Covert recording at school

[IveLostMyUsername]

I have no idea if this is the correct place to put this.
Two weeks ago I got a call from the school. DD13 (year 9) has had a bit of a falling out with some of her classmates. The school are sorting it out. Seems to be a personality clash, but they want my permission to offer DD some counselling as her self esteem seems poor.

I agree. All seems fine. DD comes home happy, tells me they've had a communication issues but they talked it out in the Learning Support Unit (LSU) with a trusted adult in a mediation session. Apparently everyone agrees and is now on the same page.

On Wednesday DD had a migraine. So I let her stay home from school, as she had 100% attendance at that point so I knew it must be bad for her to ask.

She goes back in on Thursday to find out that one of the girls, I'll call her Mandy, has been put into isolation for 3 days. It turns out that Mandy recorded the mediation session they had in the LSU and was going around showing it to people moaning that DD had people ganging up on her. Mandy has a much older brother (in his mid 20s) and apparently he has written a 3 page letter to the school about how my daughter likes to twist things and put the blame onto Mandy. He mentioned the recording in the letter which is how the school found out.

DD heard this from friends who were in on wednesday. Now I know that teenagers exaggerated, get things wrong etc. But Mandy is definitely in isolation, so something has happened. Obviously I only find all this out when DD gets home on Thursday (Yesterday) evening.

I called the school this morning, as I wanted some clarification on this. Mainly has my daughter been recorded without her permission, during a mediation session, in a supposedly safe space, and also has a random (to me) 20 something year old been writing letters about her to the school. As it sounds just this side of creepy to me. Also where are Mandy's parents in all of this? (I do know that Mandy being in isolation is none of my business, I only care if she actually recorded DD)

School haven't contacted me. So I followed up with an email. But am I overreacting?

I'd be pretty cross if DD was involved in a mediation session and it was recorded without her knowledge or consent.

Yep that's pretty much where I'm at. Annoyed that it's happened and also annoyed that's she's found out from someone third hand. I'd assume the school should have contacted me once it came to light

I don’t think you’re over reacting.

Presumably, the mediation session was intended to talk to the girls involved and resolve the personality clash and what led to the falling out. That being the case, that session should have been private and not open to any other people. By recording without the knowledge and agreement of everyone involved, this girl has broken the terms of the session and presumably, this is why she’s now in isolation.

She compounded this by making it public to her brother, who is neither a parent, or involved with the school in any way and has no business involving himself in the situation.

The school can sanction the girl and it looks as though they’d have done so by putting her in isolation. I’m not sure though, what they can do about the communication from the brother and I imagine they’re trying to work out how to resolve that.

I should think that the trusted adult is pretty annoyed too. I think you’ll spend should pursue a response from the school, but give them a little time to respond. Otherwise, it seems as though they put something in place, to try to resolve a friendship issue and it would have probably been successful had the girl not decided to do something unreasonable.