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?

The consequences for this can be massive, a friends ds did end up on the sex offenders register for something very similar to this. Nd I'll be honest, I was surprised he did. I honestly thought kids that age would be given a bollocking and some sort of awareness course. He lost his apprenticeship and basically ruined his life before it had even started, he wasn't 15, he was 16 and I'm unsure of the girls ages they were either 14 or 15. But this needs to be drumming into all kids how serious this is. I think the only way to do that would be to have the ones stupid enough to do it come in and talk to the kids about the impact it's had on their lives........but as they're convicted sex offenders they wouldn't be allowed into a.school like that. A sex offence or accusation is a stain that never goes away. After having that rant ......i'd then start working on his attitude and objectification of girls.

You say you checked his phone and couldn’t find anything. Presume you’re aware that Snapchat has a hidden photo section. He probably has plenty of nude photos there.

if someone had harassed my dd like that I’d be going to the police and naming names.

If that was my son, his phone would be confiscated for a considerable amount of time. The fact that he isn’t accepting any blame and trying to pin it all on his friend would also concern me.

I would be going to the police with this if it were my daughter.

The ridiculous thing is, if these boys want to see pornographic images the internet is awash with them, saturated with them. So there's something else at play when they choose to harass a girl they know personally into sending a pornographic image. That something else is the enjoyment of the dehumanisation, degradation and coersion of that poor girl. It's absolutely horrendous and needs to be punished to the max. The young men who think harassing and coercing girls is 'sport' are tomorrow's dangerous misogynists men.

I can't believe how some posters (parents of boys) are minimising this.

Even setting aside the hideousness of it and the fact it’s a crime and morally repugnant it’s potentially extremely damaging for him. Any conviction coukd massively damage his career chances you can’t even visit the US with any sort of record. So actually in down playing and minimising it as a parent you are paving the way for a potentially worse outcome for your precious son.

Oh and rightly or wrongly some of these posts display what others in the community will be saying about him if this gets out.

This ^ unless you want to be visiting him in jail.
Bullying young women to send nudes is not acceptable.
Remind him, if you fly with the crows, you get shot.

The police if it was my DD, wouldn't consider another option.

As you have DS you won't be wanting that (I understand he wasn't the instigator which doesn't really matter...he was involved) but as his parent I'd at least want someone with knowledge (community police/any sexual abuse charities) to speak to them all because it would be my responsibility to ensure my DS wasn't a rapey cunt.

That poor girl. I hope she is getting support and her parents go down police route.

I assume you're a parent of boys.

He hasn't just made a stupid mistake, he IS a sex pest, and as for not going to the police and not assuming he's lying about his level of involvement - well there's one way to find out for sure - let the police check his phone and restore the deleted messages. Is he's done nothing wrong he won't mind that will he?

"But, he needs to know he can trust you when he’s made a mistake and telling on him removes this trust." Why do you keep saying he made a mistake? He knew exactly what he was doing and is only sorry because the girl involved her parents.

Well thank fuck there’s one parent of a boy that doesn’t have a problem grasping the seriousness of this!

Don't overreact. The girl.said no.and your son wasn't the instigator. Just explain the legal situation and possible consequences.
No way would I.ever grass up.my child!

Another one with a son who I hope has a better sense of what’s morally and criminally okay/isn’t okay than his mother/father/whoever this PP is.

I'm a parent of both girls and boys and fully agree with this comment. I'd be fucking devastated if any of my sons did this and tried to minimise it.

Also, to the the quoted post - 'throwing the book' isn't confiscating their Playstation or phone for a week, it means police/court! At their ages they won't be sent to jail for this, hopefully get some sort of intervention and will be logged in case anything comes up in the future.

OP I get it's your DS but you must know what should happen, surely? What you you want as a 15 year old girl? Excuses that it was a mistake?

Whether you grass up your child or not...the ball is in the court of the girl and her family. And there's a few parents of girls here that have said in no uncertain terms they would want to go to the police, with or without the addition of the safeguarding officer?

Would you really do nothing if it was him who'd had this same treatment from 2 other so-called friends?

The girl said no and they (including OP's son) didn't give a shit.

Hope you don't have daughters.

When possible, discipline of sons over age twelve should IMHO be handled by the father: boys just don’t respond as well to disciplining by women once they reach puberty. Since this is a matter involving sex, it would be well to have an adult male (an uncle will do if dad is not around) tell the boy that this is not respectful behavior towards women, and that grown men don’t do this sort of thing.

In any case, the phone should be confiscated and examined for any kind of inappropriate materials. If any sex crime has been committed, it should be reported.

A verbal apology to the girl Is just the beginning. The girl’s reputation has almost certainly been damaged and she probably feels hurt and threatened. HE has to figure out some way of making restitution to her, and you need let him know he isn’t “off the hook” until he does.

I can’t tell you how you should handle it, other than very seriously, but as the parent of a young teenage girl I can tell you this is an absolute red line for me, and I would be involving both the police and the school DSL, no equivocation on either. The repercussions for a girl of having nudes/partial nudes potentially screenshot and shared are too serious to ignore, or bat away as a “silly mistake”. I think if her parents reaction has been to reach out to the parents of the boys involved vs involving the authorities you have got away very very lightly. It would not be the response of myself or anyone I know.

As others have said, if another teenager under the age of 18 sends him a sexual image, and he forwards it on to a friend, maybe to show off, or impress them, or for some other reason, he will have committed a crime. If it appears he or a friend coerced her into taking the image, it will be worse.

In this sort of situation, if the friend forwarded the image to someone else, your son could theoretically be viewed as complicit under "joint enterprise". He doesn't even need to have said anything. Young people have been convicted via joint enterprise because they were simply present at the scene of a crime.

You need to talk to him about peer pressure, and how he gets out of situations like this, because otherwise the consequences for him could be really negative. What if, next time, his friend gets into a fight, and someone gets seriously hurt? Just standing nearby could make him legally complicit. What if the friend sexually assaults someone, and he's viewed as having encouraged him due to messages sent?

If it were my son, unless I was prepared for him to be convicted of a crime, I wouldn't involve the police- you don't know exactly what the other boy has done/will do going forwards, and what might initially be a friendly chat could later be used against him.

At the time, incidents like this are devastating for the girls involved, but ultimately, it's likely she will recover and move on from the situation. But actually, if a crime was deemed to be committed, it would be your son facing really long term, life changing consequences. I think you need to stop looking at this as a favour to the girl/her mum, and start thinking about it in terms of protecting your own son from himself- that might make you a bit firmer, here.

If it were me, I'd really want to know what was on the chat, and whether he was minimising. If you check his phone regularly, he may well delete chats like this as a matter of course.

(This is not me trying to minimise what he's done, btw. But in my experience, a lot of parents of boys think that this is really a big deal for the girl and don't take it seriously. They need to understand that actually, they need to be worried about the potential consequences for their sons just as much, if not more.)

Report your son to the police only if you are prepared to absolutely destroy your relationship with him.

Any reporting to the police should be done by the girl or her parents.

Apart from the moral side of things it could also be a police matter. I’d try to get through to him how serious this is. She is underage by the sound of it and if so depending on exactly what they were doing it could be a court matter. They need to know they could end up on the sex offender register if this got to court and they were convicted. That is not easy to leave behind you. Good luck

God that poor lass.have you any idea what a girl has to live with once something like this has happened.and what it can do for her mentally

Your son might be telling the truth. I would confiscate his phone and not allow him to meet with the friend. Let him know how serious this type of behaviour is and that even if he was not the instigator or even wanting to take part, that being associated with someone that behaves like this will get him in a lot of trouble.

Amazing.

It's this attitude that causes the issues in the first place.

For the love of god, read properly woman!

I didn’t say, not once, that I would consider if it was worth taking forward. Not once have I said that.

I said I would report it - but wanted to know what I was reporting.

Slowly now, read it again, because you repeatedly fail to acknowledge this.

Stop misrepresenting what I’ve said!

Definitely check the phone and remove it. Ground him for a month. No PlayStation or any other means of communication with friends other than school. Have a calm discussion about consent, empathy and sex crime (which this is.) Explain the seriousness if he has shared any photos. If he has, you may need to report him to the police. Ask the girl’s parents if they want a written or face to face apology. Speak to the parents of the friend, to try to ensure that he is adequately punished too.

I'd want you to do your damndest to really make him think about the fact that he is growing into a man and he needs to decide what kind of man he wants to be. Tell him he's not a little boy any more, that 'he started it' is a fucking joke when you're talking about sexual crimes.

How does he want women to feel about him? How does he want to treat others? Does he see himself in the future as a good, honourable man that women can trust, or would he prefer to be a coward and a sexual harrasser who women dislike and fear? Because you are worried that he is heading down the wrong path.

Get him to seriously engage in thinking about his future and how he sees himself. Make sure he knows he was taking part in sexual harassment and exploitation, that standing by as a mate instigates that behaviour makes him guilty too.

Obviously remove any phone that allows the sending and receiving of images and videos and report him to his school.