Girl tried to pull down my son’s shorts

[dontwanttooverreact]

My son is 4 and he went to a 3 hour camp at our sport’s club today. He had been yesterday with a school friend and today with the same friend. After pick up today he told us that a 10 year old girl had tried to pull down his pants and shorts “to see if he was a girl or a boy”.

he is upset, this was his first experience of camp and he is quite shy. Additionally the school friend independently told her mother the exact same story so i believe it (I believed it anyway but you never know with 4 year olds and details.

he told the supervisor who apparently said something to the girl but no one told us at pick up.

AIBU to be furious? I had assumed initially the girl was also 4/5, but 10?!? Surely that’s not on? What, if anything, can I do?

[Title edited by MNQ at poster's request]

Sorry my thread title is incorrect she didn’t manage she just tried - will get MNHQ to change!

The response from the camp is totally inadequate as this is a big safeguarding fail. Why are 10 year olds mixing with 4 year olds anyway? Were they supervised and if so why did no one see or intervene?

I think I'd be contacting the management, mentioning safeguarding a lot and asking for their policies and how they intend to keep your child safe and away from this older girl from now on. If you are in any way unhappy with their response I would remove my child and report the incident to OFSTED.

I agree with Roses.

I’d be reporting the incident to the police. Yeah they probably won’t do anything but I would want to at least try.

This isn’t acceptable, either from the girl or the camp. An attempted sexual assault on a toddler needs to be taken seriously. Her parents need to be involved, and she has to know how wrong it was.

He was only there for 2 days so it won’t happen again to him but it just feels so totally unacceptable. He’s my eldest so I’m not that well versed in children above 4 but 10 feels very old for this sort of behaviour - I can’t help but feel If the roles were reversed and my son were 10 and the girl 4 and he had done this to her the reaction of the camp would have been different

Yes it's awful and I wonder what their response would have been with a 10yo boy pulling down the trousers of a 4yo girl. Definitely escalate it. Your poor son.

@RoseslnTheHospital

they were supposedly supervised. I’ve emailed the camp supervisor and called the reception of the club who seemed very underwhelmed and said they would get the supervisor to call me.

Would it be reasonable to ask for her parent’s contact details?

It's entirely possible that's part of the reason why they've not responded properly. I know it's tempting to leave it and just not use this club again, but they will still be putting other children at risk if they don't address this.

10 is far too old not to know that it's a very inappropriate thing to do, unless there are other reasons why this girl might not be able to understand that. But either way, it's up to the people running the club to know the risks and mitigate them. The easiest thing is to keep children of different age groups separate.

That is shocking. I would be horrified at that behaviour. Have you spoken to whoever is in charge? Is it a small local thing where the people running it are very inexperienced? They should know how bad that is and have procedures in place for dealing with it

They absolutely should not give you any details about the girl or her parents contact details. That would be a big data protection issue. The organisation should be handling it as it happened in their care.

It’s a family member’s sports club so I will be there all the time, just not using the summer camp bit

@RoseslnTheHospital

ok that’s good to know!

it’s not a small thing at all - it’s a huge club and they run this camp every holiday

Are you serious? If you were assaulted at a gym, would you say that it was fine if the gym said they were not going to give you your attacker’s details?

Yes it would be. Obviously they won't be allowed to give them to you!

You've done all you can for now so just wait and see what the supervisor comes back with

Bloody hell

Over reaction right here

That would be totally inappropriate and they wouldn't give that information to you
M

I wouldn't be bothering with the club, just report it to the Police, she's 10 so over the age of criminal liability and whilst they're unlikely to pursue a criminal case against her they are likely to involve appropriate agencies that can assess whether she is a risk or indeed at risk.

I had a similar (in terms of seriousness, not actual event or type of event) incident happen at a holiday club with my DS, and they could not have handled the aftermath better. They were horrified it had happened, they had already taken action to discipline the member of staff involved by the time I learnt of the incident. They had also revised their processes to ensure it couldn't happen again and were quite prepared for me to escalate it if I wasn't happy. Because they'd been so thorough in dealing with it, and because we'd not had a problem for the previous years, I was happy with the action they'd taken and was happy for DS to continue attending.

The management of the holiday club your DS attended really don't sound like they are reacting properly at all.

@Alfenstein

i understand they couldn’t release the information but I hardly think asking would be “inappropriate”. “Inappropriate” was a 10 year old trying to see my son’s penis

Yes. They should give the details to the police in that case, not to me personally.

@RoseslnTheHospital

thats also very useful information, thank you!

My worry is that the club are just going to discuss and attempt to deny to avoid any issues

If they do, then I would ask them for their complaints process, go through that process and if you're still not happy, escalate to OFSTED as a safeguarding concern. Assuming they are OFSTED registered and get inspected?