NBC Today - Bullying

Florida father lashes out at kids bullying his daughter

Click here to see interview with David Lawrence Jr., co-chair of The Children's Movement of Florida.

FORT LAUDERDALE (NBC): A Florida father took matters into his own hands and confronted the two classmates who were bullying his daughter.

42-year-old James Willie Jones was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Jones admits his temper got the better of him, when he unloaded on some children who he claims were bullying his 13-year-old daughter, who suffers from cerebral palsy.

In the deputies' report, Jones alleges schoolboys on the bus had placed an open condom on his daughter's head, smacked her on the back of the head, twisted her ear and shouted rude comments at her.

"My daughter is not going to be hazed and beat up and touched on and like what they've done. OK?" said Jones about the incident. "I'm very sorry. I apologize this is not just me. That's my daughter."

The report says Jones had called the school to complain "...but nothing was done..."

The deputy writes: "The school has two adults on the bus in attempts to control the children, but they didn't even speak English."

Students say it was his threat to kill that was most upsetting.

"He can't just kill kids for, like, somebody messed with his daughter," said Alonso, a 13-year-old who was on the bus that day.

More often than not, experts say, parents don't hear about the bullying until it becomes a crisis.

And the consequences can sometimes turn deadly.

In Massachusetts, prosecutors say classmates tormented 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in school hallways and online for months. She hanged herself at home.

The Children's Movement of Florida has been studying the problem of bullying.

"It's not going away," says David Lawrence, co-chair of Children's Movement of Florida. "Frankly it's escalating. Every school ought to have an anti-bullying program."

One in three teenagers say that bullying at school has happened to them.

The difficulty is getting the victims to speak up, before it blows up.

Read the full article here.