Conflicting Bullying Allegations Stir Up South Bay School

PALOS VERDES, CA – Aalia Lanius got the shock of her life recently when she turned on the evening news to see a video of her son, a Palos Verdes middle schooler, fighting with a classmate. As the grainy video plays, the other boy involved describes the pain and suffering he’s endured as a victim of bullying, painting Lanius' 13-year-old son as the schoolyard bully. Her son does look like the bully in the video, but Lanius wants people to know that’s not the whole story.

It was a fight that upended the lives of two families as it went from the school yard, to social media, to the airwaves and is now headed to a courtroom. It reflects just how quickly a problem can spread beyond the schoolyard in the age of cellphones and social media.

Leo Lin, a student at Palos Verdes Intermediate School, claims he was bullied and bloodied in three incidents, one of which he said involved Lanius' son. Lin's family said earlier this month they've filed a lawsuit against the Palos Verdes Unified School District, the alleged bullies and their families.

The first incident, Lin said, was when he was “attacked by other students, and it was filmed on tape,” the second was when a school supervisor told students to “jump him,” and the third was when a peer smashed his head into the bathroom sink for refusing to purchase a vape pen.

However, Lanius said the fight started when her son Kamal intervened to stop Lin from pushing girls. It's the reason, she says, that Lin was suspended and her son wasn't. Witnesses corroborated the story, she said. Patch made multiple efforts to reach the Lin family through their attorney but never received a response.

With pocket-sized cellphones always within an arm’s reach, scenarios like the schoolyard fight can be videotaped and spread with no context. Even worse, children and adults alike spew vile messages to friends and strangers, all while hiding behind a screen. Accessibility to technology and social media has made bullying and cyberbullying easy, and surprisingly, the line between “bully” and “bullied” often overlaps.

Patch is taking a year-long look at bullying and cyberbullying, which affects as many as one in three middle- and high school students. Public health officials have declared bullying "epidemic" and have said it should be treated on par with other threats to childhood well being, like diabetes.

“Leo Lin is putting on an act, and I don’t appreciate it, especially if you’re threatening to sue my family,” Lanius said. “My son is being labeled as an attacker or a bully when he isn’t.”

After the story aired, Lanius said her son received multiple texts and Snapchat videos from his friends, pointing out that he was on T.V. Her son messaged Lin on Snapchat, asking why they were calling him an attacker when the video aired, Lanius said.

According to Lanius, Lin responded with multiple expletives, calling Lanius’ son homophobic slurs. Screenshots of the exchange obtained by Patch are too graphic to include here.

Mark Haushalter, the lawyer representing the Lin family, did not respond to repeated calls for comment.

Experts say it’s not unusual for a victim of bullying to also be a bully themselves.

“I think fundamentally, youth who are bullied experience certain psychological and emotional consequences, and many times they have not yet developed positive coping skills to deal with negative stressors or relationships. As such, they often act out in dysfunctional ways,” said Sameer Hinduja, professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center.

“Sometimes those ways involve interpersonal harm and delinquency, sometimes, they involve self-harm and self-destructive choices," Hinduja said. "And we are seeing that this can even manifest online.”

Bullying at the school has been a recurring problem, Lanius said. Her son was new to the district and needed to be chaperoned to a local carnival because kids told him they were going to assault him at the event.

“I think because my kid was a newer kid, they saw him as an easy target,” she said. “My son isn’t perfect, but he’s not going around picking on people.”

Eventually, Lanius went to the principal after a student was arrested for campus violence, but the administrator wouldn’t divulge any information regarding the incident, she said. Lanius said schools need to stop being so concerned about protecting an individual child if they’re putting other students in danger.

“They can share when a kid gets lice but can’t share when someone is violent on campus or gets arrested?” she asked. “If you don’t let us know what’s going on with these kids, how can we support them?”

Lanius’ children are now homeschooled after the family moved out of Palos Verdes last month, but she says bullying contributed to her decision. On the first day of school this year, Lin was already spreading rumors and pushing her son into lockers, she alleges.

The school district told Patch student safety is a top priority.

The school site administration and staff “appropriately took immediate action” to ensure the safety of the students involved and the campus as a whole, the district said in a statement.

“Palos Verdes schools are great with education, but I don’t think they always make the right decisions,” Lanius said. “If there’s an issue with a particular kid, do something about it and stop worrying about the Palos Verdes reputation.”

Related: Boy Says He Was Bloodied By Bullies While Adult Egged It On

In the "Menace of Bullies" series, Patch is taking an in-depth look at the roles society plays in bullying and a child's unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes that we might offer solutions that save lives.

Do you have a story to tell? Email us at bullies@patch.com.

Earlier In This Series

• Bullied To Death: When Kids Kill With Words
• America’s Shameful Truth About Bullying And School Shootings
• Teen Tells Bullies In Video: 'Every Day, I Wear Your Words'
• Poetry Teacher Helps Bullied Kids Open Tortured Minds
• Bullies And Their Targets The Same In Surprising Number of Cases
• The Menace Of Bullies: Patch's Experts Answer Your Questions
• Bullying Expert: Talk And, Especially, Listen To Your Kids

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