A video circulating online appearing to show a teenage girl being pulled to the ground by her hair and kicked by another girl has understandably caused distress and anger across the North West.
I watched the footage of the alleged incident in Strabane several times in quick succession, struggling to believe it was real. The violence present was chilling, and the apparent casualness surrounding it was equally difficult to comprehend. Each time I replayed it, I found myself looking for something that might change what I thought I had seen, or suggest the incident had been staged. There was no such reassurance.
Police are now investigating a report of an assault in the Canal Basin area of Strabane on Friday, July 17. As those involved are young people and enquiries are ongoing, it would not be appropriate to identify anyone shown in the footage or speculate about individual responsibility.
The existence and circulation of the footage, however, raises important questions about what such a recording can achieve as well as the further harm it can cause.
In this case, while it may help establish what happened and has prompted a wider public response, it has also left the girl at the centre of it with little control over who sees one of her most vulnerable moments.
Her family has said she had experienced persistent bullying and that they had exhausted every avenue and felt let down by authorities. They also said that this may have been the fourth serious attack since May.
That reported history stayed with me almost as much as the video itself because separate incidents can take on a different significance when they are seen as part of a pattern.
We have seen repeatedly, in the most tragic cases, reviews established after a child has died or suffered devastating harm. They look back at what was known beforehand and whether concerns held by different people were ever brought together.
They also consider whether earlier action could have changed the outcome.
Such reviews are necessary, yet their lessons come after the harm has already been done.
In this case, we do not know what any adult or organisation knew and I am not going to fill those gaps with assumption.
The wider question remains important. How do we become better at recognising when individual incidents form part of something more serious?
A child may disclose only part of what has happened because telling the full story feels frightening. One adult may know about an online threat while another is aware of a confrontation. Unless that information comes together, the level of danger may not be fully understood.
The language used to describe what is happening is important, too. This incident has been described as bullying, a term that covers a very wide range of behaviour.
It may involve exclusion or verbal cruelty; at its most severe, it can include intimidation and physical violence. That breadth is precisely why the word on its own may not always be enough.
Where an incident appears to involve physical violence, it should be stated clearly so the seriousness of what is being described is not lost beneath a general label.
Crucially, children are taught about bullying and online safety in school, including under the Bí Cineálta procedures introduced in Ireland in September 2025.
Most will know that they should tell an adult when they or somebody else are being harmed. The harder question is whether they believe that doing so will make a difference.
Department of Education figures found that only half of post-primary pupils who believed they had experienced bullying had told an adult at school. Among those who did speak up, one third felt unsupported and 36 per cent believed the school had not acted quickly. Those figures suggest that knowing what to do is only one part of the problem.
Children also need confidence that an adult will listen and that something will change as a result.
The response to the incident in Strabane has shown how strongly people from across the North West want to stand with this girl and her family. That support matters greatly.
The harder – and more crucial work – begins earlier, when individual incidents may be easier to dismiss and there is no video forcing the wider public to pay attention.
No child should have to be filmed at their most vulnerable before the danger around them is taken seriously.