Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

I'm a victim too: Internet video bully

"He abused me first... he was like `get to class, you idiot', all that sort of stuff," Ritchard Gale said.

The Sydney schoolboy who was body-slammed for bullying Year 10 student Casey Heynes in an internet video says he's also been a victim of bullies.

"I got bullied at primary school," Ritchard Gale told the Seven Network on Monday.

Ritchard, a Year Seven student, is depicted as the bully in the video, throwing a punch at Casey, who then body-slams him.

"I always used to get teased and I just snap back at that now," Ritchard said.

The Chifley College student also says that Casey in fact had bullied him prior to the altercation and threw the first punch.

"He abused me first... he was like `get to class, you idiot', all that sort of stuff," Ritchard said.

Peter Gale, the single father who is raising Ritchard, said he was worried about how the attention is affecting his son.

"(It has been) very hard, unbelievable," Gale said.

Ritchard, who has been dubbed "Ritchard the Rat" on some online forums, said he was not really sorry about teasing Casey because, he claimed, the older boy started it.

Ritchard's mother, Tina Gale, said she was shocked at the video showing Casey picking up her son and throwing him down onto the ground.

"My son could have been a paraplegic out of it for starters," she said.

Meanwhile Casey Heynes's father says he does not think it's safe for Casey to return to Chifley College.

"That is the attitude I got, you know, he has to learn to live with it," Colin Heynes told the Nine Network. "You know, be a man, man-up, whatever,

"He is not going back there... it is not a safe place for him."

Casey said that he wouldn't accept an apology from Ritchard as "it's just going to happen again".

"It doesn't really mean anything and he might just get his friends on me," he said.

Casey also said that his school had suspended someone who had bullied him in the past but that the bullies just come back and do it again.

He said he was bullied since he was in second grade, with children going as far as duct-taping him to a pole and teasing him about his weight.

On the now famous video Casey can be seen advancing towards the smaller boy, Ritchard, who repeatedly had hit him, with Casey picking him up and throwing him onto concrete ground.

The action has seen Casey dubbed "Casey The Punisher", or "Zangief" - the name of a fictional wrestler in a video game.

Ritchard sustained only a grazed knee in the incident.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: etwork, Seven Network

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: bullying, Casey Heynes, Ritchard Gale
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Consolidated Storage for Virtualised Server Environments
    This research brief is based on a recent Tech Target survey with more than 200 storage administrators and IT professionals in mid-sized and enterprise-class companies, and focuses on how these decision-makers view the storage-related challenges that result from server virtualisation. See the results.
    Learn more »
  • Consolidation Without Compromise
    Virtualisation of computer, storage and infrastructure is enabling the transformation of enterprise datacentres into private clouds. The impact is an unprecedented ability to consolidate infrastructure without compromise: no change to service level agreements (SLAs), no loss of performance or scale, and no regression in the organisation’s overall security posture. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Best practices for implementing 2048-bit SSL
    Secure sockets layer (SSL) technology continues to be essential to the growth of the web. With unabated increases in ecommerce traffic along with transmission of personal information, SSL is no longer just a nice to have capability; it is an absolute necessity. The requirement to protect information is further heightened by the universal availability of easy-touse hacking tools such as Firesheep. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments