It also works the other way some times
I spent about 10 years being bullied at school (i.e. 7 years primary school, first 3 years of secondary- after that it petered out but was worse when it happenned).

4th and 5th year were filled with the second years lobbing stuff at us, kicking, etc. We didn't want to beat the crap out of them as when someone had hit back they'd been threatened with expulsion (they were 3 years older than their attacker).

Anyway, one day we were playing football and doing a pretty good job of just ignoring them. So they started throwing rocks (not stones. Rocks.), crushing people's bags, climbing trees and chucking things / spitting from there. One of them chucked a big branch and it glanced off my best friend's shoulder.
So I picked it up and threw it back at the prick who'd thrown it at us.

And missed spectactularly- it was a 15m javelin throw with a kilo or two of crooked wood. Can't really be expected to go in exactly the way I hoped.
Which impacted with the wrong kid's face. Half an inch below the eye. It knocked him out of a tree, he fell onto the pile of rocks that was providing his friends with ammunition and got carted off to hospital.

I got a token two hour's detention where I caught up on a good book (the last one was waived for "good behaviour") and they got a couple of months nights of detentions each. While not allowed to do anything- not talk, not even homework.

So yes they're ambivalent sometimes. But if the problem's just that your kids' otherwise decent teachers have their hands tied, you can find that they'll suddenly find them even more tied when the victim retaliates.

Demanding security camera footage after every single instance of bullying is also a good way of getting to the truth and getting them to act on it.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Sat 16 May 2009, 13:17, 1 reply)

I absolutely agree about the otherwise helpful teachers with hands tied -
it was t'management who were being pricks in this particular school, and that seems to be the general pattern.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Sat 16 May 2009, 13:33, closed)