Poland-School Violence/Expert
Poland-School Violence/Expert
Dateline : Recent
Location : Poland
Duration : 2'30
Warsaw, Poland - Recent (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
1. Various of police officer entering school building, ambulance outside of school building
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Adam (full name not given), student (ending with shot 3):
"Our principal wrote in a message that somebody was hurt and we didn't have school for two days. I think it scared so many people. I've never seen this before."
3. Various of police officers entering school building
4. SOUNDBITE (Polish) Tomasz (full name not given), student (starting with shot 3):
"Not very safe, because it kind of threatens my safety and I'm a bit afraid that someone might even approach me and kill me with a knife."
5. Various of students entering school building
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Aleksandra Sikorska, Polish adolescent mental health expert (partially overlaid with shot 7):
"[These] situations happened one after another, and I'm sure that many people are worried. But the reasons why [a] person decides to hurt people, there are many. It's not only the influence of the information about another incident. It's also experiencing domestic violence at home and [it leads] into cases that were confirmed that those young people experienced domestic violence. And it's also struggling with [the issue of] bullying at school, and if others bully you then you may start to think about revenge."
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++
7. Students entering school building
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8. Police car at school
9. Students walking on campus
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Aleksandra Sikorska, Polish adolescent mental health expert (starting with shot 9/partially overlaid with shot 11/ending with shot 12):
"Social media, I think it's really dangerous because we may not have access to that group, we may not know what they talk about with other group participants and also someone, a person or an organization, may influence you. The violence or self-harm, they copy from one another."
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++
11. Police car, students
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++
12. Various of school entrance
In the wake of three school knife attacks in four days that have rattled Poland, a leading adolescent mental health expert says the violence cannot be reduced to a single cause, but to a mix of domestic violence, school bullying and social media's power to amplify teenagers' desire to be "seen."
The attacks, which struck between Oct 7 and 10, left one person dead and more than a dozen injured, while two other planned attacks were foiled by police in advance. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called their density and severity "unprecedented."
Yet Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said on Oct 16 that after a week of intensive work, investigators had found no evidence that the incidents were linked or coordinated, nor any confirmation of a nationwide "challenge" or of incitement by external groups.
On Oct 7, a 19-year-old student injured nine people in a knife attack at a school in Ostroleka, in central Poland's Mazowieckie province. A day later, a 15-year-old boy stabbed a school principal, a cleaner and a teacher at a school near Wyszkow in the same province. The 37-year-old cleaner later died of her injuries.
The third attack came on Oct 10 at a school on Minska Street in Warsaw's Praga District, where a student walked into a corridor with a knife and stabbed three women she did not know. One victim was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, while the other two sustained minor injuries. The attacker, a 21-year-old student at the school, was arrested, Polish news channel TVN24 reported.
Days later, fear has yet to dissipate among students at the Minska Street school.
"Our principal wrote in a message that somebody was hurt and we didn't have school for two days. I think it scared so many people. I've never seen this before," said a student named Adam.
"Not very safe, because it kind of threatens my safety and I'm a bit afraid that someone might even approach me and kill me with a knife," said another student, Tomasz.
Polish police have since launched a massive operation, conducting 225,000 school checks and detaining 194 people as of Oct 18, according to Interior Ministry data.
Many of those detained were teenagers who had posted knife photos online, threatened attacks or carried dangerous items on campus.
In one case, a boy had built a model of his school in an online game and simulated attacking students, and a search turned up firearms, ammunition and knives in his possession. Those detained were mainly aged 13 to 19, meaning most of the suspects are minors themselves.
The Ministry of Education has announced it will revise school safety regulations, requiring principals to work with relevant services to hold at least two crisis-response drills each year and expanding their authority to inspect students' belongings and confiscate dangerous items.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski also announced on Oct 16 that the police school-stationing model would shift from purely guarding campuses to a nationwide prevention and education campaign, with officers entering schools to conduct safety training and dialogue, while police deployment levels and security measures will be maintained.
But for Aleksandra Sikorska, a Polish adolescent mental health expert, security measures alone do not reach the roots of the problem.
"[These] situations happened one after another, and I'm sure that many people are worried. But the reasons why [a] person decides to hurt people, there are many. It's not only the influence of the information about another incident. It's also experiencing domestic violence at home and [it leads] into cases that were confirmed that those young people experienced domestic violence. And it's also struggling with [the issue of] bullying at school, and if others bully you then you may start to think about revenge," Sikorska said.
Many teenagers are withdrawn and struggle to gain attention in real life, so they turn to the internet seeking to be "seen," even in extreme ways, she noted.
They initially express anger and loneliness online, but social media infinitely amplifies that desire, turning the internet from an outlet into an accelerant. Some online communities, she said, turn violence into a constantly replicated "performance."
Beyond the role of social media, Sikorska pointed to a pattern running through the recent attacks themselves, one that she said points directly to copycat behavior.
In case after case, the perpetrators did not know their victims and had no personal grievances -- an "indiscriminate attack" pattern she described as a dangerous signal of copycat effects, in which violence no longer stems from a specific target of hatred but becomes a way of demonstrating one's own existence to the outside world.
In several of the incidents, knife photos or threats had been posted online beforehand -- warning signals often dismissed as "stupid jokes."
"Social media, I think it's really dangerous because we may not have access to that group, we may not know what they talk about with other group participants and also someone, a person or an organization, may influence you. The violence or self-harm, they copy from one another," said the psychologist.
The Polish government has characterized the attacks as scattered copycat behavior rather than an organized wave, arguing that such dispersed and imitative violence cannot be answered by police deterrence alone, which treats only the symptoms, and that prevention and education are the fundamental cure.
ID : 8504543
Published : 2026-10-20 17:17
Last Modified : 2026-10-20 21:21:02
Source : China Central Television (CCTV)
Restrictions : No access Chinese mainland
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