Publication type: Resource Library
Author: Other
Themes: Discrimination, Education
In the BBC News article called I feel like I’m being pulled back, Irish Traveller Chantelle says that she’s tried over the years to hide her identity as an Irish Traveller while at school, and sometimes she even “talks English” to escape the bullying. But her own accent usually leads to the cries of “pikey” she is all too accustomed to hearing.
“It would start with name-calling, a string of obscenities flung at Lisa Devers as she arrived at school each day. Then the violence would begin, elbows in the ribs, shoving on the stairs, punching, kicking, scratching, spitting. Lisa is 15 and the child of a Travelling family. She has attended, and left, four schools in the space of two years and will never go back. She has had her nose broken and is partially deaf after one particularly vicious beating. She wants to be a beauty therapist and knows she needs qualifications, but the bullying and intimidation are more than she can bear.”
