Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine arrested - The vindictiveness of the school and police overreach

Nope the police said there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution which means the evidence has been presented to the CPS and they have said that the evidence doesn't meet the 50% threshold. Not that it wasn't there or that they couldn't produce it. They said it was insufficient. The police also said my rapist confessing was insufficient. So you saying they had none is not what they said or that none of them met that definition. They said that the evidence is insufficient for the 50% test.

Nope I do not expect all of them to be shared but if they are gloating saying they have done something but do not release the communications that show what they were gloating about doing then crying they didn't do it to the press then it asks questions. Why were they gloating about doing it and wanting to continue?

Why would you think I want access to their child's records? What a reach and what a pathetic deflection when at no point have I mentioned about their child's records. Can I ask why you would even make such a weird and obscure comment? Probably to make me out as something I am not which is what people like you do. Cannot handle that I question evidence when you do not.

The majority of people can read and understand what insufficient evidence means. I've explained it and you seem unable to comprehend what it means. Sadly if you cannot grasp that insufficient relates to the chance of prosecution with the CPS test and not that it wasn't there then there is no helping you.

I've not said the school must be in the right - more fabrication from you. I have said time and time again that I have not given my opinion on that. Again you seem to have ignored those comments and made something up I've not said. Now why are YOU pretending I have said that.

The main question is why am I obseessd with replying to people like you you mean?

Because people like you seem obsessed with lying about me and lack understanding such as what the police said and it seems that you lack reading skills and if you keep asking me then I will keep responding. Don't act dumb as to why does she keep responding when you keep debating! Doh!

You get tetchy and cry when I challenge evidence and when you make things up that the police have not said despite the facts being there yet and you not being able to handle it!

Why are you obsessed with responding to me and then wondering why I am replying? Why are you obsessed with making things up and obsessed with crying over people who disagree with you? If debating is not something you can handle then step away.

You are within your rights to debate and to have your own opinion and so am I. That doesn't make me obsessed nor does it make you obsessed. However, you lying about me and what the police have said is not factual and will be challenged. Also pretending what you said about me is not acceptable. Using that tactic when all else has failed is low and appalling behaviour.

Why did you resort to the 4 humours to pretend anyone who disagrees with you is mental? Are you unable to debate without this?

When you have half a conversation and they have released part of a convo gloating about what they did but not the bits showing what they did then of course you will ask what is it that they did?

But the letter! But the letter!

With no link to it, let alone excerpts from it, just supposition and fantasy.

That thread, if it is the one I think it is?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/chat/5304206-police-arrest-parents-who-slate-school-on-class-whatsapp?page=33&reply=143351741

started off very much as you describe: a thread for teachers being vindictive to parents and welcoming this false arrest despite the police having confirmed that there was no crime. However, as it progressed this was challenged by more rational posters, including me, with facts, references to education law etc, so the later pages in it are worth reading. There were also some eye-opening comments there from a teacher who left the profession for precisely the reason of this type of toxic behaviour from Heads and SLT which is damaging to both pupils and staff.

Some of the comments on this thread and that one - disturbingly, mostly from people who work in education - show total ignorance of the legal responsibilities of schools and that they are in complete denial about the reality of how children - in particular those with SEND (like the girl in the article) - and their families are treated by schools despite this being a well-documented fact. They also seem to have no comprehension that the school’s own admissions about what they did in this case in fact evidences that the school was in fact in breach of several different laws and regulations whereas there is zero evidence that the parents did anything to break the law at all.

Not liking what somebody does or finding it unpleasant or annoying doesn’t make it a crime. Refusing to communicate with the parents of a disabled child or allow them to communicate with the school in a timely and effective manner about a child’s medical conditions or hold the required termly review meetings of their provision with their teachers (as this school did) is, however, illegal. It’s quite astonishing how many teachers seem to be unaware of this, oblivious about their legal responsibilities, and seem to think that school policies can override the Children and Families Act 2014, the Education Act 1989, the statutory SEND Code of Practice 2015, and even GDPR, simply because they found a parent “annoying”.

As I said on the other thread, repeatedly, the only real solution to this problem given this type of behaviour from schools is now so widespread (although granted, it is not usually as extreme as in the case in the article i.e. going as far as making false allegations to the police) is to put a proper regulator in place in the education sector which comes down like a ton of bricks on all schools and Local Authorities that break the law, stripping professional qualifications from staff involved and implementing significant financial penalties for legal breaches to create sufficient disincentives for behaving like this and hold them to account properly - like in every other sector - rather than leaving it up to individual parents to try to enforce education law through tribunals. When these cases do come before a court, in 98% of cases where the is a dispute between a school and the parents of a child with SEND judges find in favour of the parents. That statistic alone should make it quite clear that to assume the school was in the right in such a case is extremely unwise.

Pleased to see this thread. The previous one I read on MN was like an alternate universe of people - many of them teachers - determined to assume the parents were violent bullies on the basis of no evidence, and no comprehension that their attitudes of assuming any questioning is bullying or aggression towards schools and teachers is part of the problem.

This is why so many in the UK are turning to home-ed these days because schools are so uncooperative and despite wanting to blame parents for every failing don't actually want to work with the parents at all but rather to lay down the law without challenge or discussion, treating the parents as a recalcitrant child in their over-crowded classroom.

Oh dear.

The police reviewed every single communication via email or Whatsapp (and there were no other communications, e.g. in person or by telephone, because the school prohibited it). The police could not produce a single communication that fell within the definition of a crime, such as “harassment” or “malicious communications” (the false allegations that the school had made). Not a single communication that met the definition of the crimes was found, hence there being no charges brought.

If there was evidence of a crime having been committed but the police had been uncertain of whether there was sufficient evidence to proceed to prosecution or whether this would be in the public interest, that would be the role of the CPS to determine. But there wasn’t any evidence at all, as the police have confirmed.

You seem to expect the entirety of all communications between parents and school to be published by the press? That’s completely unrealistic and bizarre and I can’t think of a single case in which that’s ever happened. These parents have already been subjected to huge intrusion into their lives and have now willingly subjected themselves to even more in the public interest by publicising this, knowing it would entail more mud-slinging from people like you. Yet you expect every communication about the details of their child’s medical condition etc to be published in the press?

This simply doesn’t happen, and in no way indicates anything is “being hidden”. If you don’t feel that, without this, you have sufficient evidence to reach a view and comment on the topic then why have you posted hundreds of messages commenting about it?

For the majority of people, who are rational and reasonable, the fact that the police have confirmed publicly that there was no evidence of any crime having taken place is sufficient to conclude that the school’s allegation was false. The police will have been thorough and made sure they have gone through it all with a fine-toothed comb given the publicity, and it’s not plausible the parents would have publicised the case like this if they had in fact committed a crime because this would then, no doubt, come to light and cause them reputational damage.

Your comments seem to be entirely motivated by making up ever-more implausible invented scenarios for which you have presented no evidence at all in a desperate attempt to try to pretend that the school must have been in the right.

The main question is why you are so obsessed with attempting to find a way to justify such a position, despite all available facts pointing to the opposite being the case.

To be presented with a negative and come up with the idea there "must be more" with no evidence, you can't seem to see your own bias here. I think you might need to take a step back. If you went into a Jury and were presented with evidence, would you start off thinking they must have done it because you didn't watch them on the toilet on the morning of the crime and something important might have happened, just not "found"? Your logic is bizarre.

Not fantasised at all. The messages they have released do not follow on nor to they show what comes before. Pretty simple. I've never said the police were wrong.

They didn't say no crime has been committed at all. Nor did they say it was a false allegation. Nor do the police NFA things - the CPS do!

Nope never mentioned whether the police were wrong or not. That is again you falsifying things as you already have done in that last message about what the police said as the police have not said what you have stated. I presume you lack comprehension skills as you have made up things that you think I have said and what you think the police have said.

How is it spiteful to ask why they have withheld information? It is not spiteful to want to see all the information before making a decision! Until then I will assume there is a reason they are hiding it.

Well, fortunately, objective reality exists regardless of your weird conjectures and fantasised narrative of what happened. The police have reviewed all communications between the school and parents as - at the school’s behest - all communications between them for over 6 months prior to the arrest were in writing, so there’s no subjectivity or doubt or different memories of events to be considered: the police have reviewed every single communication that there was. They have also seen all of the parents’ private communications with friends and family via Whatsapp, which were none of the school’s business to begin with. And having reviewed all of this they have determined that there was no crime committed, no evidence to support the school’s false allegation that the parents’ behaviour met the definition of “harassment” or “malicious communications”.

Since you seem to believe that the police were wrong, and presumably you wouldn’t just be making this up and have some evidence to back up your spiteful comments about the parents, perhaps you’d like to share the evidence supporting your assertions with everyone else?

We have evidence that they omitted the messages. They have only shown some not all.

Because petty bickering in WhatsApp groups is not even fun for people who are in them through choice?

You say evidence but we have no evidence of anything else, in fact we have more evidence that there was no evidence than any evidence of what the school accused them of.

It isn't misunderstood when they admitted they did in fact do it. They also omitted all the rest for an unknown reason.

You do realise that people can tell the truth and lie at different times. Now when speaking with their mates they are all billy big bollocks. When with the media it is daily mail sad face I never did a thing wrong but will not share the evidence.

Make from that what you will. I make from it there is a reason they refuse to share the evidence. Why hide it if you have not done a thing wrong?

And how odd that you want to “go off their word” (that you have misunderstood) about this issue, yet have stated you are determined not to believe their word about the entirety of their account of events. How very convenient and selective your beliefs are.

No they did not. They mocked the absurd letter sent to all school parents demanding that parents were not to discuss the school in private conversations and saying they would “take action” if parents did so despite this being completely outside the school’s authority or jurisdiction. In the Whatsapp messages parents were therefore laughing about the absurdity of the letter and the control freakery of the Head Teacher even thinking that the school should be able to control the private conversations of adults simply because their children happen to attend the school the Head works at, so they said “what will they do, send the police around because someone said hurty words?”. Clearly they were joking because it was unthinkable to them that a school would even attempt to do that, or that the police would go along with it given having private conversations that someone else doesn’t like - which they shouldn’t be spying on anyway - is not a crime. Sadly the school were actually barmy enough to make a false crime report and the police were incompetent enough to go along with it despite already being in possession of all of the evidence proving that no crime had taken place.

The parents joking about the absurdity of the school’s attempts to impose demands on who parents can talk to, and how, was rightly mocked, and is in no way any admission of harassment. You seem to be incapable of understanding written language which is rather concerning if you work in education.

Listen 3 min 30 in https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0029hwt
Think you might be the only one who can't see the obvious here @whippy1981

They joked saying they had done so I will go off their word, they said they had been doing it so their words are what I read.

Nope the police investigation didn't conclude that they hadn't. The police didn't conclude either way.

They couldn’t “stop harassing them” because they weren’t doing so in the first place, at all, as the police investigation concluded. HTH.

Why are you bringing rape into this? Parents calling a teacher a control freak isn't anything similar to it, please stop using ridiculous comparisons. This was all done via electronic communication, of which there will be copies on the sender and recipient devices. None of these have been enough to prosecute. We all know the rape stats are appalling and the whole point is the police should be focusing resources on those real crimes rather than petty disputes that the school can't handle themselves in an adult manner.

That's actually really helpful, I was trying to work out how to do it!

You are well within your rights to believe that and make that statement.

Not sure why you wanted to mention what you were doing to me though?

If you click on 'edited' it will show you the post pre-edit, so you can see exactly what was said.

Whippy, I'm not arguing with you as I don't think that'd be productive. More just making a general point.

I think that the school/police response was over the top in this case.

You asked a question. I answered.

Not that difficult. Why ask if you do not wish to hear the answer.

You cannot be reasoned with.