unending heartache. As with all the cases featured in this book, it is the relentlessness which comes across clearly. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year bullies derive their "fun" by deliberately making their victims' lives a misery. It is a challenge to convey in words the daily terror that targets face every time they leave home. Stephen had nowhere to turn. With no prospect of resolution and no end in sight, desperation set in. He couldn't escape school until he was fifteen. For a child tormented daily, four more years of suffering is an eternity. His family provided him comfort but they had no power and no influence against a culture which condoned and rewarded violence, even if the reward was only to evade accountability. However, whilst most bullying goes on for years, for some the viciousness can drive the target to bullycide in an alarmingly short few weeks. END Chap One

The Times Education Supplement
The authors make their purpose clear. They intended to shock, and they succeeded. Although tragic stories dominate the book, there's lots of practical advice too. It's an angry book - an excellent book - a call to action and a cry on behalf of unhappy children.
Gerald Haigh

Yorkshire Post
A horrifying book - shocking - should be required reading for every education authority.
Liz Carnell

Sunday Life, Ireland
The book uncovers an almost secret syndrome, which is reaching epidemic proportions. The authors slam the authorities for doing little to tackle the problem.
Stephanie Bell