DS threw bully’s phone in lake

This is a tricky one. If someone took my teenagers phone and threw it in a lake I'd call the police. I think you need to bear in mind that the girl will have told her mum a very different story.

Out of interest, how would you view things if, instead of this scenario, it were a (sadly far from unheard of) case of a nasty bully/sex offender in school pushing their phone under a locked toilet cubicle to try to film their victim and violate their privacy and dignity?

The advice usually given in such cases is, if at all possible, for the victim to try to stamp down hard on the phone and smash it - hopefully also injuring the hand of the little scrote who is holding it.

Would you say that a teenager being victimised in this way at school should do nothing, allow themselves to be intimately filmed and wait patiently until it goes to the police?

Ideally you want the footage thats on that phone - hopefully it's backed up to a cloud somewhere

There's 3 versions of events.
If your 100% convinced DS is right, let the police deal with it.
Not the school they are there to teach not sort fights between children.

Just like the mother of the owner of the phone, i would definitely be looking for more of an explanation to this.

Possibly the first time ive ever heard of someone being bullied by a group and them being able to get away from the bullies, up to the bystander recording, steal their phone and throw it away....... Did the bullies just stop and watch this happen? Did the girl just hand over her phone? Could there be more to it than either set of parents realise.

Might be worth having a chat to them, just in case.

The same applies to OP and OPs son.

You would hope this, but it could really go either way: she might have been completely lied to by her DD and genuinely believe her to be an innocent bystander; or she could be one of these parents whose children can never do wrong, and it's always somebody else to blame, never their precious angel.

At 13 he's over the age of criminal responsibility, so he/you either replace the phone or risk the other family pursuing a case of criminal damage with the police.

I personally think that the circumstances leading up to the loss (of the phone) are very significant.

Had she not been filming harassment/abuse with it - presumably for her own/other people's entertainment rather than gathering evidence that she was fully intending to take to the police (and did she report the attack to the police afterwards as a concerned witness?) - her phone would have been perfectly safe.

If a vicious dog came over to attack and severely maul you and you somehow managed to boot it hard to get it off you, and killed it in the process, I don't see how the owner would have any grounds for blaming you.

I know this case hasn't (yet) gone to the law, but when people are found guilty of profiting from crime, the money is taken away from them - even though there isn't anything intrinsically wrong with the money itself.

Eek it's a tricky one. I probably wouldn't pay either, but I'm sure the girl will have told her mum and entirely different tale to what your son has told you.

I can only assume that the mother of the girl does not know the true version of events (hence her anger) as surely if she knew her daughter was using the phone to film bullying, she would tell her daughter that it serves her right.

I ams so Sorry for your son having to put up with nasty shits like this. Karma indeed. Block the mother and she can get her own child to behave.

I wouldn’t be paying for jack shit. Definitely get the school involved though to prevent this from escalating any further.

As the saying goes, there's your version, my version, and the truth.

If the other mum has your number I presume there is a school connection somewhere. I'd ask the school to intervene if you think there's a bullying problem.