A mother whose son was repeatedly assaulted at school in a campaign of harassment has now herself been accused of bullying local education authority Moray Council.
Zoe Sharpe, who previously spoke exclusively to our sister title The Sunday Post about the bullying her 10-year-old son Tommy faced while enrolled in New Elgin Primary, says the local authority has accused her of bullying them after taking screenshots of her posts on a private Facebook group.
Zoe currently has two complaints pending with the council because New Elgin Primary, as well as Moray Council, refused to expel any of the boys accused of bullying her son.
Bullying incidents
During his 18 months at New Elgin Primary, Tommy was injured a number of times, including one incident which left him with a concussion and another which was recorded and uploaded on social media by his tormentors.
The ringleader in one attack was taken out of school on a series of activities, such as being taken to McDonald’s, to keep them away from Tommy.
Tommy is one the thousands of children that have faced bullying in the UK.
The Anti-Bullying Alliance identified that 72% of children and young people had been bullied. Zoe pulled Tommy from school due to the bullying but says nothing has been done since and when she asked about discussing home schooling with some of the home school workers, she says she was brushed off.
Also during the meeting, she was presented with screenshots which she had posted to a private additional support needs (ASN) Facebook page about the ongoing situation with the council and her son.
She was shocked.
Facebook comments
Days later, she received a message from one of the group administrators, saying that a member of the council had emailed her screenshots of comments as an example of harassment, and within these screenshots Zoe’s were included. In the email, the council made no attempt to hide her name or photo.
Zoe said: “The council are now doubling down and extracted a comment I made on the page and accused me of bullying.”
In her comments, she had named council staff she believes should be relieved of their duties.
“They claim this is bullying and harassment and they’ve presented that to the group as bullying and harassment and used my comment only, even though there are comments that are far worse than what I’ve said.
“But they have singled out my comment and used it against the group and so I’ve had to leave the group so they don’t get tarred because they are doing an amazing job. That’s now twice that they’ve done that with my comment, but they didn’t present me with the evidence, but instead sent it to the group’s email address.
“I was mortified and apologised, I never thought that would be an offensive comment.
“They accused the group of bullying and harassment, saying that the placards that they used in the protest were offensive, which is not the case.
“They are trying to tar the group as malicious which it’s not.”
The Facebook group was set up as a safe space for parents of ASN children to be able to talk about any issues they faced or if they wanted advice.
When approached for comment, Moray Council said: “The chair and deputy chair of the Education, Children’s and Leisure Services (ECLS) Committee, along with the interim chief executive, recently met with the parent action group regarding the ASN review.
“It was a productive meeting that built a good understanding of the current situation and aimed to reassure parents that we would provide them with further updates in a timely manner.
“It was agreed that past concerns were addressed and put behind everyone in order to continue respectful discussions about the matter at hand, namely the future of ASN provision in Moray.”