Please help I need some advice .... Don't know what to do ..

[rumby]

I will try to keep this short... here is the story: Have been step mum to 2 teenage boys for past 4 years. They live with me and my husband (their dad)full time since their mum left 4 years ago. Youngest boy (13) has always been very " feminine"and I have had thoughts that he might be gay for a while now . He has no friends his own age who are boys and hangs out with girls whenever there is something on ..... This morning his phone alarm went off and I went downstairs to turn it off , he left it there by accident last night . I know I am bad, but I looked through his phone ...not all of the stuff but I noticed there were 2 videos on it so I opened them up . Not good :( He had filmed another boy (face shown first ) pulling his pants down and masturbating ..... Please someone help me out with this . My husband would flip if he finds this out . I have no-one to talk to about how I approach this sort of thing with him ... I know I was wrong to look up his phone , but he is only just gone 13 and I am horrified by what I saw .. I need some advice please .

[spookygarlic]

If you talk to him about it then he won't trust you at all in the future. I don't think you can say that you've seen what was on his phone to be honest, hard though that is. Do you have a good relationship with him normally?

Can you talk to his Dad and just say that, now his sons are getting older, that it would be a good idea if he spoke to them about pornography and online pornography and about acting appropriately on the internet? Maybe that would help his son to realise that it was not appropriate to have such content on his phone.

[frenchfancy]

Good advice spooky.

Do not admit to ANYONE that you have looked at his phone, not even your DH.

Just use this as a guide for how you respond/react to things in the future.

[spookygarlic]

Thanks french.

[rumby]

Thanks Spooky, I will take your advice on board .Will keep my mouth shut and have chat with husband regarding appropriate behaviour .Appreciate the advice ..

[GiganticusBottomus]

Isn't anybody else worried about the other boy

Would you want your 13yr old letting somebody film them masturbating? What kind of emotionally vulnerably 13yr old thinks that it is ok for them to let someone film them.
If i have this wrong and the 'boy' is actually an adult then ignore me but FGS out there somewhere is a child who is letting others film them performing sexual acts. This is not normal behaviour. I'm not sure from OP whether her stepson did the filming.

YOu MUST take action. This see no evil hear no evil attitude is not good enough.

[rumby]

Am not sure if my stepson filmed him or not... it looked like this boy filmed himself and then sent the film to my stepson. I feel awful about this whole thing ...

[GiganticusBottomus]

Rumby, you cannot ignore this. If this other boy is a pupil at the school your stepson attends at the best he has made a gross error in judgement at the worst....well...you don't need me to spell that out. You must do something.

Childline's number is 0800 1111, they might be the place to start for advice.

If your stepson didn't film in then who in the hell is sending him child pornography and where did they get access to it? If your stepson did film it then a vague talk about appropriate behaviour is too little too late.

[GiganticusBottomus]

If the other boy in the video had been a girl would you be acting any differently?

[rumby]

Thanks Giganticus. I am going to ring childline in the morning ... You are so right about if it was a girl ...

[OldLadyKnowsNothing]

Before we all get het up here, it's actually a perfectly-normal part of the mating rituals for girls that age to film themselves in a sexually-provocative manner and send it to boyfriends. It's not wise and of course questions surrounding the production and distribution of "child porn" arise, but it's common.

That this boy has also done this is not necessarily an indicator of abuse.

[timidviper]

Just a word of caution rumby. I was not involved in this so am not well up on the details as have only heard from others. Our local school had an issue in which a young girl sent an indecent pic of herself to a boy who then sent it out to other friends. Somehow this became known by another parent who asked the school for advice and the final result was police involvement, threats of children being put on the sex offenders register and a lot of heartache for children and parents.

I think Childline are a good place to start but please be very careful about who else you might involve.

[GiganticusBottomus]

This is 'normal'? I think you are wrong.

'sexually provocative manner' is bad enough but this CHILD filmed themselves or was filmed masturbating. If you were his parents would you not want someone to alert you? The 'it's perfectly normal' argument is a load of irresponsible bollocks.

[GiganticusBottomus]

I see your point TimidViper but at some point we have to simply say to ourselves, we are adults, a child is either putting themselves or being put in an extremely vulnerable situation. We must act to protect that child because somewhere along the line another adult is failing to do that.

[rumby]

Timidviper, I was thinking that this could happen . I really do not want my stepson or the other boy to go through that. I just can't ignore the situation though, it feels wrong . I do not think that this is "normal" behaviour at all , and I would be devastated if it was my son/daughter being filmed . I would want to know if I was the parent .The question is how do I go about sorting this out without things resorting to what timidviper said?

[PattySimcox]

Agree with giganticus. Normal to take flattering pictures of self and forwarding, but not normal for 13yos to film themselves masturbating and distributing.

Similar incident to that which viper describes happened at DS school. Girl sexually assaulted boy at lunch time in front of a group of other Y8s - instead of intervening, they whipped out phones and started filming.

They were all told in no uncertain terms that anyone with footage would be suspended pending police investigation etc

[rumby]

I recognise the other boy from my stepson's BB account. I do not actually know who he is or exactly how old he is ... probably under 16 I would guess.He appears at the start of the video saying "hi baby" and smiling and then takes off his clothes and masturbates .
I am going to have to have this conversation with my stepson . It is just too serious to ignore really. I feel terrible about not being able to confide in my husband , but I think his heart would break if he knew .

[GiganticusBottomus]

Is your husband going to flip because his son might be gay or because of the video?

I do think you should speak to childline before you speak to your stepson because they may have advice on how to broach it with him.

I really hope you manage to get to the bottom of this and are in some way (as maryz said) notify the other boy's parents. I am heartened at how seriously you have taken this, good luck tomorrow.

[rumby]

Thanks Giganticus, I really appreciate this advice , will ring childline first and go from there .

[Downnotout]

Just wanted to say that I understand being a step parent puts you in an even more difficult position than normal.

I don't suppose it's an iPhone or similar that is synced to a computer? If so you could have discovered the video completely by accident.....

[GiganticusBottomus]

Rumba- have you made contact with childline - I would be interested to hear what their advice is.

[GiganticusBottomus]

Sorry, rumby not rumba (iPad auto correct at work again....)

[rumby]

Hi GiganticusBottomus, made contact with childline yesterday. They referred me to "parentline" for advice. I spoke to a lady who was very understanding .. she gave me the number of a gay and lesbian family helpline , which I tried to call but they were shut. She did not advise me about what to do with this other child on the video though :(

I did tell my husband the whole story last night . He was upset and angry . We decided to confront stepson last night with everything. We both felt that there was no way we could ignore this behaviour and put it down to curiosity /etc . Stepson has said the video was part of a prank that he and another girl played on this boy . He said that they were pretending to the boy that he (stepson) was a girl on BBM and that the boy sent this video to him . He said that he just thought it was a bit of a laugh . I have serious doubts about the explanation he gave . I also saw BBM messages from the same boy that my stepson had replied to last Friday night .... this other boy was calling him "babe" and saying that he "loves him" and "what are you up to", "I love you" and "I'm upstairs in my bed in my boxers"...... I do not believe a word of the explanations he gave us .

We have confiscated his BB phone and he is not allowed on the laptop unsupervised at the moment .

We still do not know what to do about the other boy .And where do we go from here ? GiganticusBottomus you sound like a sensible woman ... any advice will be appreciated :)

[GiganticusBottomus]

Hi Rumby.

I'm glad you have been in touch with parentline. It sounds like your stepson may have some deeper issues than you first thought if he would either play such a cruel 'prank' or tell you such barefaced lies.

I would firstly have a really good look around his BBM history etc and see if you can find out any further info about the other boy. I would then (and bear in mind this is just my opinion) would take a camera shot from the video of the child's face. I would take it to your stepson's school, ask for a private meeting with the head teacher or head of pastoral care and ask if the boy is a pupil at the school. Explain that you have some concerns about the child but not knowing who he is you don't know where to start. If he is a pupil then, in my opinion, it would be reasonable to ask the school to contact the boy's parents - they would be required to as it then becomes a child protection issue.

If he is not a pupil at the school then I think you will need to ask your stepson how he knows this boy. Your stepson is going to be in some level of 'trouble' if the boy is a pupil at the school but he is still also still a CHILD himself and will be treated as such. You could tell your stepson that you are planning to go into school and see if this elicits any further more truthful responses from him.

Although other posters mentioned the concern of breaking your stepson's trust in you, I think if you present him with a chance to be honest with you, then he (on some level) will understand if you take matters further due to his continuing dishonesty, then there is some responsibility left with him. If he is struggling with his own sexuality there may be some services/counselling that will be accessible to him through school (my friend is a senco and has arranged other sorts of councilling for children under her remit).

This really is a awful situation for all concerned, do let me know how you get on. If you would prefer to do this off the forum do PM me.