At 15, Jay­den Lalchan should have been look­ing ahead to a bright fu­ture. The school he at­tend­ed, St Stephen’s Col­lege in Princes Town, should have pro­vid­ed a safe, nur­tur­ing en­vi­ron­ment where he could learn and grow.

But his par­ents claim it was in that space that Jay­den was bul­lied re­lent­less­ly and fell in­to such deep de­spair that he end­ed his life on Oc­to­ber 3.

Fa­ree­da and Ro­han Lalchan fur­ther al­lege of­fi­cials at the school took no ac­tion to ad­dress their son’s many re­ports of bul­ly­ing, even when his tor­men­tors start­ed send­ing threats that made him afraid to leave the school com­pound on his own.

While all the trag­ic de­tails of Jay­den’s un­time­ly end are not known, it ap­pears that many red flags were ig­nored over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od. If his par­ents’ ac­counts are to be be­lieved, his com­plaints were not han­dled with ur­gency and there was a trag­ic out­come.

Jay­den’s death, there­fore, could have been avoid­ed if the re­port­ed bul­ly­ing he was sub­ject­ed to had been seen as dan­ger­ous and life-threat­en­ing. It could be that his teach­ers and oth­er school staff were not sen­si­tised about bul­ly­ing and its life-al­ter­ing con­se­quences, in­clud­ing the long-last­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal prob­lems it caus­es.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, his case is not iso­lat­ed. For years there have been warn­ings about in­creas­es in di­rect bul­ly­ing and cy­ber­bul­ly­ing in lo­cal schools.

In 2006, UWI’s Vidya Lall re­searched bul­ly­ing among Third Stan­dard pupils and found that 20 per cent of them had been bul­lied.

Then, in 2011, in an in-depth re­port pub­lished by this news­pa­per, the then-pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), Zena Ra­matali, ex­pressed con­cern that with cell phones and oth­er elec­tron­ic de­vices ac­ces­si­ble in class­rooms, there had been a marked in­crease in cy­ber­bul­ly­ing. She said the or­gan­i­sa­tion had been get­ting re­ports about stu­dents send­ing threats on­line and via text mes­sages to oth­er stu­dents, as well as break­ing in­to the so­cial me­dia ac­counts of school­mates and even cir­cu­lat­ing sex­u­al­ly sug­ges­tive pho­tos.

Ms Ra­matali had warned then that if the is­sue was not tack­led im­me­di­ate­ly, there could be far-reach­ing con­se­quences, in­clud­ing sui­cide.

The is­sue of bul­ly­ing is ad­dressed in the Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct, with re­vi­sions that tack­le, among oth­er things, the de­vel­op­ment of “op­er­a­tional poli­cies on bul­ly­ing with the in­put of all school per­son­nel and the guid­ance of trained pro­fes­sion­als where nec­es­sary.”

How­ev­er, Jay­den’s case rais­es ques­tions about how ef­fec­tive­ly these pro­vi­sions are be­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ed to staff and stu­dents in schools and en­forced. More needs to be done to deal with all the dis­turb­ing di­men­sions of this prob­lem.

There have been calls over the years for a stand­alone bul­ly­ing pol­i­cy with clear and de­tailed pro­vi­sions for anony­mous re­port­ing and reg­u­la­tions that man­date prin­ci­pals to take ac­tions such as no­ti­fy­ing the po­lice with­in a pre­scribed pe­ri­od.

And an­ti-bul­ly­ing cul­ture needs to be cul­ti­vat­ed in every pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school so that stu­dents are taught to iden­ti­fy bul­ly­ing and prin­ci­pals and staff should be alert to ac­tiv­i­ties in every part of the school com­pound.

These ef­forts should al­so go be­yond the perime­ters of the school so that the wider pub­lic is en­cour­aged to mon­i­tor and re­port bul­ly­ing.

The many vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing silent­ly de­serve to be heard, sup­port­ed and pro­tect­ed. The bul­lies al­so need to be dealt with firm­ly.

Bul­ly­ing is dan­ger­ous and dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour that should nev­er be ig­nored or un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.