AIBU to think train officers should be better with dealing with a vulnerable child?

[slw95xx]

Hiya all,
I have a younger sister who is nearly 16, she turns 16 on the 11th of next month so only a couple of weeks really. she is not in school due to mental health problems. she has suffered with depression and social anxiety which made it better for my sister to be taught at home with a tutor. Anyhow, My sister isn't too bad anxiety wise anymore thanks to CBT but can suffer with feeling "like she's being looked at" or "attacked" if a stranger invades her space or draws intention to her (Where she will usually slink into a corner and avoid being noticed) yesterday she came to visit me, its a 25-35 minute train journey. she buys her ticket from the machine, goes to the platform and gets the train, then gets off and meets me at the other end and then we walk to my place. she has never had a problem with this before. I used to do the route with her when she started (12-18 months ago) but she was confident enough to do it alone and to be honest I couldn't afford to get a train ticket from my town to the city to get her, another train to bring her back, a train to drop her off and then a train to get myself home as it was costing me £20 per two way journey and money is tight atm. anyways,I've waffled on enough (I just dont wanna leave any important info out)
My sister tried to buy her ticket as normal but the machine was only accepting card payment (which obvs she doesn't have) so had to go and actually speak to someone in the booth, which is a big step for her. she bought the ticket and was asked if she was buying it for herself or someone else, she answered his question honestly and went on her way. by the time she got to the stairs to walk to the platform 1 male and 1 female revenue protection (?) officers approached her. the man asked if he could see her ticket. she handed over her ticket while asking why he needed to see it as no one had asked her before. He asked her age and she told him. he then told her she looked considerably older than 15. He walked her to the platform and sat on a bench,by this time the lady had disappeared. he started asking her questions (I believe the latter are what was asked)
"What school do you go to?"
"Why aren't you in school?"
"Whats your mothers phone number?"
"Where do you live?" now these are fair enough questions even if he did seem to be bombarding her a little. she then told him she is home schooled which is why she isnt in school today.
he then asked her why she was home-schooled (non of your business!) she explained that she had social anxiety and would rather do this elsewhere (I.e a waiting room or somewhere private) as he was making her feel extremely unsettled. He ignored this request. she tried to answer his questions but could barely think let alone talk so couldnt come out with much. he gave her a clipboard with a sheet of questions on it (Just name,age,DOB, address) she filled it out and he disappeared back downstairs with it. He then came up and said that her postcode doesn't check out with her address. she then explained that she lives in an area that is named after another place and if he checked out the street name with postcode he would see that. he asks her to write it down again, she doesn't want to as she's already done it once and he keeps asking her questions which is making her feel increasingly upset. by this time she was really struggling to think properly as her anxiety had kicked in tenfold. she walked into the waiting area and sat on the floor trying to regain control over her breathing. the revenue officer walked in again and continued to ask questions (I.e "can you confirm your postcode can you confirm your birth month") at this point she lost it, told him to fuck off and ran into the ladies toilet where she bolted herself in for 20 minutes. upon leaving she saw the revenue officer talking to the ticket person that was later on her train, the revenue officer very obviously pointed her out to the ticket person but neither approached her.
AIBU to think they should have handled things better for a child with anxiety (When they know this?)
AIBU to think she should've been taken somewhere quiet and private to talk?
AIBU to consider filing a complaint against the railway? I don't want money or anything like that but an apology and revisions of their guidelines wouldn't go amiss.

you dont actually know how she was treated other than a 2nd hand story on the internet.

Bruffin, I'm not sure if you're suggesting if I'm lying or my sister is (either I find offensive) I do not see how questioning a young girl when she was very obviously in distress (hiding behind her bag attempting to regulate her breathing, as she has been taught to do to block everything out and focus on herself) is appropriate. I do not see how it is appropriate to ask a young girl to justify her education. I do not see how it is appropriate to ignore a request of privacy. Even for safe guarding, if that was the case why follow her in to the waiting room anyway? it makes no difference from a safe guarding point of view as regardless even if only for a minute they were alone together in that waiting room and anything could've been said. I can see some points for and against but I really cannot view this behavior as reasonable.

I don't think they did anything wrong either - they asked questions to see if there was fare evasion going on, and your sister told them to fuck off. It's an unenviable job, and I expect they've been given every excuse in the book. You didn't say they were rude - in my experience, they would have been unfailingly polite.

I realise your sister has mental health issues, and that travelling alone is an achievement. I do worry that your infantilising her though by calling her a "young girl". She's weeks away from becoming an adult.

Nor do you know precisely what happened, Bruffin. No-one who wasn't there can know. But based on the facts we have, you have decided that the ticket inspector acted reasonably. But, based on the facts we have, he treated a vulnerable, ill girl as a criminal, and failed to comply with his duties under the Equality Act.

AgentProvocateur, you're totally misrepresenting the facts as given. Is your username deliberate? At 15, OP's sister isn't "weeks away from becoming an adult". She's over two years away from it. This wasn't a case of the sister doing nothing but telling them to fuck off: despite her illness, she answered all the officer's questions, she explained about her anxiety, she made a reasonable request for privacy which was ignored, she filled in his questionnaire, she answered his further questions when he queried the address. When all this had the inevitable effect of exacerbating her anxiety, he ignored the obvious manifestations of it and followed her and continued questioning her. It was only after all that that she swore at the officer. Do you seriously think that was appropriate conduct on the part of the staff?

Timidly returns to thread to restate agreement with bruffin, agent provocateur, Santana Lopez et al. Having re- read the original post, I do feel sorry for the revenue officers - what an unenviable job. I think the difficulty here is that your sister's manifestation of anxiety and her vulnerability and her verbal aggression could very easily be interpreted as behaviours of a fare cheat.

Still, if a complaint assists with training going forward for revenue officers when dealing with vulnerable transport users, that would be no bad thing.

OP's sister is almost 16, 2 years is a more than 'weeks away from becoming an adult'.

Idiomoi, at 16 she can get married. In Scotland, some people leave home and go to uni at 16 - myself included. I'd say that makes you an adult.

I am notg suggesting you are lying, but you are recounting something you yourself were not present at. Your dsis obviously had a panic attack but you yourself said that she misinterprets peoples intentions so we dont know exactly how the inspector behaved. My dh has had nervous breakdowns from stress and anxiety and he does interpret things wrongly when he is not himself. I do undertand the issues for her, but I would not have let her leave the house without an uncharged phone or without some written explanation of her condition and the fact she is HE etc or some sort of proof of age at nearly 16 etc

You can only get married at 16 with parental consent or a judge's agreement. Whatever you want to call it, legally an adult in the UK is 18.

I still think YABU, although I am sorry your sister is so upset.

He asked perfectly valid questions and her behaviour would have looked exactly like someone bunking off school and crapping it because they were caught (wrong postcode, forgetting her phone). Telling him to fuck off and running away would have looked even worse.

Making this big a deal of someone checking your sister's ticket won't help her anxiety.

Arguing about ages is beside the point. She's not a "young girl". But you can get married at 16 in Scotland without consent, so we'll need to agree to differ on what we consider an adult.

In Scotland you don't have to have parental consent to get married age 16. UK law doesn't exist. Scotland and England have completely different legal systems, that's why eloping to Gretna has been so popular through the years.
To me 16 is an adult and I have as much sympathy for the train inspectors who were just doing their job as the OP's sister.

Maybe she could get some of the fab Stickman Communications Keyring Cards for when she's feeling a bit overwhelmed or just hasn't got the spoons to deal with talking to people.

I don't think taking her into a more private area would have been a good idea - it would have given the impression this was being treated as a potentially serious offence and could have made her panic worse. Talking on the platform is much more informal and less likely to panic your sister further. Also, you have no idea why the female officer went away and returned, so it's not reasonable to think she should have stayed rather than her male colleague. She could have been the senior officer and had to go and deal with a more serious incident - you just don't know what the circumstances were.

The officers saw a young woman buying a child's ticket on a school day and it was appropriate to ask her for proof of identity and age. I don't think they handled it particularly well, but given the nature of their job they probably encounter all sorts of tales every day, not only about age but why they aren't in school. The combination does tend to arouse suspicions.

I'd concentrate on getting your sister some form of ID to avoid future incidents. And to have her phone with her and charged.

Perhaps the best way forward is for your parents to ensure that if she is out alone, then she has some kind of pre-printed card / letter such as those produced by National Autistic Society, to give her something to show anyone when she is panicked or upset in the future - in the same way a medi-alert bracelet works - when she isn't able to calmly talk to someone, it explains to them why not.

Oh gosh, that's upsetting reading that. Your poor dsis

I don't think yabu at all. Write a complaint emphasizing the need for better training.
They have treated one of their customers appallingly and they need to at the very least acknowledge that.

I think it's a pretty appalling way to treat someone with MH issues. Sorry your sister had to go through it.

The ID issue is a tricky one, in London she'd be able to get a child Oyster to prove her age. But what are her options elsewhere in the country? Seems a bit unreasonable to expect her to get a passport purely for ID purposes.

Revenue protection officers are not police. They have very limited powers although they'll make out to the contrary. They don't have any duty to check up on potential truants etc, because they're not the police. Just as if your sister had shown them her ticket, and refused to answer their questions they can't compel her to, or in any way detain her or physically prevent her from leaving.

They're just there to check tickets. That's the extent of their role.

I don't think a complaint is fair at all. Your sister acted exactly like an arsley skipping school kid would. Although to you her panic is obvious to the train man it just looks as though she is upset at being caught out or worried she's going to get in trouble.

When I was at school there was a rumour that if you ever got caught shop lifting that you should act a bit odd and tell them you needed to contact your psychiatrist. I imagine a lot of kids still try it on a lot.

I don't understand what you all want these apoplectic to have "training" in. Really? It takes can take ages for a qualified professional to diagnose mental illnesses. How is a training session going to help a man who spent about 3 minutes with a girl know if she was a knobby teenager or not?

As soon as she's sixteen she can get a 16-25 railcard (I know it won't help for these last few weeks though), so dates will be cheaper for her, and they'll take her date of birth to get that so from then on it will be 'official'.

Poor thing, hope she doesn't dwell too much on it and gets her confidence back soon

*fares will be cheaper

I think they were doing their job. Even if they did have training with working with vulnerable people that doesn't equip them to deal with the full array of different sorts of vulnerabilities that forms of mental illness have. I think they dealt with it the best way they know how and I don;'t think she would have come across any differently than a young person attempting to truant.

I say that as someone who from a young age had MH issues, and I looked a LOT older than my age. It got to the point where I paid for the adult fair just to avoid the bother :( but i had no card to prove otherwise

I don't think revenue protection officers need anything more than basic training where disabilities are concerned. They can't be expected to be fully fluent in every single scenario likely to present but that's no excuse for the way the OP's sister was treated.

If they were aware of the equality act, what constitutes a disability, what constitutes discrimination and a few basic adjustments (e.g. being prepared to contact family member or support worker in difficult situation and taking cue from individual who is used to living with condition). Human decency should make up the remainder.

revenue protection officers- as opposed to ordinary ticket inspectors- often do behave in a a very high handed and unpleasant manner. They assume guilt, and make it very hard to prove innocence. Our nearest station is unmanned and the permit to travel machine is often out of order. Some of the local kids have taken to taking a photo of the broken machine with a newspaper in the picture as proof to avoid hassle. They wouldn't be driven to doing that if the RPO's weren't being heavy handed.