Sympathy For My Bully

One survivor now wonders whether abusers like hers deserve the harsh comeuppance they often get

- Geraldine Deruiter

AS A CHILD, I WAS AN EASY MARK for playground torments: smart, insufferably rule-abiding, decidedly unpretty. The tormentor I remember most distinctly was not my first bully, nor my last, but his attacks would turn others into footnotes.

He was in my class for years. In class photos, his face is round and almost cherubic, but I remember it contorted in anger as he spat insults at me, telling me to shut up, flailing his hands against his chest and moaning—an approximation of what he said I sounded like. We were seated next to each other year after year, and when I finally complained about this arrangement, one of my teachers said that maybe I’d be “a good influence on him.”

It didn’t work. His mom was also my softball coach, driving me to and from practice when my single mother could not. Sitting in the back of his mother’s van after my team lost a softball game, he snapped, “It smells in here. Close your legs.” Reflexively, I did as he instructed. When his mother climbed into the driver’s seat, oblivious to what had happened, he was still doubled over with laughter. I was ten.

WHEN I WOULD return home after one of my bully’s taunts, tearful and broken down, I’d comfort myself with the idea that one day I would be happy and successful and my bully would not. I internalized the bromide used to soothe all bullied children of my generation—the universe would mete out some sort of karmic justice.

This idea is everywhere: Bully Biff Tannen waxes George McFly’s car at the end of Back to the Future, having been beaten into submission (literally) years earlier. In A Christmas Story, Ralphie finally snaps after years of torment and attacks Farkus, who is left tearful and bleeding. Regina George—the Machiavellian queen bee in