Hi,
I don't want to give too much away, in case it's outing, but I was at a local (ish) pub the other day and I witnessed, what I would call, child abuse.
Started with shouting, threatening, punching the table, throwing a plastic bottle at him etc, from I'm assuming the new step 'dad', which was bad enough, but then it got physical. Basically they were passing him back and forth and hitting him hard on the arm.
I could see another couple of women looking over and they looked horrified too. One stood up briefly like she was going over, but then sat down. I decided if I saw them touch him again, I would call the police. He did, so I did.
I was seriously debating going over myself, but ds was with us and this guy was clearly a nasty piece of work, so didn't want to risk it, although it took everything in me not to yell at him to leave him alone!
I would have just called ss but I only slightly recognised the mum and didn't even know her name, so wouldn't have been able to offer them much information.
Now I'm worried that I could have made it worse for the poor boy. What if the police turned up, saw nothing and were fobbed off by them and then the step 'dad' took his anger out on the boy? Honestly, I can't bear it.
This was abuse though, right? Did I do the right thing?