Ben Grubb, The Age,June 25, 2011
A NSW school whose students participated in a Facebook site used for cyber-bullying has threatened to expel students under 13 who are using the social networking site. In an email to parents the principal of Northern Beaches Christian School, Stephen Harris, warned that students registered on Facebook and under the social network's age limit of 13 would have their enrolment reviewed. Either children had lied about their age or their parents had helped them join Facebook, he said. ''Let me be very clear - it is an immense parenting mistake to allow for either to happen,'' Mr Harris wrote in the email sent on Tuesday.
Yesterday the Herald reported that thousands of Sydney students from various schools had joined websites on which teenagers had been subjected to malicious sexual slander and cyber-bullying. The Christian school's general manager, Alan Schultz, said yesterday that conversations on sites such as Facebook could ''become an Animal Farm-style environment''.
''It's just complete anarchy and so open then for bullying and all sorts of negative things to happen,'' he said. Having a child's enrolment reviewed was a ''last resort'', Mr Schultz said.
The Education Department has arranged for police to run a cyber-bullying workshop at a school attended by recent victims. The department also admitted that one of the schools whose students were bullied in the sexual slander postings had received a complaint from a parent earlier this month, but the email was deleted. The principal of the school said on Thursday she had not received complaints of cyber-bullying until contacted by the Herald. But the department conceded yesterday that a clerical officer at the school did recall receiving emails addressed to the school's email account that referred to Facebook. ''As such emails are often spam or contain viruses, these were deleted, without being read,'' a department spokesman said.
The father of a victim of the bullying has threatened to report administrators of the sexual slander pages to police if they do not remove the content. The father, who did not wish to be named, said he had sent emails to his child's school and others with students involved on June 16 but had received no reply.
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