Author Archive

Over the years I have made several presentations on the topic of “long-term psychological impact of bias-based bullying”. These presentations were based on my first book titled “A Life Interrupted – the story of my battle with bullying and obsessive compulsive disorder”. These presentations have always been well accepted by audiences from different walks of life.

My presentation emphasizes the fact that ability to accept differences in people and to promote unbiased positive interactions are key ingredients for overall success for all of us as a society. If on a regular basis a child is concerned about having to deal with negative issues/events/incidents because he or she is perceived to be racially ‘different’, it is simply not possible for the child to focus on important academic and social aspects of school life. If a child has to deal with such an unsafe environment on a continuous basis, the longer term impact can be devastating.

When a person is bullied because of how he/she looks or how his/her name is spelled or pronounced, it can create a major negative long-lasting impact for years to come. The purpose of this presentation is to describe a personal story that demonstrates how bullying based on cultural/racial differences can cause severe mental health issues for the victim, with a long-lasting impact that typically derails the victim from his/her normal developmental track. This is an extremely serious issue that often goes unnoticed and undetected during school years. Specifically, the presentation discusses the details on how prolonged bullying (based on someone being perceived as different) can trigger devastating long-lasting mental illness and how that impact can torment a victim long after the school years are over.

Over the years I have made several presentations based on my book titled “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse”.  One of the topics of my presentations is “Prevention of child sexual abuse – role of a school counselor”. This presentation is based on the details described in my book which elaborates on the challenges in preventing child sexual abuse. In this presentation I focus more on how school counselors might be able to intervene to prevent a possibly abusive situation. School counselors typically have a good relationship with a lot of children and can at times be in a position to be able to help if a situation arises. The presentation is typically very well received by school counselors with a lot of follow-up comments and discussions.

One of the challenges I describe in my book is that our systems do not often respond adequately in a preventive situation, which means doing something “before” it happens, not after. If a school counselor detects a possibly abusive situation and reports to the “systems”, it is more likely that the systems will take some preventive action. In other words, a school counselor’s report will likely receive more attention than a report from an ordinary citizen.

School counselors and other school staff can have a key role in detecting and possibly preventing child sexual abuse. In the true story I describe in my book, it was a school counselor who detected possibility of sexual abuse and reported to the authorities, which eventually led to the arrest of the individual responsible for the abuse. That is why I try to make the point that school staff can have a key role and must keep their eyes and ears open for possible red flags.

Victims of childhood bullying can have serious long-term mental health impact that can lead to devastating outcomes such as suicide. We have to find a way to avoid these sad incidents. That is why I wrote my first book about long term psychological impact of bullying. Victims need help so we can avoid any life-changing devastating impacts in the future. It is very real and is still happening.

Many in our society today still do not believe that bullying is a real problem. It seems that many people do not seem to understand that every child has his or her own personality. And that is why bullying does not have the same kind of impact on all children. Yes, it is true that some children are able to ignore it and/or fight back and are able to minimize the impact on themselves. But there are many children whose personalities are such that they are not able to ignore the bullying and are therefore affected very negatively. It is our responsibility as adults to make sure that we have a safe environment for ALL children.

Affected children develop emotional issues that can escalate if not addressed in a timely manner. As I travel around the country for my speeches I have observed that many schools now have counselors, social workers, school psychologists who do understand the issue and try their best to help the affected students. The situation is much better than it used to be 30 years back. But we still have a long way to go. ALL children deserve safe environment and we need to do everything we possibly can to make that happen.

My latest book titled “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System” is a gripping new true story about defamation against a person of color, by a white female hotel employee in the small northern MN town of Deerwood.

Following various undesirable events in 2016, I eventually had to bring a lawsuit against the hotel employee for defamation and surprisingly, the hotel in Deerwood supported her over me, their paying repeat customer, in spite of her untrue and unsubstantiated comments to the cops. The hotel’s insurance company paid ALL her legal expenses and hired top lawyers to defend their employee against me (while I had to pay my fees out of pocket). I eventually had my case dismissed much before trial, which I believe was primarily due to less than commendable representation by a prominent MN law firm. I provide details on what I believe were some of my lawyer’s errors and omissions which likely contributed to the undesirable consequences I derived from filing this case.

There is so much for the general public to learn from this remarkable true story. This book demonstrates to everyone, and especially to fellow people of color like me, how defamation can spread through a community, what can actually happen in a lawsuit, with cops, lawyers, law firms, and the whole legal system including lawyers professional responsibility board, and how to fight back against alleged racism and defamation without resorting to violence. It educates people of color on some of the unique risks we can face due to not being part of the white majority, and how certain environments may increase such potential risk factors for us. The book encourages all to do the right thing for the greater good regardless of the final result.

My book titled “How to stand up to workplace bullying and take on an unjust employer” is all about bullying and harassment in the workplace and is meant for both the employees and the employers.

Bullying and harassment in the workplace is a critical issue that has no place in our society today. It affects countless individuals around the country. In many cases it has caused significant distress for affected employees, ultimately leading to depression and other serious related mental health disorders. It also is not very helpful for the employers because it can result in several different outcomes that are typically negative for the companies.

The purpose of the book is to present a captivating true account story that provides key information, salient advice, and guidance on what workplace bullying is, how it can impact both the employees and employers, how it happens, what to do about it, and how to prevent it. This book forms the basis of the training sessions and workshops I offer to organizations for both employees as well as for mangers and employers.

In today’s world, it is important that all employees have a thorough understanding as to what kinds of things might constitute ‘harassment’ and what kinds of impact that might have. It is also critical for employees to understand what kinds of options they have in dealing with workplace bullying and harassment.

All employers also need to pay attention to this issue. If an organization is not able to maintain a well-established approach in this regard, it may have to deal with difficult situations that might be significantly unproductive (and/or financially damaging) for the organization.

In the true story I describe in my book “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse” my purpose was to point out the fact that risks of child sexual abuse can come from various different directions. One of the messages I particularly wanted to stress is about the importance of family members and friends keeping a watchful eye on the children in the family. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, grand uncles/aunts, etc and family friends can all make a difference in preventive action by making sure children are not in a situation that could possibly lead to abuse.

In the story in my book I focus on the challenges I faced in my efforts to prevent a situation that could possibly lead to child sexual abuse. I found out that it was a challenging experience to try to get child protective services or law enforcement to take any significant actions in this preventive scenario. This was extremely surprising to me. However, it turned out that when I was able to get some family members involved in this effort, it was possible to get the systems to act in this preventive process.

In other words, with the help of some family members, it was possible to mobilize child protective services as well as law enforcement to dismantle a scenario that could possibly lead to abuse. However, it took a lot of time and effort to get the family members to take the matter seriously and to take appropriate actions. Although in this case the outcome was positive, my hope is that family members would act more promptly when it is a matter of preventing the possibility of child sexual abuse.

In my first book titled “A Life Interrupted – the story of my battle with bullying and obsessive compulsive disorder” I talk about the fact that reactions from bystanders can significantly impact how a bully treats a victim. I illustrate this point through the description of a most interesting encounter I had with one of the worst bullies from my past.

This revealing encounter clearly indicated to me the significant role a bystander can have in encouraging bullying. In this encounter my worst bully had mentioned to me that he used to do all those terrible things to me because “people laughed”. In fact, even if the bystander does not laugh or visibly encourage the actions, just by being there and witnessing it and not saying anything causes the bully to continue his/her irresponsible behavior. Of course it would be best if a bystander can step in and try to prevent the negative behavior – but as a minimum a bystander must not laugh or encourage the actions and should simply go away from the area and report it to the school authorities.

In my case, my long-term Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) was certainly triggered by bullying – it is certain that the impact would not have been this serious if the bystanders had not encouraged the actions of the bully. Bullies typically do not thrive as well if there is no one around to watch their actions and/or to encourage their negative behavior by supporting their actions one way or another. Support from bystanders provides the boost that the bully needs to continue his or her unacceptable behavior.

My latest book titled: “MINORITY VIEWPOINT: MY EXPERIENCE AS A PERSON OF COLOR WITH THE AMERICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM”, is a true story about defamation towards me, a brown Indian man, by a white female hotel employee in a small northern town in Minnesota.

I ended up having to sue the hotel employee for defamation and surprisingly, the hotel supported her over me, their paying repeat customer, in spite of her unsubstantiated and untrue comments to the cops. The hotel’s insurance company paid ALL her legal expenses and hired top lawyers to defend their employee against me (while I had to pay my fees out of pocket). I eventually had my case dismissed much before trial likely due to less than commendable representation by a prominent MN law firm. The book provides details on what I believe were some of my lawyer’s errors and omissions which likely contributed to the undesirable consequences I derived from filing this case.

This book is full of information for ordinary citizens as well as for fellow people of color like me. It provides a lot of details about how defamation can spread through a community, what can actually happen in a lawsuit, with cops, lawyers, law firms, and the whole legal system including lawyers professional responsibility board, and how to fight back against alleged racism and defamation without resorting to violence. It informs people of color on some of the unique risks we can face due to not being part of the white majority, and how certain environments may increase such potential risk factors for us. The book encourages all to do the right thing for the greater good regardless of the final result.

Here are a couple of thoughts from my book titled “How to stand up to workplace bullying and take on an unjust employer”.

I firmly believe that there are many changes that need to be made with our current employment legal system. After reading my book and hearing the sordid details of my case; I imagine people will widely question why my employer in this story engaged in such maltreatment and how so much negativity and disorder was able to thrive, seemingly out in the open, at this particular establishment. In fact throughout this case, I myself have questioned many times why presumably educated managers repeatedly subjected themselves to such unnecessary risks and liability. However, I do believe the answer to these questions is far more simple than complicated: NOBODY IN AUTHORITY BELIEVED FOR A MOMENT THAT AN EMPLOYEE COULD SUCCESSFULLY STAND UP TO THEM.

But WHY would the managers in this organization have been of this particular opinion, one might choose to question, and what role might our employment legal system have in promoting this belief in an employer? While many of the issues from this story are unique to this employer’s environment, I believe that too many employers take for granted that employees will not stand up for their basic rights. And perhaps even more unfortunate, is the fact that far too many employees also believe that they cannot dare to assert their basic rights with their employers! This especially rings true in today’s tough economy, where nobody wants to do anything to potentially jeopardize their job security.

And when I was in need of witnesses to support my case, the majority of those I contacted did everything they could to not be involved in this matter. I am once again reminded of a statement commonly spoken by one of my coworkers, “Remember, it is not our place to question things, to ask the question ‘why’ or to try and bring about change.” It is this widespread belief among employees which causes so many arrogant employers to believe they are invincible.

One of the main characteristics of my book titled “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse” is that it focuses on what a bystander might be able to do to protect children from possible risks of sexual abuse.

Most of the available books on the topic of child sexual abuse typically fall in one of the following categories:

• Research based techniques for interviewing and treatment
• Advice for parents
• Understanding behavior of abused individuals

In addition, most of these books are written by folks who consider themselves to be “experts” in this field.

In contrast, my book has the following characteristics:

• It’s written by an ordinary person and is meant for everyone concerned about child safety
• It has advice for parents, but purely from a practical viewpoint
• In addition to parents, it also has suggestions for many other groups in our society who need to be involved in protecting our children
• It makes the point that we are all responsible for protecting the children in our society – an average bystander can and should step in if the opportunity presents itself
• It focuses on several of our systems that are not always effective in a “preventive” mode
• It provides a lot of useful information for an average person through a story that most people can identify with.