Irish YouTube star Riyadh calls and confronts the childhood bully who taunted him for being gay
The vlogger filmed himself speaking to one of the boys who harassed him at school
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Your support makes all the difference.An Irish YouTube star has released a video in which he calls and confronts one of the childhood bullies who made his school life hell because he was gay.
Riyadh, who is also a radio personality, challenges the man for the way he taunted him for his looks and the way he dressed.
He says that he was frequently heckled for being a “faggot”, “poof”, and “queer” – and "hated every minute" of school, Pink News reports.
In the video, before he calls up his old bully, whose number he got from a friend of a friend, he says he is aiming to be a "guinea pig" to show those who might be suffering the same at school that things change as time passes, and that "your bullies end up being just normal people".
"They’re not evil,"he adds. "It’s not some scar that should remain there forever. I want to find out why he did what he did.”
Riyadh asks his bully, whose voice he changes to protect his identity, if he had known he was causing him to feel in that way – to which he replies that he "didn't think we intentionally made a point of slagging you".
"I don’t think there was ever a conscious thing," the man says. "I’m really sorry, I obviously didn’t know that was happening in secondary school, and feel kind of bad about it now for sure.”
Riyadh also makes it clear why teasing or bullying young people because of their sexuality can be so damaging.
“It was laughing about something that was so central to who I was and who I was becoming," he explains during the call. "I stayed in the closet for four years beyond when I realised – because I was afraid of reactions from you, the boys and a few others.”
And while the bully says that if he had heard directly from Riyadh at the time, he would have stopped teasing him; he admits he was completely "unaware" of just how afraid Riyadh had been. He also apologises.
At the end of the conversation, Riyahd says it couldn't have gone any better. "He genuinely was sorry, and I don’t think he even realised the effect that it had on me, and still has on me now," he says. "It’s very cathartic."
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