There's a lot of pain!

Discrimination takes many forms. Verbal, visual, physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual. There are most probably more.

But in recent times, as a consequence of modern technology, another form of discrimination and a most insidious one at that is "cyber bullying". And it's not just a new word in our vocabulary; it's a word that brings with it fear and terror. School children, teenagers and adults are being pursued by known and unknown persons; it's a frightening situation. For syber bullying quite often leads to physical bullying as well.

Stories of a number of young people who have suicided over the past 12 months as a result of cyber bullying are becoming more frequent; parents are left to wonder what they could have done to prevent the situation occurring. They're in a Catch 22 situation. They tell themselves and others that they "should have sat with their son/daughter at the computer to make sure what sites they were visiting and who they were talking to". But at a parent it becomes obvious that this problem is much much bigger than at first imagined.

For how can a parent sit with a teenager for as many hours as he/she sits at their computer, monitoring what they're are doing in cuber space. Lives have to be lived; parents have to be parents to their other children; they have to manage a home; if they have jobs they have to go to work. Their children may appear to allow their parents to monitor or block certain aspects of their technology, but kids don't always tell their parents the truth about what they're doing and who they're speaking to - especially on the internet. And especially at night when their parents are sleep!

As one couple said, "our son had three lives. One with us, and his siblings and our entire family, and neighbours. The second with his friends. We know all his friends and were comfortable with him spending time with them. We knew he was safe with us and he was safe with his friends. But it was the third life that literally took him from us. And one that we knew nothing about. Cyber-space and some people who knew him and who bullied him until he took his own life. We failed him. We failed him, terribly."

This is a most dreadful situation for any parent to find themselves in. They most likely couldn't have done any more to keep him safe. They are taking upon themselves the full blame for what has happened. But someone has to share the blame.

The perpetrators of the bullying showed no remorse whatsoever, in fact the young man involved in the majority of the bullying took the attitude of "well, everybody does it." And he smiled. In no way would he accept the fact that what he had done was wrong.

For governments to say they are bringing in policies and "blocks" to protect people using the internet, is a bit late in the day. These protections should have been in place at least ten years ago. Furthermore the latest "block" and filters can be broken through - that's for certain. A young 17 year old recently broke through the filters of the entire federal governments computer system. So much for today's filters.

Meanwhile we have a problem on our hands. And someone, somewhere, has to take some responsibility and get the best possible advice and technology into gear, to protect us from the "invisible threat" that is very real.

(This was submitted to me by Ben Warwickshire.)