DD17 has been inappropriately touched by a customer whilst at work.

[Normansglasseye]

DD17 works at the weekend at a well known store.

We are currently on our way to pick her up as she's just rung me very distressed. She was serving on a till and an autistic young man around the same as DD has grabbed one of her breasts. She is absolutely distraught. The carer/parent has apologised.

I've never been in a situation like this.

I'm so upset for DD.

I have rarely been as shocked by a post as I was by this one. To describe sexual assault as 'ultimately harmless' as if the distress of the OP's DD is not itself sufficient evidence of harm? Have you ever been the victim of a sexual assault? I have & I recall how distressed I was & was entitled to be.

I also speak as a parent of an adult DS of my own with severe learning disabilities. I can assure you that he doesn't get to behave any way he likes when out & about, it is my job as a carer not to let him behave in a way that puts others at risk.

Yes that is an enormous ongoing challenge to me and his other carers. I agree that there is inadequate support and funding for the disabled which leads to an inordinate burden on their carers.....I don't know all the answers to that, but the answer cannot be for women and girls to be collateral damage for a failing system, to put up shut up and 'be kind'.

What ?????

Yep, and there are many more.

OPs daughter, the young man, the carer or indeed anyone who ends up in a situation like this are not acceptable collateral damage of a society and political agenda that seems to think that if you remove the support, the need for that support disappears, it doesn't. It results in preventable situations like this happening to which people have the attitude 'You work with the public, you can't expect anything else'.
The young man should be able to visit the shops, the carer should have the support/training to enable that to happen while not endangering other people and OPs daughter, or anyone else, should not be expected to accept being assaulted is inevitable, because of a lack of that support or training, which actually is lack of money, or the will to recognise it's needed and provide it.

Absolutely spot on and very eloquently expressed.

This was the point I was actually trying to make by suggesting that as many people as possible lobby their MP for an explanation of how this change will work. As you say, it’s probably a foregone conclusion that there will be no extra funding provided for social care, who will have to suck up the cost and stretch the existing resources even further to accommodate it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold MPs to account. They work for us, not the other way around.

The vote on these cuts is next week and there have been rumblings of discontent for weeks, which is ramping up with many opposition MPs saying they will not support the proposals. Now is the time to hold our MPs to account and ask the awkward questions, that as far as I can see, no-one wants to ask, which are:

What is the justification for a cut deliberately aimed solely at reducing benefit costs with no consideration of the effects of loss of support for the claimant ?

Who, if anyone, has carried out a risk assessment for these claimants to determine safety and other concerns.

What is the likely saving overall - if any - given that professional social care costs significantly more per capita than the disability and carers benefits currently in payment, and what, if any, extra provision has been made to ensure that these claimants can access the care they need ?

We all know what the answers will be but holding them to account and highlighting the disparities and lack of critical thinking in what is being proposed, is what’s important.

But if you work in special education with the type of pupils who behave that way, then you go in prepared and with the knowledge that this will likely happen.

That is different to the OP's DD she was not working in special education but in a job where being assaulted in any way should not happen and there is no excuse whatsoever.

So do we go back to the days when adults with learning difficulties were locked up away from contact with anyone ?

What happened to this lady is distressing but even with all the possible control measures not involving restraint or seclusion it isnt possible to eliminate them completely. And parents have just successful campaigned to have these almost totally banned with children.

So do we go back to the days when adults with learning difficulties were locked up away from contact with anyone ?

That's the plan. Out of sight, out of mind.

@helpfulperson

It's a huge jump you have made from me saying a 17 year old girl should not be assaulted at work to you suggesting I meant all adults with LD should be locked up away from contact with anyone.

Don't you care about young women's safety?

It's not an excuse but it can be a reason ,the Ops whose child it happened to.Is accepting of that and has been very balanced
We cannot and should not go back to the days where disabled adults and children were locked away.

@x2boys I agree with you that it could be a reason. However, it is not an excuse; there is no excuse. It could mean the individual is not culpable, but someone needs to take responsibility.

I have never said or even implied that disabled adults / children should be locked away although there will be cases where this is sadly necessary.

We cannot and should not go back to the days where disabled adults and children were locked away.

Remember you are only speaking for yourself. There are plenty of people more than happy to go back to those happy, halcyon days.

A 17 year old girl was assaulted.

Don't forget the victim.

Nobody is forgetting the victim its a horrible thing to have happened regardless of wether the man has capacity or not..

Thanks. if only I could go back in time now to express my sympathy and best wishes for the OP so as not to look like a twat

Clearly my earlier post generated a lot of anger, but I pretty much stand by it. Perhaps I should have shown more empathy for the 17 year old in this situation but as the OP said she did when writing the first post, I was feeling particularly protective of the young people I work with. To the poster that asked, yes, I have been sexually assaulted and raped, but I am still nowhere near as vulnerable as the young person who touched a breast in this story. Maybe I’m slightly desensitised after working in a special school, but I don’t think being grabbed momentarily, over clothing, when no injury occurred, by a person who has an intellectual disability, did not intend to harm, and who was supervised by someone that was able to de escalate the problem almost immediately, is that traumatic a life experience for someone who has chosen to take on a public facing job.

Being a bit upset is reasonable. Expecting either a family who have much bigger problems to deal with or a carer who is paid next to nothing to be phoning the shop to ‘check she was ok’ is not reasonable.

I know the majority of people have never encountered adult sized people who are nonverbal, struggle with impulse control and sensory input and have the emotional and intellectual ability of a three year old, but they exist. And they have as much right to be in public spaces as everyone else.

Of course everything possible must be done to ensure that they and others are safe, but the only way to guarantee that they will never do anything that upsets anyone is to keep them isolated at home or in specialist facilities. That’s not a valid option. The world becoming a bit more accepting and understanding is a valid option. The same reaction wouldn’t have been given if it were a girl who had grabbed someone.

Reading some of the responses on this thread at the same time as knowing many beautiful young people who sometimes show challenging behaviours is genuinely upsetting. It also makes me immensely thankful for the kind, understanding, lovely people I encounter in my school’s local area.

Yes i care very much but unless people understand the reality of what it would take to guarantee things like this will never happen we cant have a proper societal conversational about medical, social care and research funding. We need to be looking at root causes of this tyle of disability and preventing it and investing significantly more than we do.

Whilst I think what your daughter experienced was horrendous, can I ask how she knew he was autistic and her own age with a specified carer?

I assume the carer told the Op?

But to some exent it is an 'either or' question. No matter the carer's skill or training, you cannot 100% guarantee incidents like this will not happen. You either lock people away from society or you accept that sometimes incidents will occur.

The parent or carer (as I mentioned, we are not 109% sure as to which one she was) told dd he was autistic when she removed him from the situation.

DD assumed him to be around her age and the assistant manager, after viewing the CCTV, also concluded him to be late teens but if course none of us know for sure so he could have been older or younger.

Locking people up for the safety of others is precisely what happens after an assault happens in some cases.

I mentioned upthread a situation where I'd reported a concern and had it ignored. The first time that an offence was committed, there was limited incarceration. The second time that it happened, the person who committed the offence was placed in a secure mental institution. The judge's reasoning was that the offender was incapable of understanding the impact of his actions on others.

IMO, the OP's daughter should consider having the offence recorded with the police, since it seems that some kind of intervention would be beneficial.

With regard to the concern that I reported, IMO an intervention might have saved both the perpetrator and his victims.

Yes to some degree I think working in a special school has desensitised you, and although you don't say your age by the tone of your post I suspect you are older than 17, with more general life experience as well as specific experience with as you put it "adult sized people who are nonverbal, struggle with impulse control and sensory input and have the emotional and intellectual ability of a three year old".

You went into that job reasonably knowing that you are going to be exposed to this, you have likely received training on how to deal with it and de-escalate it, and you have the experience of what works and what doesn't. The 17 year old girl in this scenario doesn't, and it's quite a reasonable expectation that someone working in a shop doesn't have the skills or experience to deal with the same things you do in the same way.

How can you expect that 17 year old to have the same experience in life, never mind specific experience with people with impulses they can't control, to have the same viewpoint on the incident as you?

That's as unrealistic as expecting disabled people to not be in public. You're saying that the OPs daughter should have empathy and understanding for the young man in this situation, because of his condition, however you're not willing to apply that empathy and understanding the other way around. You think she's 'allowed' to be upset, but no more than that, that's unreasonable. It's not for you or anyone else to dictate how this affects her, in the same way it's not for anyone else to unilaterally decide what this young man's intentions were and decide he needs to be locked away from society indefinitely.

I would likely be much calmer in a situation like this, I work in hospitality, so also have a reasonable expectation that I won't be abused and assaulted because I simply work with the public, however I'm in my mid 40's and have experience with people who have disabilities, that life and specific experience is going to affect how I view and deal with the situation, again a 17 yo, who is still a minor, still expected to be in education of some description, is not going to have the benefit of that experience.

Choosing to be working with the public should not be a reason to be assaulted and just live with it. No matter the reasons behind the assault. She wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time, she wasn't doing anything wrong and quite frankly it's a lazy way to look at it and sweep away the fact that working in a shop shouldn't expose you to assault or abuse just because you work with the public. That shows a real lack of respect for anyone who does these jobs. Do you expect that anyone just outside in public should be accepting of an assault by virtue of just being in public?

You're showing the same lack of empathy and understanding that you're accusing others of, that you're so disgusted by, while demanding that empathy and understanding for those you care for and others like them is non negotiable.

I didn’t say she was doing anything wrong and I didn’t say I expect her to have life experiences or training that would lead to her having the skills to deal with situations like this. Nor did I say that this exact situation is to be expected when working in public. That’s a huge amount of projection you’ve put on what I said.

I did say that my first post may have come across as lacking in empathy, and of course I can acknowledge that she had a horrible experience. But the posts calling for the police to be contacted, the OP’s expectation of a phone call to check if someone is ok after something they have probably experienced a million times and couldn’t be helped, the cries of sexual assault, it’s all over the top and small minded in my opinion. We are free to disagree on that.

I dislike that a boy who looks like he’s in his mid teens is automatically being judged as a sexual predator when I believe a younger child or a girl with a similar disability and exactly the same level of understanding would be given more sympathy by the MN feminists.

The Op has been very balanced in her views tbf,unfortunately you always get posters on these threads who have little concept of how severe autism can present
I'm the parent of a severely autistic teenager who can exhibit extremely challenging behaviour and could potentially grab at people its not sexually motivated he doesn't have the capacity to understand how his actions impact others and we are ultra vigilant when we take him out
But it's also not the daughters fault regardless of why it's happened she's still a victim .