A 16-year-old boy has been charged with threatening to kill a Jewish schoolboy and his mother after the 12-year-old was forced to kiss a Muslim student’s shoe.
A shocking image of a Year 7 boy at Melbourne’s Cheltenham Secondary College kissing a classmate’s shoe in a park was circulated earlier this month.
After the picture went viral online, a different student allegedly terrorised the boy and his mother with a series of terrifying phone calls and messages.
Appalling: The photograph shows the 12-year-old boy on his knees kissing the shoe of a Muslim boy, allegedly after a group of nine 12 and 13-year-olds threatened him in a park
This week police confirmed they have charged a boy who will appeared in the children’s court next month.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the mother recalled the horrifying threats allegedly made against her.
‘Whilst I sat in synagogue during Yom Kippur on October 8 , I missed three calls by a private number,’ she said.
‘We got home started settling for the night. A private number came up and I answered the phone.
‘For the next three hours I was subjected to threats of home invasion, being bashed, my son being bashed and silenced for good,’ she said.
‘There was no holding back his identity either. He admitted who he was.
‘His retaliation towards me because of the articles made it quite clear that we are under attack for defending our right as Jews to do so.’
‘He tried to instill fear by telling us he was at various entrances of our home and the level of violence that would be afflicted on us.’
The mother said she contacted the boy on Instagram and begged him to stop – but he allegedly refused so she silenced her phone and called the police.
She said the abuse continued the next day.
‘No sooner did I leave synagogue for an afternoon break, I answered a private number to have three male voices start harassing and threatening me,’ she said.
My son didn’t want to stay home alone
‘The worst part was being called a Jewish dog and Jewish c***.’
She said the days that followed were some of the scariest of her life as she waited for the police to catch her alleged abuser.
‘I believe the only reason the calls subsided was because I told them my phone had an incoming call trace. My son didn’t want to stay home alone,’ she said.
‘There was a sense of relief and the feeling of justice hopefully prevailing but the hatred towards us with the vile anti-Semitic vocabulary can’t be taken away,’ she said.
‘It can’t be pushed aside and it can’t be forgotten. It will be a memory that lives with us forever. You can’t go through that experience and never forget!’
A police spokesman said: ‘Police have charged a 16-year-old Moorabbin boy with make threats to kill, use telecommunications device to harass and stalking in relation to alleged incidents involving a 49-year-old woman and 12-year-old boy between October 7 and 9.’
After the picture went viral online, a different student allegedly terrorised the boy and his mother with a series of terrifying phone calls and messages (stock image)
After the kissing incident – which was part of a lengthy bullying campaign – the mother of the 12-year-old victim spoke to the parents of the Muslim boy, who were horrified by their son’s actions.
‘We sat down, his parents, the two boys and myself, around the table and explained the velocity of [the bullying] and what it meant to us as parents as far as building bridges between Jews and Muslims in society and not creating division like that photo does,’ the boy’s mother said.
The school denied having responsibility for the incident because it did not take place on school grounds, the mother said.
‘I took such offence with the Education Department, because there was nothing they did to protect my son at all, at any point in time – that’s what’s cut me up,’ she said.
The mother of the younger boy also revealed her heartbreak at the abuse her son suffered.
‘He literally fell down on the floor and said, ”Mummy, you shouldn’t love me. I’m a worthless, Jewish rodent. I’m vermin”,’ she told the Australian Jewish News.
The mother added that one of the most disturbing aspects of the insults was the way they mirrored the anti-Semitic language of the Holocaust.
‘The words ‘you dirty Jew’ and ‘Jewish cockroach’, they are such cliches,’ she said.
‘I grew up with Holocaust survivors, I used to go to synagogue with my uncle who was a Holocaust survivor and those were the words, literally, he was taunted with when he was five.’