I heard a man shouting at his 4 DC the other day - full on shouting / swearing etc. I’ve witnessed this a few times, as has my DH (they live a road over from us). All his DC are little - this ages 4-7yo. He walked out of his house and I heard one DC say “daddy, why did you call that man a f-ing c-nt (full swear words)”. The dad saw me and straight away denied it and said to DC “I didn’t say that!” But DC were adamant - I carried on walking and pretended not to hear.
My DH walked past their house a couple of days later and heard the dad going ballistic inside the house - full on screaming at them. I spoke to a neighbour who said she heard it all the time and the dad says things to them and makes threats that he will pack their stuff and move them out. Apparently the children cry and say “don’t calls us c-nts, daddy”.
The mum is not on the scene.
With this, I popped into the school and mentioned it to the safeguarding lead as it may be that the dad needs some extra support and they were unaware. Ever since, the school have called me 3 times asking me to forward this concern onto the council / safeguarding team. I have done this but feel sick - I know this man my have issues and may just need extra help. Of course, I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to those kids as a result of the abuse they get from their dad, but was I right to tell the school / the council? I just thought by telling the school, that would be done and I wouldn’t have to keep getting involved. I don’t want to tear a family apart but I just couldn’t ignore it.
I’m not sure what I’m after for by writing this - maybe someone to tell me if I’ve done the right / wrong thing? The school called me again today to make sure I’d done called the council - maybe they may have had other complaints about this man?