The number of girls among these offenders rose from 1,728 to 5,125. Even more depressing, say police, is the increasingly younger age of offenders. Central Toronto Youth Services surveyed 397 students and discovered that almost a third of Grade VI students had beaten someone up in the past nine months. But statistics show only the tip of the iceberg. Kevin Guest, an officer with the Community Response Unit of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Service, who has investigated such incidents.
Teachers are often targets.
Covered in blood, Oram stumbled out of her office for help. More than 60 teachers in British Columbia have been attacked by students in the past five years. A survey by the Manitoba Teachers' Society revealed that between September 1991 and January 1993, one in ten teachers was attacked by a student. And almost a quarter of school staff in the Northwest Territories were intimidated or threatened by students during the first term of the 1995-96 school year, with ten percent physically assaulted. Some parents think it doesn't happen in their kids' school, but it does.