Looking at young Jak, with his head bandaged up in a hospital bed, tears streaming down his puffy cheeks, it really is enough to break your heart.
But how Jak got here in the first place is almost just as heart-wrenching as seeing this sick boy cooped up in hospital.
According to the young Shropshire boy’s mum, Laney, Jak had been bullied at his school in the UK for an entire term by one child.
“[Jak] has been whipped with skipping ropes, stabbed with a pencil, scratched, punched, called names, stabbed with paper clips, hit around the face with a tennis racket”, she wrote on a Facebook page called Justice For Jak that she set up to raise awareness around schoolyard bullying.
Laney continues to describe the final, violent act that would later see her son requiring surgery on his skull.
As Laney writes on Facebook, on March 23 the bully pushed Jak so hard that he hit his head on a metal pole, leaving him with an open head wound.
According to the concerned mum, not only was the bully not held accountable, but Jak was sent home without “a head injury letter or even a cold compress”.
The day after he suffered the injury, Laney noticed the lump on his head was very swollen. She took Jak to hospital where she learned he’d been concussed from the incident. Laney and Jak were then sent home.
Days went by and Jak’s head pains got for worse and his wound began weeping.
Jak was then admitted to hospital, where he is, as Laney explains, “on a drip, having antibiotics, painkillers and even morphine. His vein had collapsed in his hands from his cannula so he is like a human pin cushion”.
As reported by Mummy Pages, Jak has also had an surgical electric vacuum drain inserted into his head in order to drain the infection and blood from within his skull.
“My little boy’s in so much pain,” Laney says, as reported by The Mirror.
Adding fuel to this fire, Laney says following Jak’s injury, his school sent a letter to all “saying that it was a MINOR INJURY that has got infected”.
“I’m appalled at the school that I send my children to for six hours, five days a week to be put in danger and then dismissed,” she says.
What happened to Jak has prompted Laney to use Facebook to stand up against bullying once and for all.
“We need to stand up to bullies, pull together and make a change! Teach our children to be kind, teach our children to speak up.”
Many parents have jumped to Laney and Jak’s defence.
“I live in Toronto, Canada and was shared this story by a friend living in London,” one user began. “My heart literally ached reading this as I recall being bullied at age 7. Who can it be almost 40 years later and this foolishness still happening.”
Another agreed, writing, “I am actually speechless at the damage to your son you have nothing but my best wishes for a speedy recovery for him.”
