To ask parents of DDs how you'd want this to be handled

[drelo2]

DS has just turned 15, he went over his friends house last night which he's done multiple times before and he's always been well behaved etc.

I had a message off the friends gf’s mum this morning saying the friend was asking her DD for nudes when the gf said no they made a group chat and kept asking and when she said no asking why she wouldn't, basically pestering her, apparently this was mainly the friend though. The friend did face time her and she did show them something but she told her mum it was to shut them up.

I'm furious with DS, I have spoken to him and hes blamed the friend for it and he asked if they could do something else and he said no, I obviously don't know if this is true and I suspect the friend will say the same about DS.

How would you want this to be handled?

As a mother of a DD and a sister of 3 brothers, I'm repulsed. I don't want to type what my father would have done if this was one of his sons but it wouldn't be pretty. I'd want it handled robustly, and for the boy to learn to take responsibility for his choices and behaviour, to learn women deserve respect, they are not there to give him / his friends some lewd thrill - i.e.

• Remove his phone.
• Audit it - messages, pictures, SM - everything.
• If you find even 1 questionable image, insist he report himself to the police.
• Insist he apologizes to the girl with you present, and her parents.
• Ground him for a long time.

This is exactly why I've felt it necessary to teach my daughter from a younger age than I would have liked to be very aware of this kind of behavior, and the motivations behind it, the ''gang'' mentality adopted by some males. Not comparable to what this boy did, but my DD received a message from a boy 2 days ago asking her to send him pictures, her ''size'' etc (filthy little sht...). She's 13 FFS.* I'm happy to say that rather than respond, she blocked him.

And to be quite frank The police would ask her if she had seen it and if not, why is she handing him in.

What kind of a parent would do that without concrete evidence?

I disagree with the PP who suggest searching for pictures. If there's any doubt my DC had that content on one of their devices I'd contact the safeguarding lead or local police for advice.

Two reasons:

Viewing indecent images of minors is an offence.

Imaging your DC knowing their peers parents had seen incident pictures of them. Why would you do that to someone else's DC.

I’m talking about his role in this whole thing.
Not explicitly looking at the images.

Nobody is disputing the image was sent - but surely before handing your kid over the police, as some are saying, you’d need to know what you were handing him over for.

The school would have to do an investigation too.

Being a passive non-inciting member of a chat would be viewed very differently than active direct encouragement.

It’s not just the case that you can accuse someone of something without providing evidence.

I would want to know exactly what my sim had (or hadn’t done).

Ans I have children of both sexes btw.

Ex school safety officer, you need to talk to the school, I’m very rusty as it was over ten years ago but I worked on CEOP schools program, link below,

www.ceop.police.uk/Safety-Centre/Should-I-make-a-report-to-CEOP-YP/Should-I-make-a-report-to-CEOP-concerned-adult/

Sorry, I meant to reply to @Pinkyxx who suggested auditing pictures.

Think this might be better

www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/

all year 7’s got an induction to online behaviour when I was there, but I do know CEOP changed sometime back so not sure what happens now.

@TwilightDreams I consider it my responsibility to 1. Know what my child is doing on their phone & 2. Ensure they take responsibility for their actions hence audit suggestion.

In the context OP described an audit felt appropriate. As a parent I would need to know.

Would you be equally ok with the knowledge other parents had seen indecent pictures of your child?

But her responsibility is first and foremost to her own child.

Are you suggesting that an accusation alone that somebody has done this is enough and that any parent who hears this about their son involves the authorities without first investigating to some extent themselves.

I most certainly would not be handing over my child to the police unless I was absolutely certain he was culpable.

Using your logic no parent should ever check
their child’s phone in case they see something they shouldn’t because there could always be something on their in theory, even if unlikely in practice.

@Quincythequince

I'm responding to the situation outlined by the OP where her child admitted being involved to some extent. I suggest asking experts for advice rather than searching for and potential viewing indecent images of children yourself.

Not sure why you've chosen to take the points I made so far out of context.

If the police decided to investigate your child, there would be “handing them over”, they’d just pick him up somewhere. If the girls parents decide to involve the police (I would), I’d expect them to question every boy present that evening, and take their phones to be looked at as the bare minimum.

But only one has had indecent images of herself put on the internet.

You wouldn't get a choice (thankfully) as to whether you "hand him over" or not.

That's not how criminal investigations into child sex abuse (even from another minor) work.

Have you heard of the I Believe You campaign? It might be a starting point for your own education and that of your own children, given that you are so vociferously questioning the veracity of the girl's accusation.

@Quincythequince
Though I see you'd be quite happy to set the dogs on a random bloke in a park who photographed a child.

Yet would protect a male being potentially investigated for distributing indecent images because he was your son.

People have very skewed senses of morality sometimes.

Sorry, I’m not trying to take them out of context, I just don’t understand.

Of course!If he is reported, there is no choice at all.

I’m talking about pro-actively going to the authorities as a parent and not waiting for someone else to do it (I.e. sound the right thing).

If my had son had done this, I would be speaking to external bodies, whether or not the parent/guardian of the girl did (and you’d be surprised how many wouldnt report this, even id they found out).

But I would need to know what I was reporting.

I’m talking about pro-actively dealing with this in light of do knowing your child had done wrong, and not waiting for others to do this.

No.

I have nowhere said I would protect a male who had done this, potentially or otherwise.

But is you’re going to hand your child in - you need to know what has been done.

Her DS had deleted the chat, and the OP has got nothing to go on other than third party reports.

Not really an acceptable basis for reporting anyone is it.

If others do based on what they’ve actually seen and for which there is evidence, fair enough.

But if OP is expected to hand over her son, surely she needs to know his involvement.

And no matter what anybody says, that’s not clear at this stage.

There is a thing called due process and I think you’ll find both the school and the police would follow this too.

And stop with the random reference to another thread, nothing to do with this scenario at all and - the accusations of which you say here are completely untrue!

Completely different set of circumstances and the main point being is the OP over there was a first person eye witness

It happened right in front of her face.

What part of my posts are you not understanding?

I have repeatedly made my position clear.

And of course investigations into child sex abuse cases should work based on a report.

The OP can’t report her son in terms
of his actual involvement, because she doesn’t know what it is.

The other mother can, assuming she has seen the thread.

We are talking about the OP going forward and reporting him herself.

I would not do that about my son until I was clear on what it is he had done. And I would do my best to find out first. I don’t know many parents that wouldn’t to be honest.

It is absolutely imperative that he understands what a serious situation this is - it is sexual exploitation of a child and is a serious crime.

If the crime was led by the peer, I think that information needs passing to the police. Other girls may be at sexual risk.

I certainly don't think a lad who has had any part in sexual exploitation should have unsupervised access to a phone.

Does he understand the damage this sort of stuff does to girls? And that he has no right to see a girl's body whether or not he or any of his friends are dating them?

I have repeatedly made my position clear

The point you have repeatedly made clear is that you are minimising the abuse, questioning the girl's account and avoiding your hypothetical Nigel being held accountable.

One of your first points was to claim that he wouldn't have been able to stop the other boy (ie its not his fault). Of course he could have done something if he wanted to. You dismissed the abuse because the boy is young - so was the victim.

You sneered at the small handful of posters proposing OTT responses (some of which self described as gut reaction rather than serious) but I find your extensive excusing, minimising and instinctive protection of a Nigel far more chilling than You would not even take this up with the appropriate teams unless you, personallly decided it was bad enough? Really?

Not your call. The girl has made an accusation, she is entitled to be heard and have it taken seriously. Not having some Nigel's mum decide that it was too trivial for precious darling to have to be reported.

Stop the football too!

Read all my posts.
I have minimised nothing at all. I have dismissed nothing at all. I haven’t sneered.

Stop with the hyperbole!

Guess what, the police will question the girls account too? That’s what an investigation does. That is due process, to find out what actually happened.

The default for any crime is absolutely to get to the bottom of it so all perpetrators are caught and duly punished.

That process is not removed here from this boy, like it or not!

Who the hell is Nigel?

I haven’t sneered at anybody and have clearly repeatedly said, I would report this to the appropriate bodies, not conditionally, that I would, but I would want to know what I was reporting. You really need to learn to read better.

It is not wrong to try and find out what your child has done, when accused of this.

No negative implications in my post. I make no apologies for fostering my DDs' self-respect - it is what we all do with our children. We do our best to help them to feel that they have autonomy over their bodies and their opinions. Sometimes it will achieve the desired result, sometimes it will not.

Self-respect arms girls to be able to say a clear NO, which os what we hope all our children will do. No guarantees, but we do our best. Peer pressure is a very strong force in the teenage years.