Would you inform the police if your child committed a serious crime?

[partinor]

This is a hypothetical question. But just wondering what others would do if you knew or suspected your child had committed a serious crime such as rape or murder?
I would inform the police for rape or murder. Not so sure about theft though.

Mary Beard example is a bit rubbish.
it's not, and in real life, it has also shown that the results vary immensely depending on the age of the participants. 20 year old are more likely to put their hands up, 30 year old responsible for a family much much less.

I can't remember if it was with her, but when similar question was asked to various groups, people had no trouble admitting they would be too scared for themselves or for their close ones.

The question was not would you join the resistance or collaborate, the question would you resist, or not - and keep a low profile trying to stay out of trouble basically

have also taken my 5 year ld to the security guard in Tesco when she took a sweet from the pick n mix -

That’s extreme. Unfair on both your child and the security guard. Surely you are capable of teaching a 5 year old that taking the sweet was wrong?

Why is it unfair, Yabbers? It’s not like the child would have been arrested.

I would do the same.

It's clear that many don't turn them in, or something happens in their brain to distort the facts / convince themselves it's not possible.

Did Sonia Sutcliffe overlook Peter's behaviours, or was she truly blissfully ignorant?
Did Maxine Carr really believe Ian Huntley? and if she did, she still was happy to lie for him.

It absolutely does happen.

rosemary the guilt of knowing who did a crime and not turning them in. If your child was raped, murdered, assaulted, burglared, conned etc wouldn’t you want to know who did it? Isn’t the victim and their families right to know who committed the crime againest them more important than your desire to protect your child? How could you live with the guilt of knowing who committed a serious crime but not tell anyone? I don’t get it.

You can also add some variants to the question.

Would you inform the police in the UK?
Would you inform the police in a country that applies the death penalty?
Would the possible sentence affect your decision?

I suspect some parents/partners convince themselves that their loved one is really innocent.
But I am a bit shocked at the amount of you saying you would not when it is clear they are guilty.

Lots of parents tell the police over their kids... partly because they want the police to admonish them in order to put the fear of God into them and make them realise the potential consequences. If they are relatively young kids, they won't get into serious trouble, but they don't know that! ;-)

These questions are just wank fantasy for bigots, really. You can't know what you would do in an extreme situation, because you can't know what the context would be. So one set of stupid people are going to huff and puff about how every crime should be brutally punished, no matter what, and another set are going to virtue-signal about unconditional love and it is all so totally hypothetical as to be meaningless. Yet people get to excite themselves by insisting that anyone who wouldn't do what they say they themselves will do is What's Wrong With The World Today...

Back around 1997 there was a woman (Angelina Mavrides) whose teenage son returned home in some distress. After questioning, he revealed that he'd been part of/witnessed a gang rape of a young woman.

The mother took him to the Police station.

A lot of people condemned her for allowing her moral compass to transcend instinctive family loyalties: others commended her actions.

Angelina Mavrides, the mother of one of a teenage gang convicted of the violent rape of an Austrian tourist in London yesterday spoke about how she told police that her son, Nicholas, now serving 10 years in prison, had been involved in the attack.

Despite death threats, she acted as a key police witness, identifying the other gang members involved in the rape of the women in King's Cross, last September.

Ms Mavrides, of Camden Town, told the News of the World that Nicholas, 16, told her about the rape the morning after.

She described how she cried, banged her head against the wall and was physically sick after seeing the story on television. Feeling close to a nervous breakdown, she talked to her social worker and then phoned the police. "They took Nicky away," she said. "I felt a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, like a whole load of mess had been wiped clean."

Remember reading about a very upsetting case where a young girl was raped in a park and left for dead hidden in a bush her attacker hit her head with a brick. By utter luck a passing cyclist found her in time and she survived. The rapists parents were the ones who turned their son in He was only sbout 15

Yes, of course. I'd try to persuade them to turn themselves in first. It wouldn't mean I didn't love them or somehow people who wouldn't turn their child in love their children more.

Shocked how many children would shelter a murderer or a rapist.

Question for those who wouldn't turn their child in.
Is their a limit to the number of people you would see murdered by your child before turning them in? So just one person, or if they then killed another, or three or four?

In nearly all scenarios of very serious crime committed by your child you would be questioned by the police sooner or later.

If you withheld the information from them and your knowledge of it came out later, which is likely, you would be looking at a long jail sentence.

At the very least you’d get caught up in appalling lies.

Yes I remember my mum taking my sister back to a store to return a stolen item and be told off by the store. My mum was trying to frighten her, and as far as I know she never did it again. Totally different to telling police though as it is to scare kids, not to actually see them being punished by the law.

So in America in some states, kids have been put in local prison cells for very minor offences. I would not inform the police in these situations. I would discipline myself.

But rape and murder are very serious offences. And yes I would inform the police, although it would be bloody hard to do it.

The thing is partinor, most of us would say we wouldn't kill an innocent human being - but there is strong evidence to suggest we would, if given the right circumstances / motivation / fear.

So, in the cold light of day, we can all easily say we would turn someone in, but in reality can be quite different when we actually find ourselves in that position.

Now imagine if someone said 'I probably send someone into the gas chambers' - that sounds absolutely horrific doesn't it? - but in some senses, it's honest too - because people did precisely that, so why should we be any different from other human beings in history?

Hairyfairy01
I would have a much stronger guilt for doing something wrong in raising my kid than in not telling. My responsibility is my child, not the victim and their families. It's not the fact that I would keep silence that would bother me, it's the actual crime and what I had done wrong for it to happen.
Of course I would want to know if I was the victim, but I wouldn't realistically expect the family to sell their child either.

Don't get me wrong, if I was to find an abducted kid in a basement, I would get him out of there immediately and call the authorities. If I find a dead body in the basement, I expect my first reaction would be to protect my child, or even my husband.

You might not like it partinor but statistically speaking most people would keep their heads down and not say anything and hope their child is innocent. They were framed / it was self defence / they were drunk and didn’t know what they were doing / they were provoked...

People will try to rationalise and excuse anything if the reality is horrible enough.

How many posters have parents who stayed with abusive partners? Because he didn’t mean it / he loves me really. How many horror stories do you hear of children in families being abused and the family hushing it up? Because she’s just making it up for attention / uncle x wouldn’t hurt a fly. How many people do you see on the news who’ve been arrested for trying to hide their partner (that awful incident on the train only the other week, for example)?

This is entirely hypothetical for me, as I have no children and no criminals in the family. But based on patterns of behaviour, I’d say the majority of posters saying they’d take their child straight to the police would not do so in real life. I’m not saying they’re lying, as in a hypothetical situation I’m sure that’s what most people would do. But hypothetical situations have no consequences, and behaviour changes pretty quickly once there are consequences.

have also taken my 5 year ld to the security guard in Tesco when she took a sweet from the pick n mix

That’s extreme. Unfair on both your child and the security guard. Surely you are capable of teaching a 5 year old that taking the sweet was wrong?

It's also a totally different situation. The security guard speaking sternly to a 5 yr old to give her a fright and (hopefully) help her learn a lesson is a bit bloody different to shopping an adult for a serious crime which means they're going to be locked up for 10+ years.

MOST crime isn't black and white. The world isn't really full of 'baddies' and 'goodies'. It's all shades of grey. I'm not talking about monsters like Ian Huntley here. But most crimes (even horrific ones) are spur of the moment, or a reaction to something or influenced by other factors (eg, most DV occurs when at least one person involved is intoxicated).

I'm not writing this to excuse anything. I just think the reality of your kid confessing something to you/finding something out is likely to be shades of grey; and that makes deciding what to do next very tricky.

I really don't know what I'd do if my DD did something serious. I just don't know.

How it is unfair yabbers? My child took something that wasn’t hers. She knew it was wrong and she therefore had to deal with the consequence. The security guard dealt with it great and to my knowledge she has never done anything like it again. Similar to my son who at 11 was mucking around resulting in an innocent bystandstaher getting hit. My police officer friend came round in his own time and explained exactly what reckless assault was and the consequence. Lesson learnt. I would do exactly the same in both situations again.

Swift Fifteen!! Totally shocking thing to do anyway, but at that age.

Would you inform the police in a country that applies the death penalty?
Actually that is a really good question. I'm very strongly opposed to the death penalty. That's hard. No, I don't think I could in that case.

I've now read other people's answers and I'm shocked how many wouldn't tell the truth and make their children face the consequences of their actions.

Also, how little empathy there seems to be for the victim and their family. That could be you. Your child could be the victim, I bet you'd want the perpetrator caught then.

My dc have always known that I won't protect them if they break the law. For certain crimes, I'd disown them too, as they wouldn't be the person I thought they were.

I always try to treat others the way I would like to be treated, and my sympathy would lie with the victim. People need to take responsibility for their actions and accept any consequences.

TornFromTheInside I am well aware that many people will say they will do the right thing in a hypothetical situation, but would not in real life.
And yes I know many people do not believe, cover up, or hush up violence and child abuse within families.

I genuinely think I would tell the police though as I don't think I could live with myself if I did not. Being honest I might delay it by a day or two while I wrestled with it, but I have a very strong sense of guilt if I do the wrong thing, and I think in this case that would literally destroy me if I did not inform the police.

What people say they'd do is not the same as what they would actually do if faced with such a dilemma.