Tad Milmine is a public speaker, a police officer, and a gay man. In his spare time he speaks to schools and other groups about solutions for aggressive or bullying behaviour among youth. Tad also has experience as a survivor of bullying: his parents divorced when he was five, and he went to live with his father and his new step-mother. His father was an alcoholic, using booze as an escape from having to deal with his and his family’s emotions. His step-mother was emotionally abusive to Tad, confining him to the basement when he wasn’t at school and, for the most part, only communicating with him to shout at or berate him. At one point in his childhood she introduced him as "Tad, the half no one would want".

His school life was no different. As soon as other kids saw that Tad was sensitive and would cry easily, the bullies knew they had their victim. At age 17 he ran away from home and contacted Social Services. After investigating Tad’s home life, they set him up in his own apartment.

In his later life, after resolving issues from his upbringing, he finally realized a childhood dream of becoming a police officer. The abuse, harassment and bullying was put away in the past until one day, in 2011, when he heard of Jamie Hubley’s suicide.

For those who have forgotten, Jamie Hubley was an Ottawa teen who took his own life. He couldn’t take the stress and abuse associated with him being bullied for years because he was a figure skater and gay. Jamie’s experiences being bullied were – thinking about one experience Tad recounts – beyond assault. They were terrorizing.

Something about Jamie’s fate resonated deep within Tad, and he decided he had to make a change in the world.

Yet as other victims like Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd attest, bullying, assault, and cyberbullying are still ongoing, and are still harming teens. Consequently, Tad has made it a personal mission to speak about his and Jamie’s experiences; to talk to students, teachers, administrators, and others; to end bullying and to provide support to victims.

A few weeks after hearing Tad Milmine’s presentation on bullying we sat down for an interview. With the attention being focused on bullying in schools and the media, I asked Tad if, in the three years since Jamie died, we are closer to solving bullying and harassment in schools. Especially since now many schools have resources and secure environments to report unwanted aggressive behaviour.

"It’s definitely not getting better," was his reply. "I would say, from the messages I’m getting from youth, that I think it’s a lot worse than even what the media is making it to be. I think it’s partly because of the awareness. I think we’re on the right path but I don’t think we’re at the stage we can say it’s getting better."  We may be seeing just how big the issue truly is.

It doesn’t help that in the past, and even now, it’s not uncommon for adults to say things like: ‘...that is a rite of passage; it has always been there; it will get better, just suck it up; grow a tougher skin; go punch him in the nose.’ These are the wrong responses, Tad told me. Just because something has been happening forever does not mean it’s acceptable to continue. Yet why is this a crisis situation that is only now being heeded by parents, schools, and the public?

"I think there are two answers to that one. One is, as adults, we weren’t privileged to have social media when we were growing up. So we have things like cell phones, iPads, computers – stuff like that, kids have been growing up [with] from scratch." Parents may be aware their child is getting three to four hundred messages a day, but they think the solution is just to shut off the item or remove the app.

"They’re not getting to the root of what’s really happening – what is really bothering their child – which is a lot deeper than turning the phone off. It’s not about what they’re getting, it’s about when they go to school the next day when everyone’s going Hey have you seen the new Facebook page about you or the messages that were going around?"

Parents don’t understand that with social media and cyber-bullying, unlike the bullying previous generations experienced before the Internet, there’s no time off on evenings and weekends. Many times, even if a supporter of the victim posts a defensive reply to a negative post on Facebook, the victim only sees it’s yet another reply to this original comment. "It keeps coming. It keeps coming back to your attention again and more people are going to start adding and it’s not uncommon for those messages not to be positive. The bully knows that well I’ve still got that audience so it’s just like fuel on a fire."

In this situation, parents may feel they need to move heaven and earth to protect their child. Tad says parents should always respect the chain of authority when reporting on bullying. If you go to the teacher and the teacher does nothing, go to the principal. If the principal does nothing, go to the school board. If the school board does nothing, then and only then consider going to the media. Even then, be cautious, as the media will report both sides to a story – so you may come off unfavourably, and your child will be used in a wider audience. Now, even though the media hasn’t reported the child or the family’s name, everyone in that school or neighbourhood will be able to put two and two together, and the original victim will feel even worse for getting even more attention.

"Unfortunately there always is the possibility you may need to think about changing schools just because, if it’s getting that impossible to correct the problem, that means it’s going to take a lot longer to resolve it when you finally do get someone hooked on wanting to help. You’ve got to worry about the right now for that child. As much as we want to solve bullying instantly, there’s no instant fix to it."

There are several reasons why, in reality, an ‘instant fix’ would never remedy a bullying situation. First, there’s the situation where the victim can no longer hold back and lashes out at the aggressor. "Then of course that’s where everyone’s attention goes and now who looks like the person that’s instigating." Tad can attest to this, having received many messages like this from parents who then have to do damage control, correcting schools who don’t know of the underlying cause for this explosion.

Second, past victims of unwanted aggression can then become bullies themselves. Tad gets emails from people who realize because they were the victim in the past (or in other parts of their lives) they compensate by being the aggressor to others. Tad has one young woman who he speaks to quite regularly. He is challenging her to remove the negatives, but it happens in baby steps. "She has got a lot going on in her personal life no one knows about, and she’s taking that out on the vulnerable. She’s the first to say she’s mean and she’s cruel and she’s doing things, when she puts her head down on the pillow at night, she’s not proud of."

Breaking that cycle is difficult. It’s not easy to say "stop". The person needs to learn coping tools. It is not uncommon for victims from yesterday to become bullies today because they don’t want to feel weak anymore. "That would be a situation where it probably would work – for a decent percentage of those individuals – to say can you imagine what it feels like to be that person? You’re probably going to get through to them."

Of course there are those bullies/aggressors who are blind to their behaviour – some bullies honestly believe that their behaviour is not that serious. Their audience may be giggling along with them and, in the case of Jamie Hubley (who tried to maintain a positive attitude), his aggressors thought the victim was okay with the behaviour.

"Eventually it becomes a part of your daily routine. Especially the four main culprits in Jamie’s bullying that, from their perspective, they may have actually believed it was fun – Jamie’s liking this. Even though common sense would tell you otherwise, but when you slowly keep every day getting progressively worse, that person keeps smiling and laughing and walking away, you’re not thinking that your actions are really bringing this person down."

Getting them to empathize with their victims may prompt the light bulb moment in many of these aggressors. Unfortunately, "...what works for you may not work for me. You sitting down and being spoken to about feelings and emotions, and put yourself in their shoes. That might work perfectly for you. I might sit there and go yeah, go do your thing ‘cause I’m not listening. You need to do a different approach with me. That may be suspension from school or getting the police involved. But as human beings we need to be given some... chance to change our ways." This is why, sometimes, it is important to address this behaviour earlier rather than later.

Addressing the situation later means the harassment may have evolved to the point where the police are involved. From a school in Toronto, where he spoke, Tad has firsthand evidence of a situation which escalated to that level.

"I bumped into the police resource officer that works at that school at Toronto Pride and he said, Tad, have you ever heard any feedback about what happened at the school after you were there? I’ll tell you what happened. There were six students that were identified immediately afterwards... as being bullies and cyber bullies." Three were arrested, three were removed from the Toronto School Board altogether, with two still in jail to this day. The resource officer reassured Tad his school does not have bullying in it because this major precedent was set: the behaviour was acknowledged, reported, shut down and the perpetrators were held accountable.

When he speaks, Tad’s message isn’t aimed entirely at victims, parents and school staff. He does tell the bullies in his presentation "Heed my advice. When you get caught for doing what you’re doing – and you will get caught for it – when you get pulled down to the principal’s office and you start crying saying you’re sorry... it’s not going to cut it anymore. We are past that part. It’s not going to work anymore. Now you’re going to be held accountable for what you did and that is going to go all the way up to and including jail time. Because the youth that I speak to (shy of the 11 year olds) they can all go to jail."

It helps that people are now starting to realize they can us electronic equipment like cell phones and iPods to record encounters or save an electronic paper trail. This is exactly what Tad is telling people to do.

"We need them to get that evidence. So screen captures, saving emails, printing the emails... get it all and save it. Then of course block it, but keep copies so we have something to work with. Because if we have to go through the court systems it’s going to take months and months to get the IP provider, and then get Facebook to provide, and going down the chain. So [we’re] educating youth that you do this. Don’t answer the message online. Take a screen capture, bring it in and show your principal, your teacher, your parents, your trusted adults and say Here’s what happened last night." These adults can then immediately act on it instead of doing an investigation, which may boil down to ‘you said/they said’. With evidence, aggressors are caught red handed.

Another issue with bullies is that frequently it is a group effort. Tad says bullies need two things to survive: a victim and an audience. The audience may be a gang of ‘mini-bullies’ who hang around the main perpetrator, or they may be other school children who, though they might question in their mind the bully’s accusations about the victim, are too scared to challenge the alpha bully. How do you stop the ringleader without getting the attention put on you?

Ultimately the solution is not to be the audience, Tad says. If there is a set time where the bullies target the victim, don’t be there at that time. If it’s online, block the bully – kids have so many friends on Facebook you’re not going to notice one less. Another way to rectify it without confronting the ringleader is through anonymous reporting – send a note to the teacher for example, or use an app that allows for anonymous reporting. "You can even do the back channels," Tad says. "So go to the victim; let him know that hey I know you’re seeing me with Bobby doing this every day, but I just want to let you know that I don’t support it but I do support you. This will mean a million dollars to that person to know they have that support. There are a lot of different approaches you can do but, ultimately, don’t be that audience, because as soon as that bully doesn’t have that audience, they’re not going to have that power any longer."

As for the term ‘bullying’, it is one Tad is split on using. "I think we lost touch with youth on using that word probably about a year, two years ago. Bullying is just a word used to cover a whole range of behaviours; police can’t arrest someone for bullying. Even with the presentations in the schools, I ask the schools try not to tell the youth what the presentation is about because, if they do, ...we’re going to lose them right away. Because they have already had five presentations on it. They don’t want that. Adults wouldn’t want that either."

‘Bully’ is being used too liberally to describe a whole raft of behaviours and it’s losing its impact. "Prime Minister Harper said it the one day when he was addressing Rehtaeh Parsons, I think we’ve got to stop using just the term ‘bullying’ to describe some of these things. Bullying to me has a kind of connotation ... of kids misbehaving. What we are dealing with in some of these circumstances is simply criminal activity."

However, "...if we’re going to start using words like harassment, threats and assault, people need to do that two minutes of education to... understand what those words mean from the policing perspective – from the criminal code perspective – because what is harassment to you is probably quite different from what the criminal code explains it as." A complicating factor is when a victim pushes back. Bullying is one-sided, but when you retaliate, it may change to peer aggression/peer conflict and the victim, along with the bully, may have committed a crime.

Anyone who listens to Tad’s presentation can’t help but be moved to action. The only concern I had, given both Jamie and Tad’s sexuality, was what kind of reception his presentation gets from Catholic or Christian schools. Fortunately, he has never experienced any challenges with Catholic schools. In Ontario, where it is legislated that if a youth comes forward and wants to organize a GSA (Gay/Straight Alliance) it must be allowed, Tad was the first openly gay man to speak at a Catholic school.

"If anything, it tends to be a little bit more questioning at the start when we arrange the presentation, of can you just quickly verify a little bit more in regards to is this – a gay message or what for as we know, whenever you use the gay word... that’s the word they’re going to remember out of the whole body of that paragraph." So while Tad confirms he mentions sexuality, that is not the focus – his presentation is a message for all youth. If Jamie or Tad had been straight, but still had their same personalities, they would still have been bullied.

Despite relaying that bullying behaviour is still a huge issue to be tackled, Tad does have hope for the future. "These youth that are taking leadership roles and are looking to make that change, it’s going to carry over to simply being a better person. The way to do that is you teach people how to be a better person – from the smallest things, like saying please and thank you, to holding a door when you go into a workplace or in a grocery store, or you walk past somebody and give a little smile or a head nod or even a hello. It’s the smallest things, but it could mean the absolute world to somebody. That’s what I’m hoping; is that the youth are going to grow up and replace some of those challenges we have now."

As to the future of his organization, Tad has many ideas in place. Right now the biggest challenge is securing funding. He would like to be able to provide even more resources to the kids who are contacting him, resources like counselling contacts online or in the community, and even funding some of these resources so that economics does not present a barrier to kids seeking the help that they need. Tad does not only want it to get better in the short term, he wants it to stay better in the long term.