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PEER HARASSMENT IN SCHOOL
This page intentionally left blank
Peer Harassment
in School

JAANA JUVONEN
SANDRA GRAHAM

THE GUILFORD PRESS


New York London
 2001 The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012
www.guilford.com

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a


retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording,
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peer harassment in school : the plight of the vulnerable and


victimized / Jaana Juvonen, Sandra Graham, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57230-627-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Conflict management—Study and teaching. 2. School
discipline. 3. Bullying. 4. Aggressiveness in children. I. Juvonen,
Jaana. II. Graham, Sandra, 1947–

LB3011.5 .P44 2001


371.5′ 8—dc21 00–052808
This page intentionally left blank
About the Editors

Jaana Juvonen, PhD, is a behavioral scientist at RAND and an adjunct as-


sociate professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA. In her re-
search, Dr. Juvonen studies the effects of peer group norms on rejection and
self-presentation strategies of early adolescents. Her most recent work fo-
cuses on peer harassment and school-based antiharassment programs. Dr.
Juvonen publishes her work mainly in developmental and educational psy-
chology journals. She is coeditor of Social Motivation: Understanding
Children’s School Adjustment and currently on the editorial board of De-
velopmental Psychology. Dr. Juvonen is a former recipient of a National
Academy of Education Spencer Fellowship and Senior Fellowship of the
Academy of Finland.

Sandra Graham, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Education at the


University of California, Los Angeles. Her major research interests include
the study of academic motivation, peer aggression, and juvenile delinquency,
particularly in African American children and adolescents. Dr. Graham has
published widely in developmental, social, and educational psychology jour-
nals and is currently Principal Investigator on grants from the National
Science Foundation and the W. T. Grant Foundation. She also is the recipient
of an Independent Scientist Award, funded by the National Institute of
Mental Health, as well as a former recipient of the Early Contribution Award
from Division 15 (Educational Psychology) of the American Psychological
Association and a former Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. Among her professional activi-
ties, Dr. Graham is an associate editor of Developmental Psychology; a mem-
ber of the National Research Council Panel on Juvenile Crime, Prevention,
and Control; and a member of the MacArthur Foundation Network on Ado-
lescent Development and Juvenile Justice.

vii
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Contributors

Contributors

Françoise D. Alsaker, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Berne,


Berne, Switzerland
Michel Boivin, PhD, Research Unit on Children’s Social Maladjustment,
School of Psychology, Laval University, Ste-Foy, Quebec, Canada
Michael J. Boulton, PhD, Department of Psychology, Keele University,
Staffordshire, United Kingdom

William M. Bukowski, PhD, Department of Psychology and Centre for Re-


search in Human Development, Concordia University, Montreal,
Quebec, Canada
Juan F. Casas, BA, Institute of Child Development, University of Minne-
sota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Deborah H. Chien, MPP, Department of Psychology, University of South-
ern California, Los Angeles, California

Jennifer Connolly, PhD, Department of Psychology, York University, To-


ronto, Ontario, Canada
Wendy M. Craig, PhD, Department of Psychology, Queen’s University,
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Nicki R. Crick, PhD, Institute of Child Development, University of Minne-
sota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Crystal Cullerton-Sen, BA, Institute of Child Development, University of


Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

ix
x Contributors

Susan K. Egan, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Massachu-


setts at Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, Massachusetts

Sandra Graham, PhD, Department of Education, University of California,


Los Angeles, California

David S. J. Hawker, PhD, Oxford Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology,


Isis Education Centre, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom

Kathryn Henderson, MA, Department of Psychology, Queen’s University,


Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Susan E. Hickman, MS, Institute of Child Development, University of Min-


nesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Ernest V. E. Hodges, PhD, Department of Psychology, St. John’s University,


Jamaica, New York

Shelley Hymel, PhD, Department of Educational Psychology and Special


Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Colum-
bia, Canada

Jaana Juvonen, PhD, RAND, Santa Monica, California

Becky Kochenderfer Ladd, PhD, Department of Psychology, Illinois State


University, Normal, Illinois

Gary W. Ladd, PhD, Departments of Educational Psychology and Psychol-


ogy, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, Illinois

Kirsten Madsen, PhD, Earlscourt Child and Family Centre, Toronto, On-
tario, Canada

Julie R. Morales, BA, Institute of Child Development, University of Minne-


sota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

David A. Nelson, PhD, School of Family Life, Department of Marriage,


Family, and Human Development, Brigham Young University, Provo,
Utah

Adrienne Nishina, MA, Department of Psychology, University of Califor-


nia, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California

Dan Olweus, PhD, Research Center for Health Promotion (HEMIL), Uni-
versity of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Laurence Owens, PhD, School of Special Education and Disability Studies,


Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia
Contributors xi

Anthony D. Pellegrini, PhD, Department of Educational Psychology, Uni-


versity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Debra Pepler, PhD, Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto,


Ontario, Canada

David G. Perry, PhD, Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic Univer-


sity, Boca Raton, Florida

Laura J. Proctor, MA, Department of Psychology, University of Southern


California, Los Angeles, California

Ken Rigby, PhD, Division of Education, Arts and Social Science, University
of South Australia, Underdale, Australia
Christina Salmivalli, PhD, Department of Psychology, Academy of Finland,
University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Beate Schuster, PhD, Institute for Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Univer-
sity Munich, Munich, Germany
David Schwartz, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, California
Shu Shu, MPhil, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, University
of London, New Cross, United Kingdom
Rosalyn Shute, PhD, School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide,
South Australia
Lorrie K. Sippola, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatch-
ewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Phillip Slee, PhD, School of Education, Flinders University, Adelaide, South
Australia
Peter K. Smith, PhD, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, Uni-
versity of London, New Cross, United Kingdom

Stefan Valkanover, Lic.phil, Department of Psychology, University of Berne,


Berne, Switzerland
This page intentionally left blank
Preface

Preface

Humiliation, taunting, threats, social ostracism by classmates—these are


common school experiences encountered around the world. Survey data re-
veal that anywhere from 40% to 80% of students report that they person-
ally have been the targets of such peer hostilities at school. Although con-
siderably fewer students are estimated to experience repeated or severe
victimization at school, there is no question that peer harassment is a prob-
lem shared by children and adolescents across cultures. And the recent rash
of school shootings in the United States, some apparently traced to a long
history of peer abuse, is a stark reminder that peer-directed hostility cuts
across race, class, and geographical boundaries.
We define peer harassment as victimization that entails face-to-face
confrontation (e.g., physical aggression, verbal abuse, nonverbal gesturing)
or social manipulation through a third party (e.g., social ostracism, spread-
ing rumors). The crucial element that distinguishes peer harassment from
other types of negative encounters, such as conflict, is that there is an im-
balance of power between perpetrator and target. Such asymmetric power
relations can take many forms, such as when the physically strong bully the
weak, numerical majorities intimidate numerical minorities, older youth
harass younger targets, or the intellectually superior deride their less com-
petent peers. We hope that this definition clarifies for our readers that, al-
though we are aware of the widely publicized U.S. school shootings, this
book does not contain analyses of the most lethal sorts of peer-directed
hostilities. Rather, our focus is on more typical and widespread types of ha-
rassment that affect the lives of many youth and that may have far-reaching
and uncertain consequences.
The term harassment is used as a synonym for victimization in this
book, and most of the authors use these terms interchangeably. We prefer
harassment because victimization is sometimes associated with either severe
or chronic abuse perpetrated by adults as well as peers, whereas harass-

xiii
xiv Preface

ment pertains to a wider range of hostile behaviors. Harassment is also the


term used to describe adult-to-adult hostilities (e.g., workplace harassment,
sexual harassment) that are conceptually similar to those that involve chil-
dren and adolescents in school.
Although psychologists have long been concerned with the problem of
peer harassment, most research has focused on the perpetrators of hostility
(i.e., bullies) rather than their targets. This is not surprising, given the over-
whelming evidence on the stability of childhood aggression and its status as
a risk factor for later maladjustment. For a long time it was incorrectly as-
sumed that socially maladjusted youngsters who were nonaggressive, that
is, those who displayed the kind of submissiveness and withdrawal often
characteristic of victims, were not particularly at risk for long-term adjust-
ment difficulties. We hope to dispel this misconception by assembling in
one volume the work of authors who have been at the forefront of peer vic-
timization research for at least the past decade. The chapters in this book
are designed to address the complex and multifaceted nature of peer ha-
rassment as a phenomenon distinct from aggression, and in so doing to
highlight the plight of victims.
The disproportionate focus on aggressors rather than victims has been
especially striking in U.S. research in contrast to European research, in
which studies on victimization have been conducted since the 1970s (see
the Introduction by Olweus). Hence, it was crucial for us to include re-
searchers from around the world (especially from European countries) to
share their views on peer harassment. Programs of research in Great Brit-
ain, Finland, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Australia, and Canada, as
well as the United States, are featured. We believe that the cross-cultural ex-
amples in this book point out that similarities in the dynamics of peer ha-
rassment are more striking than differences between cultures and across
continents.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

Dan Olweus was the first researcher to systematically study peer victimiza-
tion. There is hardly a published study on the topic that does not cite his pi-
oneering work in Sweden and Norway. It is therefore fitting that the book
begins with an Introduction by Olweus that provides a historical overview
of the evolution of peer harassment research, as well as insights into the
contrasting approaches of European and North American researchers. This
introductory retrospective sets the stage for the four broad topics in the
study of peer harassment that constitute the rest of the book.
The first part includes five chapters that focus on conceptual and
methodological issues. Accompanying the emergence of an empirical litera-
ture on peer harassment has been concern about how to conceptualize the
Preface xv

phenomenon and how to measure it. For example, how often and how long
does harassment have to occur before it is perceived as chronic and there-
fore a precursor to adjustment difficulties (Ladd & Ladd)? What concep-
tual frameworks can guide the study of family influences on victim status
(Perry et al.)? How can one integrate self-views and peer reports of victim-
ization at the level of both theory and measurement (Graham & Juvonen;
Juvonen et al.; Pellegrini)? It will be evident that these are complex and in-
terrelated questions, for how one conceptualizes the victimization phenom-
enon largely shapes one’s measurement approach.
Victimization is both a heterogeneous phenomenon and an experience
that manifests itself differently at different stages of development. The sec-
ond part of the book comprises five chapters that highlight the different
subtypes and developmental differences in peer harassment. Whereas some
authors examine changes in the manifestations of harassment across devel-
opment from preschool to adolescence (e.g., Crick et al.; Schwartz et al.),
others focus on particular age groups (Alsaker & Valkanover; Craig et al.;
Owens et al.). These chapters demonstrate the various “faces” of the phe-
nomenon: For example, peer victimization may be more easily recognized
as physical intimidation in kindergarten and the early elementary years, but
more closely resemble sexual harassment or social ostracism during the ad-
olescent years. The more covert types of harassment (relational and indi-
rect) as well as the less recognized behavioral responses of victims (hostile,
aggressive) are highlighted in this section.
The four chapters included in the third part describe the correlates and
consequences of peer victimization. A robust finding in the literature is that
children who are chronically harassed by others also tend to be rejected by
the larger peer group. Chapters in this section by Boivin et al. and Schuster
provide analyses of the theoretical and empirical distinctions between ha-
rassment and rejection as well as areas of overlap. Another well-docu-
mented set of findings focuses on the negative psychological consequences
of victimization. The chapter by Rigby offers insight into the adverse physi-
cal and mental health outcomes that can follow chronic harassment, and
the chapter by Smith et al. highlights the various strategies that children
employ to cope with victim status. Both of these are understudied topics in
the literature on the consequences of peer harassment.
The three chapters that make up the final part of the book also address
a relatively neglected topic in the harassment literature. Although much of
the research portrays peer victimization as a dyadic interaction between
victim and bully, in truth youngsters are often the targets of others’ hostili-
ties in group contexts. The functional meaning of harassment for a group
(Bukowski & Sippola), the role of group members in maintaining and rein-
forcing victimization (Salmivalli), and the effects of social rank on individ-
ual group members’ risk for harassment (Hawker & Boulton) are examined
here in light of theories on group dynamics.
xvi Preface

To some readers, our organization of the book may seem somewhat


arbitrary. Clearly, there is overlap in the four topical areas, and many chap-
ters could easily have been grouped with other contributions in different
parts. For example, some authors who write about correlates and conse-
quences are also concerned with developmental change, and the study of
harassment as a group rather than dyadic process also has implications for
conceptual and methodological issues. We view this overlap as a strength of
our volume. The complexity of peer harassment requires authors who can
take a broad perspective with empirical research that speaks to multiple
concerns.
As will be seen throughout the chapters of this book, peer harassment
places youth at risk for a number of adjustment difficulties. Hence, one of
the greatest challenges for researchers of peer harassment is to evaluate the
implications of their work for intervention. Is there a way to stop peer vic-
timization? What can be done to improve the plight of victims? Rather than
devote a separate section to interventions, we have asked our contributors
to address intervention issues in the context of their chapters if they deemed
it appropriate. Thus, some of the chapters include descriptions of interven-
tions. Unlike the treatment literature on peer-directed aggression, most in-
tervention approaches described in this book are systemic, addressing not
only individuals, but also the larger social context.
We know from colleagues’ accounts that editing a book can sometimes
be a difficult and frustrating process, but fortunately this was not our expe-
rience. As editors, we therefore want to acknowledge those who made our
job easier. First and foremost, we thank all of our contributing authors for
their scholarship and conscientious adherence to deadlines. Appreciation
also is extended to April Taylor and Will Leiner for their technical assis-
tance. In Chris Jennison and the editorial staff at The Guilford Press, we
found a friendly and receptive publisher, for which we are also grateful.
Preparation of the volume was also supported in part by grants from the
National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.

JAANA JUVONEN
SANDRA GRAHAM
Contents

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Peer Harassment: A Critical Analysis and Some 3


Important Issues
Dan Olweus

I. CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL 21


ISSUES IN PEER HAR ASSMENT

1 Variations in Peer Victimization: Relations to 25


Children’s Maladjustment
Becky Kochenderfer Ladd and Gary W. Ladd

2 An Attributional Approach to Peer Victimization 49


Sandra Graham and Jaana Juvonen

3 Determinants of Chronic Victimization by Peers: 73


A Review and New Model of Family Influence
David G. Perry, Ernest V. E. Hodges, and Susan K. Egan

4 Self-Views versus Peer Perceptions of Victim Status 105


among Early Adolescents
Jaana Juvonen, Adrienne Nishina, and Sandra Graham

xvii
xviii Contents

5 Sampling Instances of Victimization 125


in Middle School: A Methodological Comparison
Anthony D. Pellegrini

II. SUBTYPES AND AGE-RELATED CHANGES 145


IN PEER HAR ASSMENT

6 The Aggressive Victim of Bullying: 147


Emotional and Behavioral Dysregulation as a
Pathway to Victimization by Peers
David Schwartz, Laura J. Proctor, and Deborah H. Chien

7 Early Diagnosis and Prevention of Victimization 175


in Kindergarten
Françoise D. Alsaker and Stefan Valkanover

8 Relational Victimization in Childhood 196


and Adolescence: I Hurt You through the Grapevine
Nicki R. Crick, David A. Nelson, Julie R. Morales,
Crystal Cullerton-Sen, Juan F. Casas, and Susan E. Hickman

9 Victimization among Teenage Girls: 215


What Can Be Done about Indirect Harassment?
Laurence Owens, Phillip Slee, and Rosalyn Shute

10 Developmental Context of Peer Harassment in 242


Early Adolescence: The Role of Puberty
and the Peer Group
Wendy M. Craig, Debra Pepler, Jennifer Connolly,
and Kathryn Henderson

III. CORRELATES AND CONSEQUENCES 263


OF PEER HAR ASSMENT

11 Toward a Process View of Peer Rejection 265


and Harassment
Michel Boivin, Shelley Hymel, and Ernest V. E. Hodges
Contents xix

12 Rejection and Victimization by Peers: 290


Social Perception and Social Behavior Mechanisms
Beate Schuster

13 Health Consequences of Bullying and Its Prevention 310


in Schools
Ken Rigby

14 Characteristics of Victims of School Bullying: 332


Developmental Changes in Coping Strategies
and Skills
Peter K. Smith, Shu Shu, and Kirsten Madsen

IV. BEYOND THE BULLY/VICTIM DYAD 353

15 Groups, Individuals, and Victimization: A View 355


of the Peer System
William M. Bukowski and Lorrie K. Sippola

16 Subtypes of Peer Harassment and Their Correlates: 378


A Social Dominance Perspective
David S. J. Hawker and Michael J. Boulton

17 Group View on Victimization: Empirical Findings 398


and Their Implications
Christina Salmivalli

Author Index 421

Subject Index 433


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PEER HARASSMENT IN SCHOOL
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
This page intentionally left blank
A Critical Analysis
INTRODUCTION

Peer Harassment

DAN OLWEUS

GLIMPSES FROM THE SCANDINAVIAN TRADITION

A strong societal interest in the phenomenon of peer harassment or victim-


ization was first aroused in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s under
the designation “mobbning” or “mobbing” (Heinemann, 1969, 1972;
Olweus, 1973a). The term was introduced into the public Swedish debate
by a school physician, P.-P. Heinemann, in the context of racial discrimina-
tion (Heinemann, 1969). Heinemann had borrowed the term mobbing
from the Swedish version of a book on aggression written by the well-
known Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz (1963, 1968). In ethology, the
word mobbing is used to denote a collective attack by a group of animals
on an animal of another species, which is usually larger and a natural en-
emy of the group. In Lorenz’s book (1968), mobbing was also used to char-
acterize the action of a school class or a group of soldiers ganging up
against a deviating individual.
The term mob has also been used for quite some time in social psy-
chology, and to some extent by the general public in English-speaking
countries, to denote a relatively large group of individuals—a crowd or a
mass of people—joined in some kind of common activity or striving. As a
rule, the mob has been formed by accident, is loosely organized, and exists
for only a short time. In the social psychological literature, distinctions
have been made between several types of mob, including the aggressive
mob (the lynch mob), the panic-stricken mob (the flight mob), and the ac-

3
4 INTRODUCTION

quisitive mob. Members of a mob usually experience strong emotions, and


the behavior and reactions of the mob are considered to be fairly irrational
(see, e.g., Lindzey, 1954).
Already at an early stage, I expressed doubts about the suitability of
the term mobbing, as used in ethology/social psychology and by Heine-
mann, to denote the kind of peer harassment that presumably occurred in
school settings (Olweus, 1973, 1978, pp. 4–6). Generally, with my back-
ground in aggression research (e.g., Olweus, 1969), I felt that the connota-
tions implied in the concept of mobbing could easily lead to inapproppriate
expectations about the phenomenon and to certain aspects of the problem
being overlooked.
One particular point of concern related to the relative importance of
the group versus its individual members. The notion that school mobbing is
a matter of collective aggression by a relatively homogeneous group did, in
my view, obscure the relative contributions made by individual members.
More specifically, the role of particularly active perpetrators or bullies
could easily be lost sight of within such a conceptual framework. In this
context, I also questioned how often the kind of all-against-one situations
implied in mobbing actually occur in school. If harassment by a small
group or by a single individual were the more frequent type in our schools,
the concept of mobbing might result, for example, in teachers having diffi-
culty noting the phenomenon occurring right under their noses. In addition,
the concept of mobbing will almost automatically place responsibility for
“possible problems” with the recipient of the collective aggression, the vic-
tim, who is seen as irritating or provoking the majority of “normal” stu-
dents in one way or another.
Use of the concept of mobbing might also lead to an overemphasis on
temporary and situationally determined circumstances: “The mob, sud-
denly and unpredictably, seized by the mood of the moment, turns on a sin-
gle individual, who for some reason or other has attracted the group’s irri-
tation and hostility” (Olweus, 1978, p. 5). Although I believed that such
temporary emotional outbreaks from a group of schoolchildren could oc-
cur, I considered it more important to direct attention to another kind of
possible situation, in which an individual student is exposed to aggression
systematically and over longer periods of time—whether from another indi-
vidual, a small group, or a whole class (Olweus, 1973, 1978, p. 5).
An additional, and maybe even greater, problem was that, at that time,
there existed basically no empirical research data to shed light on the many
issues and concerns involved in the general debate about the phenomenon.
Against this background, in about 1970 I initiated in Sweden (I am a native
Swede, who has lived in Norway since the early 1970s) what now appears
to be the first systematic research project on mobbing or peer harassment.
Results from this project were first published as a book in Swedish in 1973
(Olweus, 1973). In 1978 a somewhat expanded version of this book ap-
A Critical Analysis 5

peared in the United States under the title Aggression in the Schools: Bullies
and Whipping Boys (Olweus, 1978). The primary aim of this research was
to sketch a first outline of the “anatomy” of peer harassment in school and
to seek answers to some of the key questions that had been in focus in the
public Swedish debate.
Looking back, I think it is fair to say that this project and later re-
search (see e.g., Olweus, 1978, 1993a, 1994; Farrington, 1993) have
shown that many of my early concerns were justified. For example, there is
no doubt that students in a class vary markedly in their degree of aggres-
siveness and that these individual differences tend to be quite stable over
time, often over several years (Olweus, 1978, 1979). Similarly, the research
clearly shows that a relatively small number of students in a class are usu-
ally much more actively engaged in peer harassment or bullying than oth-
ers, often the great majority of the students in the class, who are not di-
rectly involved in bullying at all or only in more or less marginal roles. Data
from our new large-scale intervention study in Bergen (below) indicate that
as many as 50% of the victims of bullying are harassed by a small group of
two or three students (Olweus & Solberg, 1998), often with a negative
leader. In addition, a considerable proportion of the victims, some 25%,
even report that they are mainly harassed by a single student (Olweus,
1988; Olweus & Solberg, 1998). Data from researchers in England, Hol-
land, and Japan, participating in the same cross-national project on bully/
victim problems, indicate that this is also largely true in other ethnic con-
texts with (partly) different cultural backgrounds and traditions (Junger-
Tas & Kesteren, 1998; Morita & Soeda, 1998; Smith et al., 1999). Further,
these and other (e.g., Rigby & Slee, 1991) data show that a considerable
proportion of the students in a class have a relatively negative attitude to
the bullying and would like to do, or actually do (according to self-reports),
something to help the victim.

DEFINITION AND OPERATIONALIZATION


OF BULLYING OR PEER VICTIMIZATION

At the time of initiation of the aforementioned research project, it was not


possible, or even desirable, to set forth a very stringent definition of peer
victimization or bullying. However, the need for a relatively clear and cir-
cumscribed definition became urgent in connection with a large-scale cam-
paign against bullying in Norway in 1983 (Olweus, 1993a). Specifically, an
important part of this campaign was a nationwide registration of bully/vic-
tim problems by means of a student questionnaire that I developed. The ba-
sic definition of bullying or peer victimization underlying the construction
of the questionnaire was the following: A student is being bullied or victim-
ized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative ac-
6 INTRODUCTION

tions on the part of one or more other students. This definition emphasized
negative (aggressive) actions that are carried out repeatedly and over time.
It was further specified that in bullying there is a certain imbalance of
power or strength: The student who is exposed to negative actions has diffi-
culty defending him- or herself (for further details, see, e.g., Olweus 1993a,
1999a).
Although this basic definition of bullying or peer victimization has
been retained unchanged, the “definition” presented to the students in the
Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus, 1996) has been
somewhat expanded. In the latest version of the questionnaire, this (copy-
righted) definition reads as follows:

We say a student is being bullied when another student, or several other stu-
dents
• say mean and hurtful things or make fun of him or her or call him or
her mean and hurtful names
• completely ignore or exclude him or her from their group of friends or
leave him or her out of things on purpose
• hit, kick, push, shove around, or lock him or her inside a room
• tell lies or spread false rumors about him or her or send mean notes
and try to make other students dislike him or her
• and do other hurtful things like that.
When we talk about bullying, these things happen repeatedly, and it
is difficult for the student being bullied to defend himself or herself. We
also call it bullying when a student is teased repeatedly in a mean and
hurtful way.
But we don’t call it bullying when the teasing is done in a friendly
and playful way. Also, it is not bullying when two students of about the
same strength or power argue or fight.

After a global question about being bullied in the past couple of


months (or, in a different section of the questionnaire, about bullying other
students) with five fairly precise response alternatives, the students are
asked to respond to questions about eight specific forms of bullying they
may have been exposed to. These various forms of bullying comprise physi-
cal and verbal (including racial and sexual) harassment, threatening and co-
ercive behaviors, as well as more indirect ways of harassment (Björkvist,
Lagerspetz, & Kaukiainen, 1992; Crick, 1995; Crick, Nelson, Morales,
Cullerton-Sen, Casa, & Hickman, Chapter 8, this volume), including “rela-
tional” victimization in the form of active social isolation, backtalking,
having rumors spread, and the like.
This questionnaire, which also contains a number of questions about
attitudes toward bullying, the social environment’s reactions, and so on,
gives a very good picture of the level and nature of bully/victim problems,
A Critical Analysis 7

and the social climate more generally, at a school that has conducted the
survey with their students. If the responses about the various forms of bul-
lying and the global question are combined into summative indices, the
questionnaire permits reliable and valid identification of individual victims,
bullies, and bully/victims (e.g., Solberg, Olweus, & Endresen, 2001).

GLIMPSES FROM THE NORTH AMERICAN TRADITION

Since the early 1980s a dominant North American approach to the study of
peer relationships has been to measure peer acceptance or status through
positive and negative sociometric peer nominations. Using a special classifi-
cation scheme, researchers sort their subjects into peer status groups of
popular, average, neglected, and rejected children. There has been a special
research interest attached to low peer status or rejection. Much of the re-
search from the 1980s was summarized in an edited volume on peer rejec-
tion, which was published in 1990 (Asher & Coie, 1990).
It is worth emphasizing that this research tradition was not directly
concerned with peer harassment or victimization, but rather with the re-
lated phenomenon of peer rejection. However, because aggressive behavior
was believed (judging from a number of studies; see, e.g., Asher & Coie,
1990) to be the main determinant of peer rejection, at least up to 1988/
1989, the kind of victimization or harassment that could be implicated dif-
fered in important respects from what was in focus in Scandinavia (see the
preceding section).

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS WITH THE PEER REJECTION APPROACH

For a number of reasons, my disappointment with this general approach in-


creased gradually during the latter half of the 1980s, and in 1989—at a
well-attended symposium in Kansas City organized by the Society for Re-
search in Child Development—I expressed my major concerns and criti-
cisms of the dominant North American approach (Olweus, 1989).
My key arguments related to the fact that peer rejection measures do
not focus directly on the behavioral or personality characteristics of the
child. They rather reflect the social environment’s—the peers’—evaluation
of the child in the form of a general liking or disliking. Because different
children may be disliked or liked by their peers for very different reasons, it
is reasonable to expect considerable heterogeneity among children who are
rejected by their peers.
This is actually what has been found in empirical research (see, e.g.,
Hartup, 1983; French, 1988; Kupersmidt, Patterson, & Eickholt, 1989;
Olweus, 1989; Perry & Williard, 1989). An important subgroup of the re-
8 INTRODUCTION

jected children in these studies were children who were repeatedly victim-
ized, bullied, and harassed by other children. Thus, it was not only aggres-
sive children who might be rejected by peers. Children who were the target
of other children’s aggression and who typically showed a very different
pattern of behavior, one of withdrawal and anxiety, were also particularly
likely to be disliked and rejected. These results agreed quite well with the
findings from my own research on bully/victim problems (Olweus, 1973,
1978, 1984): The habitual victims, of whom I had identified two kinds,
passive and provocative victims, respectively (Olweus, 1973, 1978), were
typically disliked and rejected by their peers (only boys participated in this
early study).
Conversely, my data on boys who bullied other students did not support
the idea that aggressive behavior usually leads to rejection. Overall, the gener-
ally aggressive bullies (a subgroup of aggressive children and youth) were not
unpopular, and they were often supported by two or three other boys in the
class. Similar findings have been reported by some North American research-
ers (e.g., Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariépy, 1988).
In my symposium contribution, I argued that the marked heterogene-
ity of the rejected children—with several more or less distinct subgroups of
such children with very different behavioral characteristics—and the nature
of the rejection variable would lead to problems of prediction, intervention,
and understanding. A brief summary of the main arguments and implica-
tions are outlined in the following section.

PROBLEMS OF PREDICTION,
INTERVENTION, AND UNDERSTANDING

With a heterogeneous group of rejected children, it is reasonable to expect


a high proportion of both false positives and false negatives when predic-
tions are made to, for example, a later adjustment criterion such as adult
criminal/antisocial behavior. Many highly rejected children of the passive,
nonaggressive victim type mentioned earlier can be expected to be false
positives, implying that they will not end up as registered/convicted crimi-
nals (but will be predicted to belong in this group). Conversely, a consider-
able proportion of aggressive bullies, who are not generally rejected by
their peers, would probably be false negatives, that is, belong to the con-
victed group (but be predicted to end up in the group of noncriminals). In
sum, this implies that a dimension of peer rejection can generally be ex-
pected to be a relatively weak predictor of aggressive, antisocial, external-
izing behavior patterns.
These expectations were clearly borne out in two sets of regression
analyses with number of registered criminal convictions at age 24 as a crite-
rion for two cohorts from my early Swedish project (n = 276, and n = 195,
A Critical Analysis 9

respectively; see Olweus, 1989, for details). Peer ratings of rejection col-
lected both in grade 6 and grade 9 correlated only weakly with registered
criminality, with r values in the .05–.16 range. In marked contrast, parallel
peer ratings of aggressive behavior showed substantial correlations with the
criterion in all four analyses (range of r values = .27–.40).
My main argument here is not that peer rejection can never be a rea-
sonably good predictor of a criterion of adjustment or possibly serve as a
moderator variable for other predictors. There are (a relatively small num-
ber of) studies (see e.g., Parker & Asher, 1987; Coie, Terry, Lennox,
Lochman, & Hyman, 1995) that would contradict such a strong statement.
Rather, my key points are that peer rejection is a very indirect and complex
predictor of later adjustment and that adjustment criteria can usually be
better predicted from behaviors or characteristics with a more direct con-
ceptual link to such criteria. One may add that because of the heterogeneity
of the group of rejected children, predictions based on peer rejection are
likely to be variable and inconsistent, depending on the composition of the
sample in terms of the relative sizes of the various subgroups. This fact may
partly explain why rejection is sometimes a (relatively weak) predictor of
externalizing behavior and sometimes a (relatively weak) predictor of inter-
nalizing problems.
Considering the heterogeneity among the rejected children, it is obvi-
ously very difficult to design adequate and efficacious treatment or inter-
vention programs when the key criterion for selection or targeting is peer
rejection or lack of popularity (which has been the case in several studies).
Clearly, the problems and possible “social skills deficits” characterizing the
aggressive and the victimized children of the rejected group are quite dis-
similar and call for very different intervention approaches. Second, to use
rejected status as a criterion for intervention implicitly assumes that the dif-
ficulties reside mainly with the rejected or low-accepted child. As argued
later, this is likely to be wholly or partly incorrect, and the basic problem
may instead be an aggressive peer environment, particularly in the case of
passive victims. Third, using such a criterion for intervention would have
the unfortunate consequence that many children with obvious social ad-
justment problems would not be targeted for intervention. I am thinking of
the aggressive bullies in particular, the majority of whom are not rejected
by their peers (as discussed earlier) but who create many problems for other
students.
In my symposium contribution, I also questioned the general useful-
ness of peer status variables for the purpose of understanding underlying
mechanisms and establishing causal relationships. This critique was again
based on the fact that rejected children are a very heterogeneous group
composed of distinct subgroups with different behavioral patterns and mo-
tivational dynamics. This fact often means that an average value or a corre-
lation coefficient for a sample as a whole may be fairly meaningless. Such a
10 INTRODUCTION

value may mask very different, even opposing, trends or relationships with-
in the different subgroups.
A final point concerned the practice of standardizing nominations
within classrooms. This procedure is likely to have the unfortunate conse-
quence of eliminating or reducing variation in peer status variables between
classes. This “relativization” is likely to narrow the focus of inquiry to the
individual child at the expense of classroom-related environmental determi-
nants. In my view, it is very important to use measuring techniques and
variables that preserve possible variability among classes. This variation
can then be related to classroom or other higher-level characteristics, such
as the teacher’s leadership style, attitude to discipline, the size of the class,
the students’ average level of academic competence, group processes, and
the like. Such an approach will give a broader, and in my view, more ade-
quate understanding of the factors determining the peer relationship prob-
lems we are interested in studying.

IS A REORIENTATION UNDER WAY?

Because of the many problems with the dominant North American ap-
proach to peer relationship problems, in my 1989 presentation I called for
a certain reorientation of the research efforts in this area. More specifically,
I argued for a stronger focus on the behavioral or personality characteris-
tics of the child and, in parallel, on specific reactions by the social environ-
ment. This was certainly not to imply that there are no problems with the
approach I was advocating. For example, it has already been shown that
there are two subgroups of victimized children with partly different charac-
teristics. Furthermore, for some purposes it may also be useful or necessary
to divide aggressive students into various subclasses. Still, I contend that we
are in a much better position to handle such problems if the variables we
use in our research have clear behavioral or personality referents, rather
than being a reflection of the peer group’s general liking or disliking of a
particular student.
The main focus of this book is on peer victimization or harassment,
not on peer rejection. Maybe optimistically, I interpret this as an indication
that a certain reorientation in the desired direction has already occurred, or
perhaps is in the process of taking place, in the North American “peer re-
search community.”

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON THE VICTIMS

As outlined earlier, the importance of a certain shift of focus was, in my


view, evident already in 1989. More specifically, research had already
A Critical Analysis 11

shown (Olweus, 1978) that a large proportion of the (boy) victims, those of
the passive category, were not aggressive or actively provoking (which may
have helped “explain” their victimization or rejection to outside observers
such as teachers, peers, or parents). The pattern of data rather suggested
that many victims simply fell easy prey to aggressive, more powerful bul-
lies.
This interpretation was further strengthened in a prospective follow-
up study of a subgroup of former school victims at age 23 (who had been
almost exclusively of the passive type) and their nonvictimized peers
(Olweus, 1993b). Among other results from this study, it was found that
the former (boy) victims had largely “recovered” or were in the normal
range (like those in the “control” group) on several internalizing dimen-
sions at age 23: They were no longer particularly anxious, inhibited, intro-
verted, or nonassertive in interactions with others, nor were there indica-
tions that they had elevated stress levels (which they had had when
measured at age 16). This pattern of results implies that

many of them (the former victims) would probably function reasonably


well if they were not exposed to repeated bullying and harassment over
long periods of time. The elevated levels of anxiety and stress that we could
register in the school years were thus more a reflection of situation-related
strain than of a relatively permanent personality disturbance.
In a similar vein, the “normal” adult outcome with regard to peer
relationships and social interaction (according to self-reports) would
seem to suggest that the victims were not lacking in “social skills.” Or, if
they were deficient in such skills in the school period, these problems
were not serious enough to prevent normal development in the area of
social interaction in young adulthood (Olweus, 1993b, p. 336).

At the same time, it should be emphasized that even though the former
victims seemed to function well in a number of respects as young adults,
there were two dimensions on which they clearly differed from their peers:
depressive tendencies and poor self-esteem. In line with the earlier conclu-
sions, the total pattern of the causal–analytic results clearly indicated that
this was a consequence of the earlier persistent victimization by aggressive
peers, which had thus left its scars on their minds.

A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT

The results described in the preceding sections suggest a different perspec-


tive on and understanding of peer victimization than that inherently im-
plied in the study of peer rejection. In keeping with this perspective, I have
for a long time argued that it is a fundamental democratic or human right
for a child to feel safe in school and to be spared the oppression and re-
12 INTRODUCTION

peated, intentional humiliation implied in peer victimization or bullying.


No student should be afraid of going to school for fear of being harassed or
degraded, and no parent should need to worry about such things happen-
ing to his or her child (e.g., Olweus, 1993a).
The Swedish and Norwegian governments and school authorities seem
to have gradually adopted a similar view. As early as 1981, I proposed in-
troduction of a law against bullying or “mobbning” at school (Olweus,
1981). At that time, there was little political support for the idea. In 1994,
however, this suggestion was followed up by the Swedish Parliament with a
new school law article including formulations that are very similar to those
expressed above (the Education Act; SFS, 1994). In addition, the associated
regulations (Lpo94, 1994) place responsibility for realization of these
goals, including development of an intervention program against bullying
at the individual school, with the principal. The formulations in these docu-
ments have recently been made even more stringent and imperative
(Förskoleklass Och Andra Skollagsfrågor, 1997).
Also the Norwegian government has introduced a similar law article
(§2 in Opplæringsloven, the Education Act, 1998), although the formula-
tions are not quite as clear and imperative as in its Swedish counterpart.
The national initiatives taken against bullying/peer harassment in later
years in several other countries, such as Scotland, England, Ireland, Japan
(Smith et al., 1999), and just recently, Denmark, suggest a similar under-
standing, but these countries have not yet introduced special antibullying
legislation.

MORE ON THE PROVOCATIVE VICTIMS

Such a perspective on bully/victim problems in school is a far cry from “vic-


tim blaming,” at least in principle. In this context, it is also of interest to
consider the situation of the provocative victims.
From our intervention work, I and my research group have learned
that schools and teachers focus much attention on provocative victims and
often argue that the behavior of these victims is irritating and tension creat-
ing, which is thus considered to explain why these students become disliked
and even actively harassed by their peers. Some teachers and students alike
seem to think that these victims actually deserve the rough treatment they
get. It is clear that the dynamics in a classroom with a provocative victim
are often quite different from the problems in a classroom with one or
more passive victims. Among other things, a larger number of students,
perhaps the whole class, are often involved in the harassment (Olweus,
1978, 1993a). Accordingly, the attitude referred to is to some extent under-
standable.
So far, there has been relatively little systematic research into the prev-
A Critical Analysis 13

alence and characteristics of provocative victims or bully/victims as they


have also been called (but see Schwartz, Proctor, & Chien, Chapter 6, this
volume). In our new Bergen project, provocative victims have been defined
as scoring above a commonly used cutting point on both victim and bully
self-report dimensions (see Olweus, 1993a, p. 13); total n in this project is
about 4,000 students from 30 schools; n of provocative victims = 78. Pre-
liminary analyses of the Bergen data clearly confirm an earlier assertion
that these students “show a combination of both anxious and aggressive re-
action patterns” (Olweus, 1993a, pp. 33, 57; see also Olweus, 1978, p.
138). That is, these students have clear elements of both “pure” victims and
“pure” bullies in their makeup.
The provocative victims resemble the passive victims in being depres-
sive, socially anxious with poor global self-esteem and high aggression inhi-
bitions, and feeling disliked by peers. As with pure victims, prevalence rates
for provocative victims clearly go down with increasing age (from ages 11
to 15 years in this project). Conversely, the provocative victims also show
similarities with pure bullies by having elevated levels of dominant, aggres-
sive, and antisocial behavior and problems with concentration, hyperactiv-
ity, and impulsivity (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder problems,
ADHD). Moreover, there is a clear overrepresentation of boys (approxi-
mately 3:1) among the provocative victims, as is the case with bullies. In
addition, reading and writing problems are more common among provoca-
tive victims than among both passive victims and pure bullies.
The personality and behavior characteristics of the provocative victims
just described can be expected to elicit a fair amount of negative reactions
from their environments, as has also been found empirically (Olweus,
1978). This implies that interventions in situations with provocative vic-
tims must also deal directly with the behavior problems of these victims, for
example, by teaching them better ways of interacting with their peers
(Olweus, 1993a). It is important to emphasize, however, that the provoca-
tive victims’ “contribution to their own problems” does not legitimate ha-
rassment by peers; such “treatment” is as unacceptable as with other vic-
tims and is just as likely to exacerbate the situation.
Although provocative victims naturally attract a good deal of negative
attention in the school society, it should be remembered that they actually
represent a relatively small proportion of the victim group. This is true at
any rate if the measuring instrument used for classification is reasonably re-
liable and discriminating (Solberg et al., 2001). In our data for ages 11
through 15, the provocative victims constituted somewhat between 10 and
20% of the total victim group, with higher percentages in the lower age
range. Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of victims belong to the
passive, submissive category, who cannot really be seen as actively “caus-
ing” their own problems. (With younger age groups, discrimination may be
less sharp and the proportion of provocative victims or bully/victims corre-
14 INTRODUCTION

spondingly larger. See, for example, Alsaker & Valkanover, Chapter 7, this
volume.)
As emphasized by Schwartz and colleagues (Chapter 6, this volume),
more needs to be learned about this group of provocative or aggressive vic-
tims.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE GROUP

Some researchers have—in my view, mistakenly—seen my approach to peer


harassment or bully/victim problems as predominantly individual-oriented.
Such an impression may possibly stem from my early research (Olweus,
1973, 1978), in which it was of great importance to document the possible
existence of, and characteristics of, individual “actors,” given the general
contemporary Swedish focus on collective aggression implied in the afore-
mentioned concept of mobbing.
However, already in that research, a “restructuring” of the typical
school environment was seen as an important means of counteracting and
limiting these problems (Olweus, 1978, Ch. 9). In addition, the book con-
tained a fairly detailed discussion of social/psychological or group mecha-
nisms that may operate in a classroom or school and result in harassment
of victims also by ordinarily nice and nonaggressive students. These mecha-
nisms included (1) social contagion, (2) weakening of the control or inhibi-
tions against aggressive tendencies, (3) diffusion of responsibility, and (4)
gradual cognitive changes in the perception of the victim (Olweus, 1978,
pp. 143–147).
In the context of the new Bergen project and the development of a
teacher handbook about the intervention program (Olweus, 1999b), some
aspects of the ways students in a group or classroom may react to acute
bullying episodes have been further elaborated. One can also see this as a
description of various roles students can occupy in relation to bully/victim
problems in a class or school. These roles are illustrated and briefly de-
scribed in the conceptual scheme presented in Figure I.1, “The Bullying Cir-
cle.” Such roles or ways of reacting represent different combinations of the
student’s basic (inner) attitude to the bullying (positive–neutral/indifferent–
negative) and his or her way of acting or not acting in a bullying situation.
This conceptual scheme is based on my earlier research, including the
group mechanisms outlined in the preceding text, and in part on the work of
Salmivalli and her colleagues on participant roles (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz,
Björkqvist, Österman, & Kaukiainen, 1996; Salmivalli, Chapter 17, this vol-
ume). However, the present formulation seems to have a somewhat stronger
conceptual basis (in systematically combining attitude and action/nonaction)
and, in terms of empirical assessment, I rely primarily on self-reports rather
than peer ratings. Although peer ratings in this area have proven to be very
A Critical Analysis 15

FIGURE I.1. The Bullying Circle: Students’ modes of reaction/roles in an acute bul-
lying situation.

valuable for a number of purposes (see, e.g., Olweus, 1978; Perry, Kusel, &
Perry, 1988; Salmivalli et al., 1996), there is some doubt as to what extent
they can capture less visible and more subtle forms of harassment. It remains
an empirical question, however, to what extent self-reports will provide the
kind of information we are interested in obtaining.
At the same time, it is our definite experience that the Bullying Circle
in itself, independent of possible empirical data, is a very useful pedagogical
device for discussions with teachers, parents, and students (Olweus, 1999b)
about bully/victim problems in a class or school. With regard to counter-
acting and preventing bullying, for example, possible “change agents” eas-
ily realize the importance of having more students move toward the right
side of the Bullying Circle. Such insight automatically leads to questions
about how this can be best achieved.

BRIEFLY ABOUT INTERVENTION

For the past 15 to 20 years I have been heavily involved in work on inter-
vention against peer harassment or bullying in school. The key element of
this work has been my Core Program against Bullying and Antisocial
Behavior (Olweus, 1993a, Part IV, 1999b; Olweus & Limber, 1999). This
program is based on a limited set of principles derived chiefly from research
on the development and modification of the implicated problem behaviors,
16 INTRODUCTION

in particular, aggressive behavior. The principles have been translated into a


number of specific measures to be used at the school, class, and individual
levels. A central goal of the program is to achieve a restructuring of the so-
cial environment. This is done in a number of ways, including changes in
the “opportunity structures” and “reward structures” for bullying behav-
ior, resulting in fewer opportunities and rewards for such behavior.
Parenthetically, all of this represents a further confirmation that my
approach to peer harassment or bullying is by no means predominantly
individual-oriented. As strongly emphasized in the program, it is important
to work systematically on all specified levels, the school, class, and individ-
ual levels (and on the community level if possible). The fact that the inter-
vention approach is both systems- and individual-oriented is usually seen as
a strength of the program and something that helps explain its efficacy.1
The results from the first intervention project have been documented
in several publications (Olweus, 1991, 1993a; Olweus & Alsaker, 1991).
Clearly positive effects, with reductions in the 50 to 70% range, could be
registered with regard to bully/victim problems. In addition, there were
marked reductions in general antisocial behavior and clear improvement of
various aspects of the classroom social climate. As a further indication of
the effects of the program, we also found “dosage–response” effects, imply-
ing that teachers who implemented more of the program had clearly better
results than those who implemented less (Olweus & Alsaker, 1991).
Preliminary analyses of the intervention part of the new Bergen pro-
ject, with 14 intervention schools and 16 comparison schools, also indicate
quite positive results (Olweus, 1999c; Olweus & Limber, 1999). For the in-
tervention schools, there were reductions in the levels of bully/victim prob-
lems by 30 to 35%. With regard to the comparison schools (which were
not strictly “control” schools but did antibullying work of their own design
or preference), there was little or no change in “being bullied,” and actually
an increase in “bullying other students” by 35% or more.
Three of the intervention schools were followed up in the spring term
of the second project year (1999) with a small number of booster sessions
related to the program. On measurement at the end of the spring term, 2
years after the start of the project, these schools had reduced their levels of
bully/victim problems to about 50% of their initial levels.
These results represent average reductions or gains and are, of course,
quite encouraging. However, we have also documented that there was a
good deal of variation between schools and individual teachers in the ex-
tent to which they implemented the various components of the core pro-
gram in their own settings. Accordingly, it is essential to discover more
about the factors that affect teachers’ and schools’ readiness to implement
the program. Using multilevel statistical models (Bryk and Raudenbush,
1992), such work is in progress (Kallestad & Olweus, 2000) and prelimi-
A Critical Analysis 17

nary analyses indicate that both individual teacher characteristics and


school climate factors are clearly of importance for degree of program im-
plementation. Another related project concerns identification of those com-
ponents of the core program that are particularly effective; see Olweus &
Alsaker, 1991, for earlier analyses).

CONCLUDING WORDS

Peer harassment or bullying is an important phenomenon with many impli-


cations. In terms of conceptualization and empirical research, there are
clear advantages to studying a phenomenon in which both the recipient of
aggression and the perpetrator or perpetrators are in focus. In this way, the
aggressive behavior becomes anchored in a social context. The existence of
relatively pure victim, bully, and bully/victim groups (provocative victims),
as well as students with various attitudes and roles (cf. the Bullying Circle),
makes it natural to examine group processes and structural characteristics
of larger units such as the classroom and the school. This, in turn, means
that for a fuller understanding, peer harassment must be studied at several
different levels. The newly developed statistical techniques of multilevel
analysis (e.g., Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992; Goldstein, 1987) are useful in-
struments in such efforts.
Peer harassment is also a very important social issue in that it affects
negatively, both in the short and the long term, a large number of students
in our schools. Fortunately, it is relatively easy nowadays to reach consen-
sus, at least in principle, that bullying in school should not be tolerated and
that the school has a major responsibility for counteracting and preventing
such problems. Conceptually, it is easy to link work against bullying and
peer harassment to the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights and
to various legislative efforts, as in Scandinavia. All of this makes schools
more willing to “take ownership” of these problems. And with an under-
standing of peer harassment along the lines suggested in this Introduction,
it is very natural to install both systems- and individual-oriented interven-
tions in schools, where a major—and very worthwhile—goal must be to
create safer and better learning environments.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this chapter and parts of the research reported herein were greatly
facilitated through grants from the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Family Af-
fairs (BFD), the National Association of Mental Health (Nasjonalforeningen), and
from the Johann Jacobs Foundation.
18 INTRODUCTION

NOTE

1. This program has recently been selected by a U.S. expert committee as one out of
10 “model” or Blueprint programs (Olweus & Limber, 1999), to be used in a
national violence prevention initiative in the United States supported by the De-
partment of Justice (OJJDP). At present, the core program is being implemented
in a considerable number of schools in various parts of the United States. The
main components of the program are the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Ques-
tionnaire (with a PC program for processing the data), the book Bullying at
School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Blackwell Publishers, phone:
1–800–216–2522), Olweus’ Core Program against Bullying and Antisocial Be-
havior: A Teacher Handbook, and the video Bullying (South Carolina Educational
Television, phone: 1–800–553–7752). Information about ordering the Question-
naire and the Teacher Handbook can be obtained from the author, email:
[email protected], or mail: Vognstolbakken 16, N- 5096 Bergen, Norway.

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lication.
Conceptual and Methodological Issues

PA R T I

Conceptual and Methodological


Issues in Peer Harassment

A major theme in this volume is that the study of peer harassment is differ-
ent from the study of peer aggression. The experiences of victims are quite
disparate from those of bullies, and the organizing themes in the two litera-
tures are also distinct. This is no more evident than in the particular con-
ceptual and methodological challenges that peer harassment researchers
face and that are the focus of this first part of the book.
Chapter 1, by Ladd and Ladd, tackles the issue of the chronicity of
peer harassment. Aggression has been found to be relatively stable across
childhood, but the stability of victimization has been harder to chronicle.
As Ladd and Ladd point out, there is little agreement about how often a
child must be harassed (frequency) and how long the harassment must last
(duration) before the experience is viewed as stable and the individual
achieves chronic victim status. Thus, frequency and duration must both be
considered when linking peer harassment to adjustment difficulties. Ladd
and Ladd pose testable hypotheses about the independent and interactive
effects of these two temporal variables on children’s adjustment and ability
to cope with being the target of others’ hostility. What emerges from their
chapter is a portrayal of the dynamic nature of peer harassment: Many chil-
dren recover from frequent experiences of victimization that are of short
duration, others must cope with incidents that are sporadic but recurrent,
and still other youth have to deal with the isolated event that is intense and
has enduring effects. In other words, there are multiple pathways from ex-
periences with harassment to subsequent (mal)adjustment.
The notion of pathways alerts us to think about process, or the under-
lying mechanisms that mediate the occurrence of victimization and subse-
quent reactions. Graham and Juvonen in the next chapter highlight
attributional processes as one such mediating mechanism. Building on pre-

21
22 Conceptual and Methodological Issues

vious work that applied attributional analyses to the study of aggression,


these authors make the case that how victims construe the reasons for their
plight provides import clues to understanding their subsequent adjustment.
In particular, attributions for victimization to causes that are internal (“It’s
something about me”), stable (“Things will always be this way”), and un-
controllable (“There’s nothing I can do to change it”) are related to low
self-esteem, negative affect, and passivity. The analysis can also account for
how peers react to classmates perceived as victim. Graham and Juvonen hy-
pothesize that when peers perceive victims as responsible for their plight
(the causes of harassment are within their control), this leads to rejection
and unwillingness to come to the aid of the victim. Thus, attributional anal-
yses are utilized to account for both passive withdrawal by the victim and
active rejection by the peer group.
The attributional model that guides Graham and Juvonen’s analysis
begins with an experience of victimization and then examines it causal con-
sequences. However, it is also important to move back in this temporal se-
quence to ask about antecedents—that is, what factors place a child at risk
for becoming the target of others’ hostility? In Chapter 3, Perry, Hodges,
and Egan review an array of determinants, but with a focus on family fac-
tors. There is precedent for studying childrearing antecedents of deviant
behavior in the aggression literature, where robust linkages between harsh
parenting and child antisocial behavior have been documented. Building on
this tradition, Perry et al.’s analysis highlights how insecure attachments
and overcontrolling or overprotective parenting styles can be risk factors
for peer harassment. What makes their approach different from the social-
ization literature on aggression is that Perry et al. develop a social–
cognitive model of family influence that links parenting practices to the
child’s representation (schema) of the self and the parent–child relationship.
Both schemas then affect risk for victimization. For example, based on par-
ticular kinds of parent–child interactions, some youngsters acquire what
the authors label a “victim schema”: a conception of the parent as threaten-
ing and controlling and of the self as weak and helpless. Such children be-
have in ways that invite harassment from peers (i.e., they are “easy
marks”). By incorporating children’s cognitive representations of both self
and their interactions with parents, Perry et al. offer a novel approach to
family influences on peer harassment and one that has generated a number
of testable hypotheses.
The last two chapters in this part tackle one of the most significant
methodological challenges in peer victimization research—what informa-
tion sources should be used to classify children as victimized. This has not
been a compelling methodological concern in the peer aggression literature.
Typically, children are classified as aggressive on the basis of a combination
of peer nominations and behavioral ratings by teachers; rarely are discrep-
ancies between peer and teacher reports considered. Moreover, self-reports
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
of the gentlemen who have stayed here during the past year, say, so
we can look up their servants.”
“I can tell you offhand of several of my guests but it will take more
time than I can spare this afternoon to give you a complete list, and
frankly, it is distasteful to me to have my friends annoyed.” Orbit’s
tone was pleasant but firm. “The latest to visit me, whom I can recall,
are Professor Harrowden, from the Smithsonian Institute, Sir Philip
Devereux and Conan Fairclough of London, Sabatiano Maura,
Yareslow Gazdik—”
“Mr. Orbit, would you write the last two?” McCarty interrupted
earnestly. “Where might Professor Harrowden be found?”
“In South America just now, leading an expedition up the Amazon.”
Orbit laid his cigarette in a tray of curiously hammered red gold and
reached obligingly for a pen. “Fairclough’s off for Africa again, I
believe, and Gazdik is playing a series of concerts at Biarritz.”
“Are the others at the ends of the earth, too?” The question was
bland, but McCarty’s smile was a trifle grim.
“Oh, no!” Orbit smiled also in understanding, as he rose and
offered the sheet of paper. “Sir Philip is on his way here from the
West to visit me again for a few days and Maura’s portrait exhibition
closes in Philadelphia before the end of the month when he, too, will
return before sailing again for Madrid. I’ll send the complete list to
headquarters for you, but I’m afraid you won’t find that their
menservants learned much of Hughes’ affairs in the brief time they
were here.”
McCarty thanked him and they took their departure, encountering
Ching Lee in the hall below who showed them out in silence.
“’Tis beyond me what you got out of that interview,” Dennis
declared. “Stalling, is what I’d have called it!”
“The two of us!” McCarty agreed with a chuckle. “Him as well as
me. He’ll not be dragging his friends into this business if he can help
it!... Who’s the lanky, worried-looking guy talking to Bill?”
Halfway down the block, a tall, thin, bespectacled young man was
gesticulating nervously as he confronted the watchman whose
vehement shakes of the head denoted protestation. While they
watched, the young man turned abruptly and made for the Goddard
house. Bill advanced slowly toward them.
“Have you fellows seen the Goddard boy?” he asked. “He’s the
red-headed kid you saw me let in the first day you came. That was
his private teacher who’s been looking for him for an hour but he
didn’t go out either of the gates.”
“Maybe he did awhile back when that one was left open,” McCarty
suggested dryly.
“Good Lord, did you know that!” Bill gasped. “If you let on it’ll cost
me my job, and I only stepped ’round the corner for a smoke! The
kid’s all right, but they treat him like a baby. Did you find out yet who
killed Hughes?”
“We’re waiting for news every minute,” McCarty assured him
gravely as they reached the western gate. “I shouldn’t wonder if it
came to-night.”
“Now what in the world did you give him that bunk for?” demanded
Dennis, when they had left the Mall safely behind them.
“I said ‘news,’ but not of what kind, Denny,” replied his companion
with dignity. “You’re not on duty till morning?”
“No, I was thinking I’d drop in at Molly’s, now the kid has got over
the measles.”
“Well, come to my rooms when you leave your sister’s,” McCarty
invited. “I’ve accepted a bribe from one of my Homevale tenants,
who’s law-breaking in his cellar, and if you’re not afraid of being
poisoned like Hughes——?”
“I’ll be there!” Dennis promised with alacrity.
He was as good as his word but when he arrived no refreshment
awaited him. Instead, McCarty turned from the telephone with a glint
of latent excitement in his blue eyes and announced:
“The news has come, Denny. Horace Goddard has been
kidnapped!”
CHAPTER IX
IN THIN AIR

“G LAD you could come at once, McCarty.” Eustace Goddard’s


ruddy face was pale, and the humorous quirk beneath the
ends of the small, sandy mustache had given place to a tremulous
droop. “Your inspector thought I had some information for you about
that valet’s death when I telephoned headquarters to ask for your
address and I didn’t undeceive him. Don’t want any notoriety about
this while a shadow of doubt remains—but God! I—I’m worried!”
“You’ll recall Special Deputy Riordan from that first talk we had at
Orbit’s?” McCarty indicated his colleague who stood in the doorway.
“You told me over the ’phone that your boy had been kidnapped; he’s
pretty big for that, ain’t he, and in broad day?”
“What else can we think?” Goddard threw out his arms in a
helpless gesture. “Horry vanished in thin air this afternoon! He hadn’t
any idea of going out, in fact, he complained of a headache after
lunch—he has never been very strong—and his mother left him
curled up on the couch in the library here when she went shopping.
She returned late to dress for Orbit’s musicale and didn’t inquire for
him, supposing him to be with Trafford, his tutor. I reached home
from the club about half-past five and found Trafford very much
disturbed—But here he is! He’ll tell you himself. Mr. Trafford, these
are the men for whom I sent. Will you tell them when you first missed
Horry?”
The thin, anxious-looking, bespectacled young man, whom they
had seen in conversation with the watchman that afternoon, came
slowly forward.
“I went to the library at three to tell him it was time for his Latin
lesson,” he began, his voice dazed and shaken. “He wasn’t there
and I searched the house for him, surprised that he should have
gone out without mentioning it. Then it occurred to me that he might
have slipped over to Mr. Orbit’s house next door, where there is an
exceptionally fine collection of paintings which fascinate him. His
ruling ambition is to become an artist and Mr. Orbit has encouraged
him—but I digress. I went there to inquire for him but no one had
seen him, and then, really anxious, I questioned the watchman who
assured me that he had not gone out either gate.”
“H’m!” remarked McCarty as Dennis shuffled his feet uneasily.
“And what did you do after, Mr. Trafford?”
“I concluded that Horace had gone to see the artist who has been
instructing him in drawing and of whom he is very fond; I could think
of nothing else that would account for his disappearance, but it
seemed probable some neighbor with a key to the Mall had entered
just as he left so that the watchman need not have been called upon
to open the gate for him.” The young man’s hands were clenching
and unclenching nervously and beads of moisture stood out upon his
forehead. “I therefore didn’t mention it to Mrs. Goddard before she
went to the musicale but waited, believing Horace would return at
any moment. When the afternoon grew late I searched the house
again, questioned the servants, even went across the street to
inquire at the Sloane house for him; young Mr. Sloane has taken an
interest also in his artistic efforts and it is the only other house on the
block he is privileged to visit by himself, since the Burminsters are
still away. I—I met with no success!—If I had only given the alarm
earlier!”
He was turning away with a groan when McCarty asked:
“Why didn’t you think to ’phone Blaisdell and ask if the lad had
been there, Trafford?”
The wretched tutor stared and Goddard, who had been standing
with his elbows on the mantel and his head in his hands, suddenly
wheeled.
“How did you know Blaisdell is the artist who has been giving him
lessons?” he demanded.
McCarty smiled.
“I heard him say himself that Blaisdell was going on a sketching
tour next month and would take him, only you wouldn’t hear of it,” he
explained. “The boy was wild to go along——”
“Mr. Blaisdell started yesterday,” the tutor interrupted. “I learned
this when I telephoned to his studio this afternoon, as I did as soon
as the idea occurred to me that Horace might have gone there. I
forgot to mention it but my anxiety—! I feel criminally negligent in
having taken the situation so easily!”
“Don’t the boy ever get a chance to play with other lads?” Dennis
spoke for the first time, his tone filled with pitying contempt. “Couldn’t
he have gone to the Park and then home to supper with one or
another of them?”
“My son does not play in the Park,” Goddard responded with
dignity. “He rides there with a class from the Academy on two
mornings of the week but the season does not reopen until next
month. Horace is delicate as I told you and has never cared for
rough, physical exercise, although he is far from being a
mollycoddle. He has a few friends of his own age but they are all still
at their country homes; Mr. Trafford and I have telephoned to every
one we can think of! Mrs. Goddard is prostrated and under the care
of her physician; when she returned from Orbit’s musicale and
learned of Horace’s disappearance she was almost beside herself.
He is our only child, you know. If anything has happened to him—!”
He ran his hand violently through his scanty fringe of hair and
McCarty observed:
“’Tis queer the lad didn’t tell you himself that Blaisdell was going
away yesterday.”
“He hasn’t talked of him very much lately.” Goddard hesitated and
then went on: “Horace is an unusual boy, very sensitive and
reserved. I don’t pretend to understand him. He took it very much to
heart when we declined to allow him to go on this sketching tour but,
of course, it was out of the question; no one but an artist would have
suggested such an impractical thing for a boy of his age, and with his
frail constitution!—Damn that dog! He’ll drive me out of my mind!”
A doleful, long-drawn howl, subdued but eloquent, reached their
ears from below-stairs and McCarty remembered his brief talk with
the boy in that very room three days before.
“Is that Max, the police dog your son was telling me about when I
called here?”
“Yes. He wandered around whining until I couldn’t stand it any
longer and had him shut up. Devilish clever animal and devoted to
Horry—knows there’s something wrong! By God, hear that! Midnight!
What can have happened to my boy?”
He dropped into a chair burying his face in his hands as the clock
struck and once more Dennis spoke.
“Have you any notion how much pocket money the lad had this
day?”
It was Trafford who replied to him.
“Six dollars and seventy-five cents. I am teaching him to keep a
budget and he carefully puts down whatever he spends each day.”
“Little and red-headed, wasn’t he, with a narrow chest and
spindling legs—”
“Riordan means is he small for his age and kind of delicate
looking?” McCarty amended hastily, glaring at the tactless
interrogator. “How was he dressed when you last saw him and
what’s missing from his things?”
“He wore a brown pedestrian suit and brown shoes and golf
stockings,” the tutor answered. “He had a plain platinum wrist watch
on a leather strap and a gold seal ring with the family coat of arms.
Nothing else is missing except a brown cloth cap with the
manufacturer’s name, ‘Knowles,’ inside. Before communicating with
you, Mr. Goddard and I telephoned to every hospital in the city,
fearing that some street accident might have occurred, but no child
whose appearance tallied in the least degree with his had been
brought in. The only remaining possibility is that he is being detained
somewhere for a ransom.”
“Have you any other reason for thinking the lad may have been
kidnapped?” McCarty turned to Goddard. “Know of anybody with a
grudge against you or your family? Had any threatening letters?”
“Great heavens, no!” The bereaved father raised his head. “Horry
is a little chap for fourteen, looks nearer twelve in fact, and Mr.
Trafford usually accompanies him when he leaves the Mall, but he
begged so hard to go to Blaisdell’s studio by himself that I allowed it,
though it was against his mother’s wishes; I wanted him to be manly
and self-reliant, and the Madison Avenue cars pass Blaisdell’s door
near Fiftieth. I thought it was perfectly safe, but he may have been
watched and marked by some criminal as a victim for kidnapping.”
“That don’t explain how or why he passed out of one gate or the
other with not one on the whole block seeing him.” McCarty shook
his head. “You say you’re wishful to avoid notoriety, or I’d advise you
to report the lad’s disappearance to the Bureau of Missing Persons
and let the investigation take its regular course, but there’s a chance
still that he’s not been kidnapped nor yet met with an accident. ’Twas
for Riordan and me to try to locate him and get him back without
having the newspapers getting out extras that you sent for me to-
night?”
Dennis caught his breath audibly at this highly irregular
supposition, but Goddard nodded eagerly.
“That’s it, exactly! It would kill Mrs. Goddard to have the press
make a sensational case of this while there is the slightest hope that
Horace may be restored to us without publicity. You’ll do what you
can? I’ll pay anything, a fortune, to have my son again, safe!”
“We’ll do our best, Mr. Goddard,” McCarty rose. “If we’ve no news
for you by morning can we have a word with Mrs. Goddard then?”
“Of course. I’d take you to her now, but the doctor has given her
something to quiet her. The servants don’t know anything; I’ve
questioned them till I’m hoarse and been in touch with every one to
whom Horry might have gone. For God’s sake, find my boy!”
Young Trafford showed them out and McCarty glanced keenly into
his pale, troubled face as he held the door open. He seemed on the
point of speech but glanced back over his shoulder and then
resolutely closed his lips. McCarty paused.
“Before we come in the morning you’d do well to tell the lad’s
father to come clean with us,” he admonished in a lowered tone. “’Tis
not by keeping anything back that he’ll help!”
Trafford started.
“Do you think he is?” he countered quickly. “I’ve told you all I know,
at any rate, but let me hear if there’s anything more I can do. I’ll sit
up all night by the telephone.”
“Where are we going now?” Dennis asked as his companion
turned toward the east gate. “’Twas to find who killed Hughes that
the inspector made deputies of us, not to be chasing runaway kids,
but I’m trailing right with you.”
“‘Runaway,’ is it? I thought that was your hunch when you asked
what pocket money the lad had and then described him with more
truth than politeness!” McCarty chuckled. “You think he’s gone to join
this artist fellow Blaisdell? ’Twill be easy to settle that when we find
out where that tour was to commence, for Horace could not have
gone far on six seventy-five.”
“And we know how he got out all right,” Dennis supplemented.
“’Twas by that east gate ahead when Bill left it open so convenient!—
Look at Orbit’s house! Do you suppose his afternoon party is lasting
on through the night?”
The awning and carpet were still stretched from the entrance door
to curb, and, seemingly borne upon the subdued radiance of the
glow which filtered through the curtained windows of the
conservatory, there came to them faintly the strains of the organ. It
was no majestic harmony this time, however, but a simple, insistently
repetitive measure. McCarty paused to listen, shaking his head.
“Orbit’s by himself and just kind of thinking through the organ;
can’t you tell, the way he’s just wandering along, amusing himself?
That’s an easy little tune, too, that would stick in your head.—Come
on. I’ve a notion to see part of this Mall we’ve not thought to examine
yet.”
“If there’s a foot of it we’ve not been over, barring the insides of the
other houses—!” began Dennis in obvious disappointment. “I thought
we’d be getting after whoever takes care of Blaisdell’s place to find
where he’s gone—”
“At this time of night?” snorted McCarty. “Has it come to you that
Goddard may not be so far wrong at that, especially if he’s got some
reason he hasn’t told for thinking the lad was stolen? I’m beginning
to see the practical workings of those books of mine you turn your
nose up at and I ask you, did Horace look to have nerve enough to
run away? If he went outside these gates it was of his own free will,
of course, and during the time Bill left the one of them open, but what
if he’d been paid to do it? What if the lad had been decoyed outside?
How do we know there’s not others on the block concerned in it?”
“‘Others on the block!’” repeated Dennis, stopping short as they
passed the dark Bellamy house. “Mac! You’re not thinking there
could be any connection between what happened to Hughes four
days ago and the Goddard kid’s disappearance! You’re not looking to
have him found dead somewhere, poisoned! Glory be! What’s come
to this street all of a sudden?”
“I’m asking myself that,” returned the other grimly. “I’m going no
further in my mind, though, just saying it looks funny, that’s all.
Here’s a handful of rich families living behind their gates in peace
and seclusion for generations, with nothing ever happening except
maybe a funeral now and then, for they could not shut out death.
Then a murder takes place right in their midst, even if the victim did
go far before he dropped in his tracks, and while there’s still no
answer to it somebody in the next house disappears.”
“So that’s why you hinted at notoriety, if Goddard took the case to
headquarters instead of leaving it to us! We’re still on the Hughes
affair after all!” exclaimed Dennis, adding: “What’s down here?”
McCarty had turned down the black passage or court between
Mrs. Bellamy’s and the closed Falkingham house next door on the
east, and he vouchsafed no response to the companion who
followed curiously at his heels until they had reached the rear of the
boarded-up residence. Then he whispered cautiously:
“Got your flashlight?”
For answer Dennis produced the pocket electric torch without
which he seldom went on a nocturnal adventure with McCarty. The
latter took it from him, and, pressing the button, darted a minute but
piercing ray of light along the rear of the houses whose front
sidewalks they had just traversed.
“See that, Denny?” he whispered. “An open court as clear as the
palm of your hand straight past the Bellamys’ and Orbit’s to
Goddard’s on the corner. If the kid had wanted to get out without
being seen he might have left the back of his house and come along
this court to any of the passage-ways that lead out to the sidewalk
nearer the gate.”
“True for you,” Dennis assented. “Turn the light along the back wall
till we see how high it is, and whether there are any little doors in it or
not.”
But the wall, not of brick but of ancient brownstone, was as high as
the city’s regulations permitted, bare save in the rear of Orbit’s
miniature palace, where it was covered by a thick, impenetrable
curtain of ivy, sable and glossy like black satin in the moving finger of
light.
All at once heavy footsteps pounded along the sidewalk to the
mouth of the passage-way they had just left and a brighter beam
was trained suddenly upon them. Dennis dodged instinctively but
McCarty turned and faced it, calling cautiously:
“Is it you, Dave Hollis? We’ve not gone yet, just taking a look
around.”
They had encountered the night watchman when they let
themselves in at the west gate earlier in response to Eustace
Goddard’s summons, and now he merely grunted in
acknowledgment and passed on.
“There’s nothing more to be seen here,” Dennis remarked. “No
one could cross that wall without a ladder and though they might
climb that ivy it could not be done carrying a boy the size of Horace.”
“To say nothing of it being broad day and the back windows of all
the houses in this row looking out at the performance,” McCarty
interjected. “All the same we’ll stroll along to the Goddards’ kitchen
door and back, Denny.”
The rear of Mrs. Bellamy’s mansion was as dark as the front and
in Orbit’s also the lights had by now been extinguished. In the dead
stillness their stealthy footsteps seemed to ring unnaturally loudly to
their own ears. Only in the Goddard house did the dull glow from roof
to cellar gleam forth through shrouded windows like sleepless,
anxious eyes.
“’Tis almost unhealthy, the cleanness of everything!” Dennis
looked about him as the flashlight circled over the spacious,
immaculate court. “Not an ashcan nor so much as a garbage pail
that a cat could hide behind! We’re wasting our time here, Mac!”
But McCarty did not answer. He had gone halfway down the
tradesmen’s passage leading to the sidewalk and paused before a
door in the side wall of the Goddard house. Dennis saw the light play
in narrowing arcs over the paved ground before it and then settle to
a mere pin-point as McCarty stooped. After a moment he
straightened and came swiftly back, cat-footed despite his bulk. He
was holding out some small object in his extended hand and as he
reached his companion’s side he played the light upon it—a small,
plain platinum watch, crushed beyond repair, on a pathetically short
leather wristband.
CHAPTER X
THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS

T HE cold, early light of a clouded morning found McCarty and


Dennis seated over pancakes and coffee in an all-night
restaurant on Sixth Avenue not far from Fiftieth Street. The
intervening hours since they left the New Queen’s Mall had been
fruitlessly spent in a weary round of the ferries and railroad terminals
in search of news of a small, solitary traveler and now they had just
come from an interview with the superintendent of the palatial studio
apartment building in which the artist Blaisdell resided, whose exact
address a nearby druggist had been fortuitously able to supply.
“I always thought those painter guys lived in garrets with never a
square meal nor a second shirt,” Dennis spoke in a slightly dazed
tone. “I mind that day watchman Bill said young Horace told him
Blaisdell was one of the greatest in the country, but he must have
some regular business to be able to live in a place like that! There’s
one thing sure; no matter how much of a fancy he’d took to the kid
he could afford to get into no trouble by taking him on a tour without
his father and mother being willing, and if the boy showed up he’d
bring him back. Where is it again that he’s gone sketching?”
“Up in the She-wan-gunk Mountains,” McCarty pronounced the
name with painstaking care. “Ellenville is his headquarters, the
superintendent said, if you remember; the Detweiler House. Granting
there was a train, and the lad had more money with him than that
four-eyed tutor suspected, he could have got there by early evening,
but no word of any kind had come when I ’phoned the Goddard
house an hour ago.”
“I know,” Dennis drained his cup and held it out to the sleepy
waiter to be refilled. “’Tis too bad you did not tell Trafford about
finding the watch.”
“And send him into hysterics? He’s as bad as a woman now!”
McCarty shrugged. “The doctor give orders Mrs. Goddard wasn’t to
be woke up till eight but we’ll chance it by seven. How do you feel,
Denny?”
Dennis eyed the questioner with swift suspicion.
“There’s nothing the matter with me that I know of!”
“’Tis a pity!” McCarty commented callously. “I was thinking if you
called up the lieutenant at the engine house and told him how sick
you were he’d maybe let you off duty the day. There’s a ’phone over
on the cigar counter.”
“And what’s ailing me?” Dennis’ eyes sparkled but his tone was
flat for his inventive faculties were at low ebb in the early morning.
“From what I’ve learned lately, Denny, about mental defectives—!”
But Dennis had risen and stalking to the counter he took up the
’phone. Presently McCarty heard his voice raised in a harrowing
description of pain but it was abruptly cut short, and, after listening
for a moment with a dazed look on his face, he silently replaced the
receiver and returned to his chair.
“Well?” demanded McCarty expectantly.
“Mike’s out of the hospital and he’ll take my nine-to-six shift.”
“But just what did the lieutenant say to you?”
“He told me,” Dennis replied very slowly and distinctly, “to get the
hell off the ’phone, for I’d be no good at a false alarm while my
crook-chasing side-kick McCarty was on the job again. I gathered
from a few more remarks before he hung up on me that your friend
Jimmie Ballard of the ‘Bulletin’ has been nosing around the engine
house, to get dope from me about what you’re pulling off, and by that
same token running the lieutenant ragged; ’tis what I get for
associating with you.”
It was McCarty’s turn to eye his companion suspiciously but
Dennis’ stolid countenance was quite devoid of humor and he
retorted:
“Is that so? Well, we’d better be associating ourselves with the
Goddards again now or there’ll be no news for Jimmie or the
inspector either, which is worse. Come on.”
“Unless the boy is found as Hughes was,” Dennis suggested
optimistically. “It would let the Lindholms out, but who except a
lunatic would be poisoning children and servants, promiscuous-like?”
McCarty’s reply was a stare and a grunt which the other construed
as derisive and he lapsed into aggrieved silence as they made their
way once more to the gates, behind which so much mystery and
menace brooded.
Trafford opened the door almost before the bell had ceased to
echo through the house and his haggard face was mute evidence
that the suspense had not been lifted.
“Have you—?” He could not voice the rest of the question but
McCarty replied briskly:
“We’ve several possibilities, Trafford, and we’re following every
last one of ’em up. No news is good news just now. Is Mrs. Goddard
awake yet, do you know?”
“Her maid told me when I inquired a few minutes ago that she was
stirring. I’ll go and see.” The young tutor turned dispiritedly away.
“You’ll find Mr. Goddard in the smoking-room at the rear on the
Avenue side.”
In dimensions and ponderous style of furnishing the smoking-room
resembled a club lounge rather than a private apartment and it was a
full minute before they descried Eustace Goddard’s rotund figure
relaxed in the depths of a huge leather armchair. He was apparently
asleep but on their approach he opened widely staring eyes upon
them and sprang up with an inarticulate cry.
“We’ve not located your son yet, Mr. Goddard,” McCarty spoke
quickly before the father could frame words. “We know what every
minute means to you and ’tis for that we’re going to bring the
inspector and some of his other men into it. I can promise you there’ll
be no publicity through us.”
“By God, McCarty, they can blazon it in every paper in the land if it
will bring our boy back to us!” Goddard cried brokenly. “The horror of
this night has made everything else unimportant! You mean you—
you’ve failed?”
“Not exactly, sir, but there are only the two of us now and ’twill
save time if others take up some of the clues we’ve got,” McCarty
explained.
“There’s the telephone,” Goddard waved a shaking hand toward a
stand half concealed behind a lacquered screen. “Get the whole
department if you need it. I’ll offer any reward you suggest—fifty
thousand? A hundred?”
“We’ll settle that when the inspector comes.” McCarty moved to
the screen and took up the receiver, and Dennis cleared his throat.
“How many doors are there to this house?”
“Four!” Goddard replied in a surprised tone. “The one at the front,
two at the rear—kitchen and tradesmen’s entrances—and a smaller
door at the side opening on the court that runs between this house
and Orbit’s. But why do you ask? What are the clues you’ve found?”
Dennis coughed discreetly, and from behind the screen came
McCarty’s voice.
“Is it yourself, Inspector?... Yes, me, McCarty.... No, at Goddard’s
and you’re needed.... Wait a bit! Can you lay hands on both Martin
and Yost?... Can’t talk now, sir. Get me?... All right, bring Martin
along but send Yost over to—to Bill, 0565.... That’s it.... Maybe and
maybe not.... Sure, I’ve been in touch with Bill and he knows the
party I’m looking for. Tell Yost to wait and ’phone here if anything
turns up.... Of course not, Inspector, till you take it in hand! ’Bye.”
The last had been straight blarney, but Dennis shivered as the
receiver clicked on its hook. Well he knew that telephone number
and the grim little house far over toward the river where, for a brief
interval, the bluff, kindly Bill harbored the city’s unknown dead! Had
the sickly little Goddard heir gone the way of Hughes after all?
“Why did you ask about the doors?” The conversation had
evidently held only its obvious meaning for the man before them.
“Horace must have been induced in some way to leave the house,
for no one could have entered with Trafford and all the servants
about!”
“He did leave, and by the side door,” McCarty held out the
shattered little wristwatch. “Does this belong to the lad?”
“Good God, yes! He wore it yesterday!” Goddard seized it and
then sank into his chair. “It’s—smashed! He must have been handled
brutally, perhaps even—!”
“That don’t follow, sir!” McCarty interrupted. “The strap slips out of
the buckle easy, for I tried it, and the lad might have dropped it
without noticing. Anybody going to one of the back doors could have
come along and trod on it after, for ’twas in the alley right in front of
the door that I found it. And now—”
“Mrs. Goddard is awake and ready to see you now,” Trafford’s
voice sounded from the threshold and Goddard started up once
more.
“She knows there is no news?” he asked, and at the tutor’s nod
added: “Come then, but don’t tax her beyond her strength and don’t
mind any—any wild statements which she may make. My poor wife
is almost out of her mind!”
“Of course; we understand,” McCarty darted a quick glance at
Dennis and then turned to the tutor. “Trafford, Inspector Druet and
another man are on their way up from headquarters and you’ll be
helping matters if you tell the both of them what’s happened and all
about them you ’phoned to for trace of the lad.”
In silence they followed Goddard to the tiny jewel-box of an
elevator, whose velvet and gold and glittering crystal mirrors made
Dennis gasp. He gasped again when their guide pressed a button
and they shot abruptly upward and his weatherbeaten face turned a
delicate green as they stopped with a smooth but sickening swoop at
the second floor. He was the first out with the opening of the door,
but there was no time for the aside which trembled on his lips, for
Goddard led the way down the wide hall to the doorway in which the
figure of an elderly maid was silhouetted against the dim light of the
room within.
“Eustace!” A woman’s trembling voice sounded from behind her. “It
can’t be that nothing is known, nothing! Did you tell them about that
—”
“Everything is being done, Clara.” Goddard motioned the maid
aside and McCarty and Dennis followed him into the dressing-room.
They received only a confused impression of mahogany and old-
rose and tall mirrors, of a faint, aromatic perfume and the sound of
deep-drawn, convulsive breathing. The next moment their eyes were
caught and held by the long figure outstretched upon a chaise-
longue, imposing even in the dishevelled abandonment of grief. Mrs.
Goddard was a woman well over forty, but her distraught face still
bore traces of the beauty which must normally have been hers.
There was no touch of gray in the masses of luxuriant dark hair
which the maid had arranged with evident haste, but that night had
etched lines about the fine eyes and the firm though sensitive mouth
that would never be erased.
As her husband went on speaking, her glance swept past him to
the two who waited at his elbow.
“Everything that is humanly possible is being done, my dear!”
Goddard repeated more emphatically. “These are the police officers I
called in, and they want to ask you a few questions. Do you think you
can collect yourself enough to stick to facts and not foolish, morbid
fancies?”
“I am quite collected, Eustace!” There was a note almost of
defiance in Mrs. Goddard’s tones and she sat up among her pillows
with an unconscious dignity, in spite of the emotion which she held in
check with such obvious effort. “Ask me anything you please! I—I
only want my baby safe once more!”
“Of course, ma’am,” McCarty responded soothingly. “You went out
and left the lad on the couch in the library and when you came back
to get ready for the musicale next door you thought he was with his
teacher. Now, what was the first you knew of his disappearance?”
“When I returned from the musicale. It was late, after six, and my
husband met me in the hall with the news. He and Mr. Trafford had
been telephoning everywhere! They thought Horace might have
gone to some of our friends, but he had never done such a thing as
to leave the Mall without our knowledge and I knew that something
terrible had happened. I could feel it—here!” Her slender, very white
hands flew to her breast. “I cannot blame Mr. Trafford for not starting
the search for Horace in the early afternoon; he supposed he had
slipped away to the studio of an artist who has taken a great fancy to
our little boy, but Mr. Blaisdell is not in town.”
The forced composure still held her and only her fluttering hands
and quick-drawn breath gave evidence of her supreme agitation.
“You don’t think the lad has gone to join him, do you?” McCarty
asked.
“Run away, you mean?” Mrs. Goddard shook her head slowly. “Oh,
no! Horace would never dream of such a thing! Mr. Blaisdell wanted
to take him but we would not hear of it and Horace had no idea of
disobeying our wishes. He has never been away from us before—
before yesterday!”
“Then you think he has been kidnapped?”
At the question Goddard, who had moved around to the other side
of the couch, took a step forward, the sagging muscles of his round
face tightening as his jaw tensed but his wife did not take her eyes
from those of McCarty.
“He isn’t here!” her trembling voice broke. “He wouldn’t run away!
The earth didn’t open and—and an avalanche descend upon him! It
must have been that man!”
“What man!” McCarty and Dennis spoke in chorus, and then
Goddard placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“Now, Clara!” he admonished. “You promised—!”
“To give us facts, Mr. Goddard!” interrupted McCarty sternly. “If
Mrs. Goddard can tell us whatever it was you were holding back last
night so much the better! You ’phoned to me that the lad had been
kidnapped but you couldn’t give me any reason for thinking so
except that he was gone, and you didn’t breathe a word about any
‘man’!—Will you tell us, ma’am?”
“There’s nothing to tell!” Goddard insisted obstinately. “My wife is
nervous, imaginative, and so is Horace. He was badly frightened by
a strange man here in the Mall a short time ago and his mother was
quite frantic about it. It was some days before she would allow him to
go out alone again, but personally I think he exaggerated—”
“Our boy would not tell a falsehood!” Mrs. Goddard interrupted. “It
was just at dusk one afternoon about a fortnight ago, or perhaps
less, when Horace had returned alone from Mr. Blaisdell’s studio. He
entered the Mall by the east gate as usual, but stopped to play with a
little white Persian kitten, the pet of Mrs. Bellamy’s baby. Mrs.
Bellamy lives just two doors away, next to Mr. Orbit’s. The watchman
had passed him and gone on toward the west gate when all at once
the kitten darted across the street and Horace followed, afraid that it
might become lost. It ran into the open court between the Parsons
house and the closed one next door belonging to the Quentin estate
and Horace was stooping to coax it to him when he was seized from
behind by a strange man and searched!”
“Searched?” echoed McCarty.
“Yes. The man pressed Horace back against him with one hand
over his mouth and felt in all his pockets with the other, but he took
nothing and never uttered a word! My little son was too startled to
struggle at first, and all at once the man released him—and
disappeared!”
“Did the boy have any money with him?” Dennis could contain
himself no longer.
“Three or four dollars, I believe, but the man left it untouched.”
Mrs. Goddard’s eyes shifted to those of the questioner. “It was quite
dark there in that narrow space between the two houses, but Horace
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