The first thing I tell people when they meet Matthew is not to judge because... to say the situation is complicated is, if anything, an understatement. Normally when you hear about bullying you picture name calling, maybe the occasional punch on the arm or jab in the ribs, but when I say that Matthew was bullied, I mean, he was seriously abused. Child Protection Services were involved countless times. And it went on for years. I mean, sure, all people are made from crooked timber, but if you imagine a little sapling that is hacked away at and hacked away at and hacked away at, it's hardly surprising that...
Or, look... I'm sure you've heard the stories about the childhoods of some of history's most famous serial killers. Charles Manson passed between full-grown offenders in a concrete prison. John Wayne Gacy Jr. with the piss shivers in some pissy, poxy, pockmarked room. Aileen Wuornos fucked by scabby middle-class johns with cigarette breath and dead eyes. And obviously none of those things excuse their crimes, but they do provide some understanding. There by the grace of God go I, etc.
We probably should have been more concerned when Matthew first started at the school and claimed a whole chunk of the playground as his own. There might have been room enough for Matthew to have an area of the playground... I mean, we did say to him... we could have gone about things differently... But, as a school, we were so concerned with giving Matthew what he needed that the needs of the other kids were – how should I say it? - put on the back burner for a while. So when, on that first day, Matthew came running in, swinging his fists and hollering at the other kids to get the fuck out of his way, we exchanged a few glances and shrugged our shoulders. A couple of us whispered a word in his ear that it wasn't nice to kick over and stomp on all the sandcastles that a bunch of the kids had been patiently building over the last few weeks of term. Apparently things were a bit more violent than that, even. We have a chestnut tree next to the monkey bars and it is alleged that Matthew forced a couple of burrs – I mean, they're just empty husks, but at the end of the day they're really spiky – into little Eliza Yahshua's mouth... and took another one and pressed it down really hard into Arham's right eye so he had to go to hospital and ultimately have it removed. But that was a long time ago now and I don't think it's useful or appropriate to be going over old wounds.
Still, it was noticed by us and the other staff that every week Matthew seemed to be taking over more and more of the playground. Notably this meant that he got to have exclusive access to the sandpit and the monkey bars and the swing set and the slide and, admittedly, almost all of the toys... The other kids were sort of forced to the edges of the playground, which isn't always the safest of environments. The side of the playground on the West actually opens up onto the main road through the village. Ofsted weren't very impressed by this, but we avoided Special Measures because they were so touched by how well we'd accommodated Matthew with what had been, everyone acknowledged, a difficult transition. Anyway, sometimes Matthew could get a little aggressive in his ball games, booting his football directly into the face of one of the other kids. In a few instances these children – quite unintended by Matthew it really must be stressed – stumbled back into the road. Not a pretty picture and utterly regrettable, but ultimately unavoidable especially since...
I probably should have mentioned this earlier but Matthew's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather actually attended the school and was treated really unfairly. Obviously Matthew never knew his relative, but he has an incredible symbolic importance for Matthew. This ancestor of his was driven out of the school by a notorious bully who did this kind of thing across the school system. Ever since, Matthew's family had yearned to return to our school because it was the only place they'd ever truly felt safe. Again, this is pretty relatable, though it should be acknowledged that Matthew's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather wasn't the only child to have ever been to our school.
Anyway, after several months of being force fed dog shit by Matthew... and suffering a few other indignities... swimming trunks ripped off in the changing rooms and then pissed on; siblings being made to kiss while Matthew laughed at them; school projects ripped from the walls and thrown into the trash... honestly, we only recorded a handful of these incidents and occasionally addressed them in the school newspaper indirectly and through insinuation... anyway, after several months of this, a couple of the most picked upon kids snapped. We'd had to reprimand them in the past for throwing stones and occasionally trying to use the broken bits of one of their smashed stationary kits to attack Matthew. Though, to be fair to them, mostly they'd taken it on the chin, focusing on their poetry writing in lessons and occasionally trying to petition the teaching body to take Matthew's behaviour a bit more seriously.
However, last week, completely out of the blue, they attacked Matthew, viciously laying into him. A bloodied clump of his hair was left on the teachers' desks for all to see. It was really fucking unsightly and, frankly, a bit embarrassing for all of us. We all knew that Matthew could go a bit far, but to be completely frank with you, he did a good job at protecting that playground. We had some expensive equipment there and, what is more, the playground borders our staff canteen, which is very comfortable indeed. Occasionally one of us might march around the playground looking officious or, if there was the chance of local press visiting, handing out small packets of Halal Haribo sweets. But really Matthew did a lot of stuff that none of us teachers could be seen doing. We didn't like the snivelling Eliza, Arham, Maria or Tony, any more than Matthew did! We just couldn't show it because we didn't share his same grim history... in fact, some of us might have even played our own part in making Matthew the kind of person he is. Oops! Haha.
Anyway, we called a parents-teacher meeting and expressed our outrage over the behaviour of the kids who attacked Matthew, explaining that it was completely unprovoked and unprecedented. We got a lot of well-wishers and donations flooding in. Matthew didn't seem quite as appeased as we had hoped though. To tell the truth, we were going to deliberately turn a blind eye while he cracked a few knuckles or shoved a few heads into lockers. If he tripped over a couple of lads in P.E. resulting in bloody noses... well, they'd know better than to mess with Matthew again.
But he just seems to be getting angrier and angrier. He says that all of the playground belongs to him and that any kids who don't get out of the way get what's coming to them. He's tied one of the children up in the little beach hut we use as a toy cupboard. He used a skipping rope. None of us know if they're still alive in there. He's been doing horrible things with the sand paper and the really sharp thin jigsaw blades and the disc sander and other bits of equipment from the D&T classroom... really horrible. If anything, I feel like we're the real victims for having to see the mobile phone pictures he took of his handiwork and put up on Snapchat. Weird stuff too. Wearing the girls' clothes and doing impressions of them while pulling them off the monkey bars, showing off his wrestling moves. Pile drives. Ankle locks. Razor's edge. He's even got into the pre-school area. But... Christ. You just have to turn away.
One of us occasionally gets up the courage to tap on the window and say 'No' in a really stern voice or shake our head disapprovingly. We've written a letter. Told on him to the headteacher. We all thought that would work, but it didn't, so I guess we're out of options.
At the end of the day, if Matthew gets the whole playground to himself it might make us feel a bit better about all the awful stuff that was done to him when he was younger. Really, the most important thing is that he doesn't get into the teacher's lounge. We've just got a new coffee machine. It's really neat! It foams up the milk and everything.