9-Year-Old Suspended for Fighting Back Against Bully

Nathan Pemberton, a nine-year-old boy, stood up for himself against a bully and ended up getting suspended!

According to his parents, once a week, Nathan would come home complaining that he was being picked on, bullied or punched. His parents called the school and told him to turn the other cheek. Deborah Pemberton said that when Nathan tried to follow his parents instructions by walking away from the bully and finding a teacher, “there were hardly any repercussions.” She said, “Finally we told him, ‘If you have to, if there’s nobody else around, you do what you have to do.’”

This week, Nathan says that when he began being bullied, he fought back. Nathan described the event, saying, “He was picking me up and he kept slamming me into the concrete basketball place … He elbowed me in the eye so I tried to push him away where he wouldn’t do it again and then he kicked me in the back. I punched him in the face, then he punched me in the face.”

Nathan and the bully were both suspended because the school has a no bullying policy. The school district issued a statement that reads, “District 11 schools employ many anti-bullying teaching techniques … and none of these methods include violence or retaliation.”