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maskmatters.org
SPRING
2011
community
solutions
educate
Challenge
Day
T
alk about a labor of love.
For Yvonne and Rich St. John-Dutra,
working with teens dealing with tough issues
was something they were destined to do. But their
journey getting there couldn’t have been more
different.
In elementary school, Rich was a popular kid
who had a lot of friends. For him, school was his safe
place. In junior high, the tide turned after he began
getting picked on by three older kids who jumped
him when he fought back. But in high school, as
most boys do, Rich got bigger and was able to
deal with the bullies who teased him. He became
popular, excelled in school and graduated with
honors.
Yvonne, however, had a very different
experience. “There was a lot of pain at home and
school. I used food to deal with my problems,”
she says.
By the time she was in junior high, she was
overweight, short and had braces. Due to relentless
teasing and tormenting, she pretended to be sick
to avoid going to school and when she was there,
she tried to be invisible. By the end of her seventh-
grade year, she was suffering from depression and,
that summer, she developed bulimia.
“By the eighth grade, I had lost a lot of weight
and everyone wanted to be my friend,” Yvonne
says. “Then in high school, I became popular and
kids started teasing me for being conceited. I
realized that we all get treated differently just based
on our outer appearance, which planted the seeds
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{
DID YOU KNOW?
}
Bullying most often occurs in the last years of primary and the first couple of years at secondary school.