What do we know?

So it is Saturday, I'm listening to Jordin Sparks new album, it is surprisingly good.
I was supposed to work today, but I have been told not to...so I'm tucked up in bed with laptop, newspaper, magazine and my book.
There was an article about school bullies that capture me for a while and made me think of the school bullies I grew up with.

In the article the journalist contacted the boy who used to beat him and everyone else in the class, they teased him for being fat and he beat them until they cried and begged him to stop.
Would he still have beaten them had they never teased him?
Turns out the boy's dad used to beat him at home, and he has grown up to be a member in an "MC gang", he has spent some time in prison, and he has " never started a fight, but ended quite a few" he continues to say that he don't want his daughters to go through the same hell as he did, so he has taken a huge life insurance on himself.
I get the feeling he is expecting to die before his time.

I remember the children that was beaten everyday at our play ground by the "though ones" and I wonder what sort of life they have today?
As far as I know no one of my class mates were abused by their parents, but what do we really know about what happens behind closed doors?
It would break my heart to find out that someone I used to meet everyday, had to go through their own personal hell everyday at home, maybe they came to school for some respite, only to be beaten by their class mates who felt they needed to "prove" themselves in some obscure way.
What did they need to prove?
What is that makes a child cruel?
Can it be that one in a million is born with an extra gene? a "cruel gene"?
I'm guessing that 99% of cruel children who grow up to be nasty, evil adults has been badly treated from the start by their parents, and know nothing else, don't know how to treat people you love and care about, don't get taught how to love?

I can feel myself digging into an area I don't know enough about to write a post of good quality, so I will stop here.
Child abuse is heart breaking.
Bullying is terrible.
If we can stop the first, then maybe the second will automatically stop?
Or am I just naive in my way of thinking?