Newmarket Grade 7 student Adrianna Ebejer said going to school was a nightmare for her.
Attending St. Nicholas Catholic Elementary School in Newmarket, Adrianna described a terrible tide of bullying against her in the past two years. With regular mockery, harassment and social media attacks, she said it became challenging to stay in school and continue learning. Even outside of the school walls, nasty rumours about her led to harassment by other teenagers.
The bullying led to self-harm, Adrianna said, which is when her mother outright pulled her from the school.
The family told NewmarketToday they plan to move from Newmarket in the hopes of finding a new school and fresh start for Adrianna. The school administration has not intervened in a substantive enough way, they said.
“Nobody takes action. Nobody cares until somebody kills themself,” Ebejer said. “Nobody pays attention to it.”
The Ebejer family is speaking out about their experiences at the school in hopes of driving change at the York Catholic District School Board.
Adrianna’s mother, Amanda Ebejer, said the family is frustrated with the difficulties they experienced in getting any action to address the ongoing bullying her daughter was going through. She said it resulted in regular clashes with the administration, and her ultimate decision to pull her daughter from the school, turning to online learning this year.
“This is not acceptable,” she said. “Her education is being failed because people don’t want to do anything. They just want to push it under the carpet.”
A York Catholic District School Board spokesperson said it could not comment on individual students due to privacy rights.
The board said in a statement it has a bullying prevention and intervention policy that says "bullying in any form is unacceptable in the school environment or in any circumstances that have an impact on the school climate.”
“The YCDSB takes bullying very seriously, and schools regularly provide anti-bullying instruction. Students are taught to report bullying to a trusted adult, such as a teacher, principal, or the police,” the board said. “According to the safe schools policy, students who are found to be bullying others will be subject to progressive discipline.”
The board said a 2024 survey showed at least 90 per cent of its elementary students responded that their school taught them to “love all people, to show respect to everyone and to form meaningful relationship with others.”
Regular harassment
The Ebejer family said the bullying began in earnest after a Grade 5 end-of-year picnic.
The parents recounted their daughter running into the school crying after being bullied by another student. She confronted the alleged bully to ask who their teacher was, but said the bully claimed to have been the one who was threatened. Eberjer said that led to conflict with the alleged bully’s family.
The incident “started a whirlwind of hell for Adrianna,” Ebejer said.
After that incident, Ebejer said her daughter experienced relentless bullying when school began again for the Grade 6 year. Teasing, threats and ongoing harassment became a regular occurrence, even though it did not tend to escalate toward physicality.
“I couldn’t even go to the washroom because they would purposely follow me,” Adrianna said. “I couldn’t go outside. I had to stay inside because they would come up to my face and say stuff to me.”
Social media made things worse. Adrianna said bullies circulated rumours about her getting pregnant and being a sex worker. Those rumours spread far enough that Adrianna said she would be approached about them outside the school by other youths she did not know.
“How is she going to succeed if this is what is being spread about her?” her mother asked. “She’s a great student and excels and has goals and is not a trouble maker. I can’t believe they’ve gone to this extreme, to trash her name.”
While the bullying was ongoing, the family said the school administration did not take any substantive action or discipline against the culprits. The Ebejer said that while the school administration repeatedly told them the school was safe, the reality was her daughter did not feel safe there.
“My daughter does not feel comfortable. She would not go out at lunchtime. She would not go out on break. She would not do anything,” Ebejer.
“Every time they would talk to the kids (about the bullying), it would just get worse and worse and worse for Adrianna,” she added.
It would result in Adrianna missing class or being temporarily pulled from the school at times, the family said. The bullying continued through Grade 7.
But Ebejer said her daughter began to self-harm in Grade 6 as a result of the relentless bullying, though she was not aware of it for some time. When she found out, they got counselling and mental health support to help.
“It’s so upsetting,” she said. “Thank God she has some good support, but I don’t know what she was feeling last year. She was cutting herself and I didn’t even know about it. I just wanted it to stop. I want them to start taking action. I don’t want any kids to kill themselves. I don’t want any more of this stuff.
"They need to take responsibility, and this anti-bullying policy, they don’t follow anything on their anti-bullying policy.”
Things came to a head several weeks ago. Adrianna said that after bullies harassed her by saying they would get her boyfriend attacked, she called the police, who recommended having a recording device to provide more evidence.
Adrianna said she did then record a bully harassing her at school. When she brought it to the principal’s office, she was only told to either get rid of the recording device or have a parent pick her up.
“I’m like, 'she’s not coming back',” Ebejer said. “Because you guys don’t want to hear it. I give you all the evidence. You guys don’t want to hear it, you guys don’t care. You'd rather just dismiss the issue than deal with the issue.”
Provincial policy requires school boards to have a code of conduct, which includes a clause disallowing members of a school community from taking non-consensual recordings or photographs of members of the school community. YCDSB has a policy reflecting that. The same policy also disallows members of the school community from engaging in bullying behaviours, including cyberbullying.
The family, who has lived in Newmarket for 15 years, said they will now explore moving to try to give their daughter a fresh start.
Ebejer said she believes schools need to be more willing to punish and suspend students for their actions and that consequences can lead to better outcomes.
“If your kid is a bully and doing this to my daughter, the parent should be aware,” she said. “If you’re bullying and making people feel uncomfortable, the issue should be removed from the school, not my daughter removing herself from the school.
“Not doing anything is not going to stop anything,” she added.
