Victorian teen explains how Safe Schools made him feel safe for "one hour a week".

By Larissa Romensky

After years of bullying at a previous school, Kieran Atkins from central Victoria, found acceptance through the suicide prevention program WayOut and his new school, which is a member of the Safe Schools Coalition.

Eighteen-year-old Kieran was born a female but never really ever felt like a girl.

His first “clear feeling” of not belonging, happened at the age of 13.

“It just kind of popped into my head — ‘It would be really cool if I was a dude’,” Kieran said.

“Then I noticed this jealousy that I had for all the guys around me and my brothers and all that.”

Kieran talked about his feelings with his parents, who initially thought it was a reaction to his bullying at his school for his autism.

“I wasn’t quite socially adept when I was growing up,” Kieran said.

“[People] just thought I was a little bit weird.”

It was around this time he started to question his sexuality, which he was also bullied about.

Kieran said his previous school did not have the appropriate mechanisms in place to handle the bullying despite having a zero-tolerance to bullying policy.

Instead the school implemented a procedure called restorative justice.

“To sit in the room with the bullies … you’re supposed to talk about how the bullying made you feel and all of that,” he said.

He said it was not something he wanted.

“Because they’d hurt me so much, and I didn’t feel like I got any closure,” Kieran said.

Feeling safe for one hour a week

It wasn’t just the bullying that Kieran found was handled inadequately at his previous school, it was not being allowed to wear pants and promote LGBTI awareness.

Despite one of the school’s councillors introducing Kieran to the school’s, Celebrating Diversity group, Kieran said when the group put up a coming out poster the school asked for it to be taken down.

“Our group was [then] shut down once they looked over it,” he said.

Following this Kieran joined WayOut, a state-wide suicide prevention program that targets same sex attracted bisexual and transgender young people in rural Victoria.

Based in the Macedon Ranges and run by Cobaw Community Health, the 14-year-old program is also a supporter of the Safe Schools program.

“It really helped me notice that there were other people like me out there,” he said.

“That one hour after school on a Wednesday was the only time that I really felt safe.”

Four other students from his old school subsequently joined the support group.

Chief executive officer Margaret McDonald said the program was vitally important as it operated in an area lacking in specialist services.

“We know that LGBTI young people are over represented in suicide and self-harming behaviour and have other mental health issues around bullying and inclusion,” she said.

New school new beginnings

Now enrolled in Year 12 at Gisborne Secondary College, Kieran said it was a different environment to his old school.

“I get this feeling where I’m not being singled out or anything and that I can just go about my business, be the guy that I am and just kind of go about doing school and being a student, and that’s really, really nice,” he said.

Kieran was able to change his name on the school record and wear pants, instead of “pretending” to be someone he wasn’t, which caused him a lot of internal pressure and anxiety.

“It’s much nicer to just be able to sit down and just to be who I am and know that when my name is called it’s the name I want and all that kind of stuff,” he said.

“It just takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders.”

Kieran said he now had many friends and felt supported by the school and especially with how they handled an incident of bullying.

“[The bully] was told off; they took it very seriously, which is really nice,” he said.

Principal of Gisborne Secondary School Andrew Robertson said the school has had the Safe Schools coalition “in many forms, for many years”.

“We are part of a larger community and it’s important that we all take a good hard look at the sorts of things that we’re modelling to our young people and when we have politicians that behave in bullying ways it can make the work that were trying to do at school a lot more difficult,” he said.

He said his colleagues were “picking “elements of the program that they build into their health programs across all year levels with the school proud of its acceptance, tolerance and diversity which includes gender diversity.

Despite the recent Federal Government’s recommended changes to the Safe Schools anti-bullying program following a review, Victoria along with the ACT will continue the program without any changes.

Kieran said the main role of the school was to create a safe learning environment where students didn’t don’t feel anxiety over their gender or sexuality.

“That’s what the point of Safe Schools is, is to make that kids can learn at their most effective because they’re not anxious about their sexuality or their gender,” Kieran said.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.