At a weekend with family, my 4yo ds out of the blue told his 10yo cousin, a girl, that "A man touched my bits". They were outside playing and no one apart from ds and his cousin were there. This was right before they came inside, with the cousin urging my 4yo to tell me what he had just said, but he said nothing except that it was a "secret." The cousin later told me out of earshot of my son, and later as I was trying to process this (and also how to gently coax more information out of my sone) his cousin was asking him further questions but ds just started talking a bunch of kiddie stuff that didn't seem to be relevant or clearly just fabrications at this point (he was saying "...yes there is a bad mad, who wears a mask, and he's Darth vader etc etc; he likes to tell stories like any 4yo).
Dh and I have been trying to piece together what actually was said from what could have been suggested/prompted by the cousin and we are now sure that the only thing we are sure of is that, without another context to link it to, he has said that someone touched him. We really cannot tell if he was just talking boys stuff (they are obsessed with their "bits" at this age) or if this is in fact him telling his cousin of actual abuse which happened. Ds is only ever at preschool or with us, and realistically the only place this could have happened was at school (he is never out of our sight as a general matter).
Ds and his younger brother are at their grandparents' in the country safe and sound for the next few days. Dh and I were advised by the Childline helpline to call CPS to start an investigation and we are frankly almost as terrified of calling CPS as we are of the possibility that something awful in fact has happened to Ds. But finding out is all that really matters now.
My question for mumsnet is can anyone tell me what is going to happen to us once we make this call? What is the process? We are terrified of the "specialist team" swooping in and traumatising Ds even more than he might be (or might not), and generally we are afraid of not having any control over the situation. We know we must make the call because we need to know the truth, but we would be very grateful indeed if anyone could share their experiences, good or bad. We will probably call them now tomorrow, because I want to do this with Dh together (today we waited to get more info from the cousin's mom, who spoke to her again and confirmed what ds said and that it was not said ottherwise in the context of talking about his "bits", i.e. making it less likely that it was just kids' talk).
apologies for the very long post.