Girl With Tourette Syndrome Gets Bullied But Watch the Other Customers

Kids can be cruel and teens more so than anyone, at times. In a segment of “What Would You Do,” a young teen girl playing the role of “Jillian,” who passersby will discover lives with Tourette syndrome, is mocked and bullied over the apparent affliction. How you would want people to react to seeing someone being bullied is sometimes discouraging but when people stand up for anyone being ridiculed over things out of their control is the ultimate uplift.

In this scenario, the narrator, John Quiñones, explains that Jillian has more bullies than buddies. Thankfully, the bullies in the scene are actors as well.

The scene takes place at an ice cream shop in New Jersey where the kids are ordering their favorite scoops and Jillian starts to have trouble when she speaks. The loud, “Ha” sound coming from Jillian “shocks” the other teen actors.

The taunting increases

One gentleman in line right away starts noticing the interaction between Jillian and her would-be bullies as she tries to explain she has Tourettes and the “Ha” sound she makes isn’t her laughing at them.

“Yeah, guys, it’s a pretty serious condition,” the gentleman explains to the kids. “It’s involuntary, do you know what that means?”

“You shouldn’t be making fun of her,” he tells the bullies.

The bullies continue. Telling Jillian’s defender that she’s weird and why is he coming to her defense.

The man responds how everyone ought, that he’s a human being with compassion.

“I don’t like it when people bully people or demean them for something [the bullies] aren’t educated about,” he tells the kids.

“So the goal is to educate you guys, so that in the future you’ll know, “hey, I shouldn’t be making fun of these people, but I should be helping them because maybe they’ll be helping me in the future.”

When Coñones introduces himself to Jillian’s defender and asks what his message to the bullies was, his answer was simple and clear.

“Stop bullying. People got to speak up when bullying happens,” he says. “Just say something.”

In a feel-good-hopeful-for-humanity segment, the scene plays out multiple times and the adults — and fellow teens — who witness the abusive bullying step up to defend Jillian throughout the shows time at the ice cream shop. One can only hope people in Jillian’s position in real life will always have defenders and the bullies admonished for their behavior and told to stop.