A recent rash of suicides by teens tormented because of their sexual orientations has fired up the national media and politicized the issue of bullying.

Anti-bullying legislation introduced in Congress this month already has bloggers jousting over whether gay and lesbian activists are exploiting the issue to infuse public school curriculums with instruction intended to normalize homosexuality. At the school level, parents and teachers grapple with how best to change the behavior of bullies, the topic arousing passionate rhetoric in PTA meetings nationwide.

Yet amid the community fretting and political grandstanding, a sober voice has emerged. Or rather, three sober voices, intent on exploding myths about bullying and focusing light squarely on the experience of victims.

Author Andrew Vachss, artist Frank Caruso and clinical social worker Zak Mucha together released their book last week called "Heart Transplant," a gloves-off indictment of the culturally sanctioned bullying that leaves so many young people crippled by shame, rage and hopelessness. Their assessment of the bullying epidemic diverts from politics and programmatic solutions in favor of understanding the emotional dynamic between aggressor and victim when bullying occurs.

Vachss, by day an attorney who represents children exclusively, has been in the child protection business the better part of 40 years. But "Heart Transplant" is not a work of feel-good child advocacy.

The book tells the story of Sean, a kid who only begins to understand his own pain and loneliness when his abusers are shot to death and he is taken in by an old man called Pop. Sean's tale depicts bullying as a pattern of abuse meant to diminish the powerless and disenfranchised. It shows with simple clarity how the erosion of a child's self worth begins, and how we can interrupt it.

While TV "news" programs endlessly replay YouTube clips depicting violent teenage assaults, "Heart Transplant" employs a mix of art and prose that shows the world through the eyes oppressed youth in a way that cell-phone videos never could. The 100-page, full-color graphic novel (of sorts) is anchored at the end with a critical essay by Mucha, who explains what the reader has just experienced and offers a treatise on societal perceptions of bullying and their enduring impact on victims.

"That perceived lack of worth is evidenced in the victim's dismissal of his pain," Mucha writes. "The victim learns not to trust his own feelings. He ignores his own flushes of rage and shamefully swallows words he wished could be spoken."

I've read "Heart Transplant twice through, both times recalling past experiences. To be honest, some of those memories made me cringe.

During my 20s and early 30s, I worked in group homes. Most of the kids there had been abused or neglected beyond anything I could imagine. Some had been bullied within an inch of their lives: beatings, sodomy, torture with fire or blunt or sharp objects, ritual abuse.

Groups homes are often places where bullying is rampant, but the aggression is not always physical. Kids might flex their power by spreading rumors, pitting the group against a chosen victim or swiping another child's meager, yet deeply meaningful, belongings. The bullies were kids who had been chewed up and spit out by their abusers, and they were grasping for power any way they could.

What really got me, though, was considering my own culpability back then, and that of some of the people I worked with.

We often saw behavior that was violent or chaotic. To deal with such behavior, we were offered two days of crisis and restraint training before being tossed into the milieu. In a house with six emotionally disturbed kids and two rookie staff, it's easy to see how quickly the place could become dangerous. Many of our interventions were focused not on healing or nurturing, but on keeping the peace and preventing injuries. Sometimes we were afraid of losing control of the house, and our use of seclusion or physical restraint was, at times, tantamount to bullying. We thought the acquiescence of children promoted safety and that compliance was a reflection of their well being.

We were wrong.

Compliance as a measurement of emotional health is inherently problematic when applied to the treatment of abuse victims. A wiser child protection advocate than myself once said, "Child victims of sexual abuse have been going along to get along their whole lives."

She was right. By praising children for quietly following directions, and reprimanding them when they didn't, we were ignoring the feelings they were holding inside. Over time, I started to get the picture: It's healthy for a kid to stick up for himself when he's being oppressed.

Of course, to promote safety, the rules in group care facilities are exceptionally strict, and frontline workers spend much of their time telling kids no.

"Can I do my homework later?"

"No."

"Can I have a snack?"

"No. It's too close to dinner."

"Can I have a soda?"

"No. It's too close to bedtime."

"Can I play Nintendo?"

"No. You yelled at Johnny when the two of you were playing yesterday."

"Can I use the bathroom?"

"No. Suzy is in there, and Johnny is next."

"Can I use the staff bathroom?"

"No. It's for staff."

For some counselors, 'no' became the default response, the primary method of containment. And what is bullying if not repeatedly shutting someone down and telling them to like it?

When a kid is told to quietly dismiss his feelings over and over, the word 'no' might finally send him reeling. Sometimes the staff would panic and try to force compliance by upping the ante, pelting kids with greater and greater consequences until the kid felt he had nothing left to lose and lashed out violently.

The more I learned, the more I trained new counselors to say 'yes' every chance they got, to imagine themselves in the child's shoes, wherein a harmless exception to the rules can express a vital affirmation: Your feelings are real, your needs matter and they are worthy of my concern—I care about what you're going through.

In "Heart Transplant," Mucha describes a bully's operating principal: "Alleviating my pain is more important than causing yours." As group home counselors, we too often placed our own fear of giving up control before the emotional needs of our clients.

"Heart Transplant" brought all of that back to me, and it didn't sit easy. But I'm thankful the book has arrived. I wish it had been around when I was starting out, uneducated, untrained. I hope families and teachers and kids will read it because it's for anyone seeking to answer the question:

How do you take a kid who has been taught to hate himself, and help him learn to feel worthy of love?