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.

Many posters are jumping to the conclusion that the boy was with a professional carer when it’s much more likely that it was a family member ill equipped to cope. Had this been a professional carer they would have known that it was not appropriate to leave the scene. The incident would have been logged with the care provider and would have triggered a review of his care needs.

So you’ve ignored my points about the failures of care and your take away from my post is that l see the boy as a victim ? I qualified that statement. There are two victims here. OP’s DD who, regardless of disability or any other contributing factor, was assaulted. The boy is a victim of an inadequate system which failed to adequately support him - the evidence of that is the fact that the incident happened at all. They are two completely separate issues but ultimately the system failed both of them.

Men..

He needs to be banned from the shop for the protection of women and girls. Staff and shoppers.

I suspect that in the moment, I'd have dinner what the parent/carer did. I'd have assumed that the teen's continued presence would be upsetting for your daughter so would have got him out of the way. And of course as the person responsible for him I wouldn't want the general upset around him to set him off and make things worse.

Of course it's difficult to make the right decision on the spot when something like that has suddenly happened

I don't think anyone on here is saying that we should put up and shut up, but it's important to understand that the severity of the man's autism and his level of cognitive ability needs to be taken into account. If he has the mental age of a very young child it would not be classed as sexual assault.

I do understand this because, as I mentioned in some of my replies, I am a PA for disabled and autistic people but atm my DD isn't feeling this way.

She feels that he did target her because there were 6 tills open including hers and she was the only female on the till. The CCTV shows him walking past all the other tills to get to her. It's as though he made a deliberate beeline for her. She is young, blonde, slim and attractive and gets a lot of unwanted make attention and feels this young lad was no different to any of the other men who give her hassle at times. She wasn't even wearing a name badge either which is driving her to not believe the carers/parent explanation.

I have gently tried to explain this may have not been the case with him due to the fact he mate be quite autistic but I'm treading carefully as she is obviously very upset atm. As much as I have empathy and understanding for this lad and his carer (I am neurodiverse myself) I need to keep my loyalty to DD because right now she says she hates all men and doesn't understand why this happened to her.

👏👏👏

He grabbed her breast, hard. He did not brush passed her breast.

Did you not read my op?

I agree, it must have been upsetting for the carer/parent and they most probably would have wanted to get the young lad removed asap to avoid an escalating situation but time will tell on this I suppose.

I would like to think she would, maybe, contact the store to check if DD was ok. She did leave her crying and visibility upset after all.

Try telling my young dd that.

So he just keeps grabbing the breasts of young women?!

I think some posters are trying so hard to point out the disability aspect here that they are unintentionally diminishing your DDs experience. The fact that the boy clearly had a level of disability which affects capacity or impulse control in some way is obviously a factor in what happened, but that doesn’t change or take away from what your daughter experienced or the distress it caused. She was assaulted.

There has been a lot of discussion around the levels of care, and it’s obvious from the knee jerk reactions that a lot of posters don’t understand these kinds of disabilities, or the severe lack of resources in the care system. My own opinion is that this was an unpaid family carer who didn’t know how to handle the situation, which is why they scurried away - possibly knowing that his over stimulation or agitation would have made things worse had they stayed. It doesn’t make it right but it offers a possible explanation of the decision taken in the moment. Had it been a professional carer they would not have left the scene and IME there would have been protocols in place for reporting and recording a serious incident and triggering a review of the care plan.

The fact that the boy clearly had a level of disability which affects capacity or impulse control in some way is obviously a factor in what happened, but that doesn’t change or take away from what your daughter experienced or the distress it caused. She was assaulted.

Exactly. Both things exist side by side, and I have sympathy with both OP's daughter, and the carer.

It's extremely difficult to find the ideal road in managing disabilities. No-one (surely) wants people with severe autism to be confined to their homes, but there's very little support for parents to manage their lives around them, or to find safe ways to help them learn to navigate public places.

It was a miserable experience for everyone involved, and I hope that the young woman is supported by her managers

This is the reality of the situation. Adequate care is patchy - in many places it’s almost non-existent and many people with autism and MH problems end up in prison because they have committed criminal offences as a result. I’ve dealt with parents at their wits’ end caring for adult children with autism and learning disabilities who have grown much bigger and stronger than their parents and are violent and abusive. Parents have been assaulted repeatedly and are still expected to provide care because there is no adequate alternative, and they’ve ended up with the equivalent of panic rooms - internal doors with locks and barricades - as the only means of keeping themselves and any other children safe.

well yes,
tell her that

I’m really sorry about your daughter @Normansglasseye it must have been an awful experience for her and some of these comments are dreadful.

I was sexually assaulted by a young man with learning disabilities when I was 12. I was at a funfair with my family and some friends and he followed me into the Haunted House and kept pressing against me and trying to put his hands down my jeans and grabbing my chest. Fortunately one of the fairground workers noticed and pulled him to one side.

When I got out, I told my parents who called the police. Apparently he should have had one to one supervision but for some reason was allowed to go off on his own. He’d also assaulted another child on the same day.

The police took him off to the person who was supposed to be supervising him but I heard nothing more.

I still remember it clearly now, despite it happening 46 years ago.

I can't believe some of the responses here, minimising the impact on your dd. She is 17 and she was sexually assaulted at work. How dare anyone tell her that feeling distraught is an overreaction?!

Yes, there were obviously mitigating factors in that the young man who did this probably didn't realise what he was doing and almost certainly didn't intend any harm. Yes, social care in this country is in a terrible state, and it probably wasn't the fault of his carer that there wasn't another adult present to help supervise properly. Yes, disabled people have rights and should be supported appropriately to be able to go out into society.

But none of that takes away from the fact that this poor 17yo girl was serially assaulted at work, and for all that she might understand some of the issues surrounding what happened, it doesn't change the fact that it did happen, and she has every right to feel fucking distraught about it.

I do think you have a point here. It may go some way towards DD processing and healing from the incident to know that to some degree what happened was as a result of the boys’ disability and inadequate supervision has obviously played a part. But l think it has to be approached in such a way that her own feelings are not invalidated. Yes the boy has a disability which was a factor, but it doesn’t change the fact that DD was assaulted. Both things have to be held as true at the same time.

To my knowledge only one poster suggested that being distraught was an overreaction to something ‘harmless’ and l think she was very effectively handed her arse for her inappropriate comments. The boy’s disability was clearly at the root of the incident, but as you say, that doesn’t change the fact that she was assaulted and she needs to process her feelings and heal from the experience.

The questions around social care provision and the rights of disabled people are a different matter. It’s my experience that the public are quite content to observe the shit show that is social care in the UK without opinion and to also support further cuts in the system such as the ones planned to come into effect next year, until it affects them. And while OP has shown an understanding of the issues contributing to the incident, there are posters here who are completely ignoring social care - or lack of it - as a contributing factor in letting down both of these young people, and going straight to punishment. Some have even gone as far as to say disabled people shouldn’t be allowed out in public ‘if they can’t control themselves’.

This is the 21st century. We are a quarter of the way through it, and still we continue to push social care down the list of priorities with no thought to the consequences - one of which is what happened here. Until that changes these kinds of incidents will continue.

You're missing the point.

The hugging behaviour was stopped in order to stop escalation as he got older. Cute 11 yr old - no one complains. The same person trying this with strangers at age 18 - frightening.

The adult male's behaviour should have been dealt with as soon as it began. As a pp said, you teach boundaries - don't touch other people.

Very angry on your DD’s behalf that someone upthread has dared say that she has massively overreacted, @Normansglasseye. Fuck that person. Regardless of the person’s disability, your DD’s reaction was entirely appropriate given the situation. The onus was on the carer to nip that in the bud before it happened. The fact that your DD wasn’t wearing a badge was telling, I believe. Disabilities sometimes come with a lack of a filter and this may be why the young man in question needs a carer. OP’s
DD is entitled to feel safe in her workplace and this carer has a responsibility to be accountable for her charge’s behaviour.

Autism is a huge spectrum my son is severely autistic with severe learning disabilities he would grab out at people given half a chance but at 15 he's cognitively around two ,he has no understanding of how his actions impact others as he doesn't have capacity
So we prevent situations. When we are out and about
.

It's not but it might be an reason some people don't seem to understand
how broad the spectrum is therss a world of difference between an autistic man with full capacity deliberately assaulting a female and an autistic person with no understanding or capacity grabbing at someone ,obviously the impact on the Ops daughter is the same
But the law will treat the two individuals very differently.

DD is very low today. She keeps reflecting on why he chose her when he walked passed 5 male colleagues on the other tills, all of whom were wearing name tags. She's also very angry with herself for not pushing him off and for crying in front of all the customers (who were probably wondering what was going on). I've told her absolutely none of this is her fault. It's not something she could have seen coming.

I've said I'd support her in whatever she wants to do and asked if she wants to talk things over with anyone. Where would we go for this? I have little experience in this kind of thing, any suggestions?

On a side note I'm extremely disappointed with her manager. She doesn't work on Sundays so wasn't there yesterday but the assistant manager told us she had contacted her. Not a word from her today, I'd hoped she would have a least messaged DD to check she was ok. Not surprised though as she hasn't proven herself to be a great leader in the few months she's been in the role but nothing I can do about that I suppose is rather focus on making sure DD is settled. Hopefully someone from HR/Head Office will contact DD this week?