Mum to mum mission started with Chrissy
"She shouldn't be scared to walk to and from school"
In Blackpool, Chrissy watches her 14-year-old daughter come home in tears, again. What started as a common playground tiff had escalated into street violence.
Shortly after the girls fell out, a brick came through the window when the family was home watching TV. Then a man intimidated Chrissy’s daughter on the street on her way home from school. But when Chrissy turned to police and schools for help, they said there’s ‘not much we can do’.
Believing her daughter should be free to walk home from school without fear, Chrissy followed every proper channel:
She called 101. Officers reviewed CCTV but couldn’t identify the perpetrators clearly enough.
She contacted the school. The incident didn’t happen in the school, but at home.
She made an appointment at the police station, deciding to go with her daughter on a Sunday so as not to disrupt the school routine too much. The officer’s response? “There’s not much we can do.”
That made Chrissy and her daughter feel pretty flat. “I’ve pretty much wasted a Sunday morning going to the police station to be told again that we’re on our own”. Chrissy told the Other Side of Blackpool podcast. “I think my daughter felt deflated too…as if she wasn’t being listened to or taken seriously.”
The officer said, “There’s not much we can do.”
Chrissy led a six month project for the Poverty Truth Project, gathering politicians and education leaders to listen to teenagers’ real life experiences. This happened in the election campaign of 2024.
Chrissy from Blackpool leads our project for mums, parents and carers concerned for their teenage children.
"It's not like it was when I was growing up in Blackpool...now the parents are getting involved in the bullying" Chris Webb MP, Blackpool South
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Blackpool MP Chris Webb called the matter ‘the most urgent and humbling in the constituency’. Speaking on the Other Side of Blackpool podcast, he said,
“It was an eye opener for me. I didn’t quite understand, if I’m completely honest, the level of gangs in Blackpool, the amount of drugs and weapons and knife crime. I’ve seen the statistics, I spoke about the statistics in Parliament but I was shocked to hear these stories.
What was also worrying was that it seems like those bullies’ parents are now getting involved at a level that never happened when I was growing up in Blackpool.”
Police advice on the law on bullying
Because the Poverty Truth method is to connect residents’ problems with the right decision maker, we asked PC Jon Campbell Smith from Blackpool Police to speak to the Chrissy on the Other Side of Blackpool podcast. He said:
“The law is quite difficult when it comes to bulling because bullying per se isn’t against the law. However, there are four offences that people could be committing.
“One is criminal damage – it’s quite clear when you cause damage to someone’s property, that’s criminal, it’s criminal damage.
“Another is threatening behaviour. There are two forms that assaults can take – by physically assaulting someone or by threatening to. So if I pushed you for example, that would be a common assault by battery because I’ve actually physically touched you against your wishes. But threatening behaviour could potentially be an assault.
“The other offence I would pick out is harassment. If you cause some sort of alarm or unwanted contact towards someone on two or more occasions, it’s harassment.
“Name calling or following someone could be deemed to be harassment. There are also elements of malicious communication there. If you’re sending someone offensive messages, whether by letter, text or social media..that could be malicious communication.”
So police were happy to outline that bullying, while not an offence in law, could be a matter for the courts if it involves:
- Criminal damage
- Threatening behaviour
- Harassment
- Malicious communication.
The officer went on to urge everyone to keep evidence of what has happened (screen shots, voice recordings, CCTV), because a prosecution will depend of the quality of the evidence.
Jade and Lisa from Chorley visited our Blackpool mums to share their advice about bullying. They had called a press conference when they felt let down by the police. Speaking to The Other Side of Blackpool podcast, mum Jade said:
“They just got my daughter outside a shop then lured her into a subway where they brutally beat her, ripped chunks of her hair, stamped on her, spat on her, threw things on her, kicked her. She called me, screaming ‘I’ve been attacked!’.
“Once I got home, checked her over, and I rang the police and they said, ‘Well, it’s bank holiday. No one can come to you till Tuesday.’ So that was four days from when I logged it. And I was like, that’s not good enough.”
