12-Year-Old with Epilepsy Faces Relentless Bullying, Parents Consider Homeschooling

Fares, a 12-year-old student, is placed in special classes for students with disabilities (Ulis*) because he has Doose syndrome, which can cause him to have epileptic seizures. Since then, he has been the scapegoat of some students in his class. "Every week, we go to the college because he is being insulted, beaten, even strangled. In the courtyard or in the toilets in general. When he manages to, Fares locks himself in the cubicle and calls us to come pick him up. Each time this happens, I ask to see a school official. They listen to me but nothing is concretely done. Since the beginning of the year, only one of the group has received two days of suspension," Sarah, the teenager’s mother, tells L’Indépendant.

His classmates will subject him to too much violence on March 22, during a break between classes. Fares will be pushed down the stairs. The daughter of a friend saw the scene and alerted the teenager’s mother. She finds her son, terrified, and with a bloodied face, in the fire truck. She immediately takes him to the Carcassonne hospital. "In addition to his two black eyes, his lower right eyelid has opened. He also has a broken nose. He obtained two days of ITT which should be revalued next week by a forensic doctor," specifies Sarah.

Faced with the difficulty of getting in touch with the Montpellier academy rectorate, she files a complaint against nine students. "I can’t let this gratuitous violence against my son go. The rectorate and the establishment must act so that these kids realize what they have done." After this episode, Fares no longer wants to go to school. "I’m afraid it will start again. I want to do homeschooling now," he says. This is ultimately what his parents are considering doing.

"Following the statement of the parents of a 6th grade student at the Jules Verne college in Carcassonne who indicate that they have filed a complaint for harassment against their child, the rectorate wishes to specify that the situation of this student and this family is known and followed with attention by the head of the establishment, in connection with the anti-bullying cell of the Montpellier academy," the Montpellier academy rectorate said in a statement.