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Why Do The Boys Love To Beat Up Billy Wolfe?

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By DAN BARRY

The New York Times

Published: March 30, 2008

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - All lank and bone, the boy stands at the corner with his younger sister, waiting for the yellow bus that takes them to their respective schools. He is Billy Wolfe, high school sophomore, struggling.

Moments earlier, he left the sanctuary that is his home, passing those framed photographs of himself as a carefree child, back when he was 5. And now he is at the bus stop, vulnerable at 15.

A car pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he's going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cell phone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.

The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold. The aggressor heads to school, perhaps to show friends the video of his Billy moment, while Billy heads home, again.

Bullying is everywhere, including Fayetteville, a city of 60,000 with one of the country's better school systems.

It remains unclear why Billy became a target at age 12. Whatever the reason, addressing the bullying of Billy has become a second job for his parents, Curt and Penney Wolfe. They have binders of school records and police reports along with photos documenting the bruises and black eyes. They are well known to school officials, but they make no apologies for being vigilant.

It began years ago when a boy called the house and asked Billy if he wanted to buy a certain marital aid, heh-heh. Billy told his mother, who informed the boy's mother. The next day, the boy showed Billy a list with the names of 20 boys who wanted to beat Billy up.

Penney Wolfe says she and her husband knew it was coming. She says they tried to warn school officials - and then bam: The prank caller beat up Billy in the bathroom of McNair Middle School.

Things got worse. At Woodland Junior High, some boys in a wood shop class goaded a bigger boy into believing that Billy had been talking trash about his mother. Billy didn't see it coming: The boy hit him so hard in the left cheek that he briefly lost consciousness.

By now, Billy feared school. Sometimes he was doubled over with stress. But it kept on coming.

In ninth grade, a couple of the same boys started a Facebook page called "Every One That Hates Billy Wolfe."

According to Alan Wilbourn, a spokesman for the school district, the principal notified the parents of the students involved after Wolfe complained, and the parents had the page taken down.

Not long afterward, a student punched Billy so hard that when he came to, his braces were caught on the inside of his cheek.

Now 16, Billy likes the outdoors, racquetball and girls. For whatever reason - bullying, learning disabilities or lack of interest - his grades are poor. Some teachers think he's a sweet kid; others think he is easily distracted, occasionally disruptive, even disrespectful. He has received a few suspensions for misbehavior.

Wolfe scoffs at the notion that her son causes or deserves the beatings he receives. She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up, and why school officials are so reluctant to punish bullies and report assaults to the police.

Wilbourn said that federal law protected the privacy of students, but added that parents of a bullied child should not assume disciplinary action had not been taken. He also said it was left to the discretion of staff members to determine whether an incident required police notification.

The Wolfes are not satisfied. This month they sued one of the bullies "and other John Does," and are considering another lawsuit against the Fayetteville School District. Their lawyer, Westbrook Doss, said there was neither glee nor much monetary reward in suing teenagers, but a point had to be made: Schoolchildren deserve to feel safe.

For example, Billy Wolfe deserves to open his American history textbook and not find anti-Billy sentiments scrawled across the pages. But there they were, hurtful and foul.

"I'd put white-out on them," Billy says. "And if the page didn't have stuff to learn, I'd rip it out."

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