More than 1,000 girls in a day respond to photography project for bullying victims

Posted February 07, 2018 08:00:56

A photographer who launched a project to help bullying victims recognise their natural beauty has been surprised by the scale of modern bullying.

Townsville photographer Kristina Hoksbergen launched Project Beauty Townsville partly in response to the suicide of former child model Amy 'Dolly' Everett in January.

She invited girls aged 13-19 years to share their experiences of bullying, to connect with others who had been through similar experiences, and to have a photographic portrait taken to help them recognise their natural beauty.

Thirty minutes after Ms Hoksbergen posted the invitation on social media, she had 600 respondents.

By the end of the day more than 1,000 teenage girls were on the waiting list.

"I thought maybe I would get 18 or 20 people involved, and it just when bang," she said.

"It was inspiring and it was heartbreaking.

"There were so many young women in there as young as 11 that reached out to me that have in the past six months attempted or thought about suicide due to bullying."

Ms Hoksbergen was also bullied as a teenager. She was physically assaulted, stripped of her clothes and had her nose broken several times.

But the death threats and vicious assaults she heard about from local teenagers who attended her Project Beauty Townsville sessions shocked her.

"It starts in terms of loathing them for a beauty aspect or a body aspect, and it ends up with some of them have been told to drink bleach and hang themselves," Ms Hoksbergen said.

"Just the violence — being held down and having bleach poured in your mouth, pushing people down two flights of stairs and trying to break their necks. It is heartbreaking."

Queensland puts bullying on the national agenda

Queensland Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk this month held a roundtable meeting of minsters and stakeholders to address the issue of cyberbullying of children.

The Government also allocated additional funding to the provider of the Kids Helpline and Parentline phone counselling services and committed to creating an anti-bullying taskforce to develop an anti-bullying framework for Queensland.

Key outcomes of the roundtable meeting will be presented to state premiers and the Prime Minster this week at the Council of Australian Governments meeting on Friday.

Townsville psychologist Suzy Dormer said any strategy to combat bullying needed to address the bullies and their victims.

"No one is born this vicious and savage and ghastly, so what has happened in their lives that has created this awfulness?"

"That also needs to be understood so we can target that."

What can parents do?

As many youth suicides occur at night, Ms Dormer thinks parents should consider banning phones or computers in children's bedrooms.

"They have taken their phones into their bedrooms and they sweat it, they stay on their phone, the cyberbullying is horrific and they are getting tireder and tireder."

Ms Dormer said communities and families are so important in helping young people build resilience.

"Encouraging that young person to realise their own strengths their own abilities, their own way of regulating the pain."

"Because a lot of this is about emotional regulation, how well that can survive other people's venom."

Ms Dormer said she would also like to see young people reframe their place in the world.

"I think we need to teach our children to pay it forward more, so that they are less focussed on themselves and more focused on what they can do for the world."

Leaving bullies behind

Kylie and her family recently moved to Townsville, a move partly motivated by bullying of her daughter Libby.

The family were keen to get involved in Project Beauty Townsville to illustrate the impact of bullying on families.

"To watch young girls have their self-confidence and their self-worth taken away from them, it is not okay and people need to be aware of the impact that it has," she said.

Kylie said since moving to Townsville her daughter Libby has started to smile again.

She hoped the positive change and friendships made through Project Beauty Townsville would help Libby recover.

"For the girls they get to see that they really are beautiful and that what the others have to say is insignificant really."

Young people needing support can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

Parents and carers can call Parentline on 1300 30 1300.