Tim Dower: I was very moved by Eva Vitali last night

I was very moved by the piece on One News last night featuring the teenager who got a terrible beating at school. This is Eva Vitali, she's 13, and it happened at Orewa College back in May. We're all too familiar with this kind of brutal playground nastiness. Three or four against one, that's brave eh? Eva's shoved to the ground, they're pulling on her hair and then it's punching and kicking her when she's down. As anyone who's experienced this kind of thing at school knows, it starts off maybe with a bit of shoving and eventually escalates. In Eva's case she'd previously been shoved down the stairs by someone she didn't know and put it down to an accident. On the day of the attack itself, out in the open on school grounds, some little ratbag is filming it, and posts it to social media. Back in the day, the worst of it was the violence itself and the fear of when and where the next assault might come from. Now, the propagation of that violence and humiliation is perhaps even worse than being hit. The perpetrators seek notoriety, fame and even some kind of perverse acknowledgement that they can't find elsewhere in their lives. And they have the perfect platform for it in the sewer of social media. In Eva's case, not only did she have to endure the physical stuff, bad enough on its own, but the messages from students at other schools telling her they wanted a go as well. I'm not going to rant on about that aspect of it this morning. I'd rather just say something about the positive I drew from that report last night. From Eva's attitude and what you saw about the family she's got around her. She talked about the emotional impact being on the receiving end has, and how difficult it was to open up about what was going on at school. And this quote "People can be really mean sometimes, but it's not your problem, it's theirs" she said. Eva says she's moving on, and get this, she's forgiven them. Wow. What a great kid.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.