Am I overreacting to think this needs raising at school?

[Staycalmandscream]

My DD (yr6) broke up for Christmas today.

Tonight she told me they were making festive cards earlier today & she was chatting with another girl about how she makes 1 for me and 1 for her DSis as her father isn't around (because others making 2 cards were doing 1 for mum 1 for dad).

A boy overheard and asked her if she was easily offended. She said no (saving face & out of curiosity what he was driving at).

He then said 'your dad's not around because he's in jail for [a crime attacking women, can't post the actual words he used] and you were conceived as an accident'.

WTF. Yr6.

(FWIW this is not true, her father was a nob who cheated on me while pregnant with our 2nd child, which should be a crime but isn't. For all his faults he's not guilty of this & my DD was planned, as was her sister.)

Anyways... my DD then immediately said to me I can't tell school or she'll not tell me stuff again. She knows what he said is very wrong as she whispered the key words etc so her DSis didn't hear.

My instinct is that this is one of those things that must be raised, a line has been crossed. It's an appalling thing to say true or not, it's hurtful to her, me & her sister. If he says it to others this is how rumours begin. If he says it about someone else they could be really affected if they bottle it up or have doubts about their background. He's a bright boy so will have understood what he meant. But I don't want my DD to hide things in future either.

AIBU to raise this at school in Jan despite my DD asking me not to? WWYD?

I've written down what my DD has told me about the exchange while it's fresh in memory. Will reflect on suggestions here & what angle I feel is right to approach it from with school in January but I feel more sure it needs raising.

The school are terrible at leaving kids out of things they need to deal with. They have implied in the past they need to confirm details of incidents as a parent might be biased. But I've felt in the past they've then tried to play down incidents by manipulating my child's memory into something being not so bad, or not meant a certain way, or by getting my child to agree that generally another child who's done something wrong is a nice person. Takes the focus off the event raised & reduces their dealings with it.

For example one of my DD was recently told girl A in another class was trying to recruit other girls to form a gang against her. Thankfully one of her closer pals told her. I raised with with her class teacher whose immediate response was 'A is a lovely girl, I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding, I don't think she'd do this'. So wrong that they don't respond to things at our school from a neutral starting point but I've seen it many times, suggesting immediately the aggrieved child has misunderstood events before staff have established the facts.

In the case of child A she made a full confession, tears to garner sympathy for her bad behaviour, was made to apologise & write a letter to my child to say sorry. And my DD was still told by staff how girl A is usually lovely & this was out of character (it isn't, she often does low level things that school turn a blind eye to, but forming a gang was another level).

So I'm feeling today like I need to set the tone from the start of how unacceptable this is, & what I expect them to do so there's no messing about. Because I keep thinking what damage could be done if this was said to someone who genuinely didn't know their background & couldn't talk to someone at home about issues it might raise.

Cheers all.