Should I report a whatsapp group to my son’s school ?

[M2BANTRIM]

So I am a mum of an 11 year old boy and about a year ago we decided to get him a cellphone so that he can have access to his homework which is usually sent on a school app and we downloaded WhatsApp for him as well . As a backstory we are from a southern African country I do not want to mention living in the UK so WhatsApp allowed him to keep in touch with grandparents and extended family . About a month ago , he told me that he had been added to a group chat and within minutes he was crying hysterically. He showed me his phone only to discover that a meme of a black boy with bulging eyes had been sent on the chat and someone had captioned my son’s name . This sent me into a rage and I managed to contact the boy’s mum who had sent it and she apologised and the son did as well and I just decided not to further escalate it . So my son doesn’t really open his WhatsApp and can go for 3-4 days without been on it and I can check on his 'last seen' . I discovered that he had over 900 messages and I saw he had been added to another group chat and these are kids aged between 10-13 and the chats were horrifying . One girl sent a picture with her mouth wide open and was saying something along the lines of how she is good at oral . The kids were throwing insults at each other including use of the n word , b word , c word it was absolutely vile . But none of these were directed towards my son . I immediately removed my son out of the group , took screenshots and sent them to my phone and deleted everything from my son’s phone and changed his privacy settings that don’t allow him to be added to a group without his permission first . So my question is will I be unreasonable to take the screenshots to the principal and have these kids dealt with ? In another chat one girl told another girl to delete herself because she was a c word ? Should I ignore this or take it up to the principal ? At the end of the day I do not want to be labelled a Karen but at the same time these kids are very unhinged . Please help

@M2BANTRIM yes, it's racist, ffs.
Ignore the gaslighting.

Are you able to share what phone she has? I would like my children who are 12 to have a dumb phone but advice is welcome.

Thank you.

OP, you should definitely alert the school. However you can't count on them to sort it out. Its your choice - and other parents choice - to allow phones and WhatsApp.
School have a role to play in educating, but they cannot be held responsible for children's behaviour on non-school
Devices on no -school time

Nothing to do with school. Parents need to parent

Absolutely not unreasonable. Disable the option in WhatsApp so your child couldn’t be added to any of the groups. I don’t allow my 11 years old to be contacted apart from us (parents) and relatives and later on potentially best friends. You can disable the groups in settings. Follow it up and report to the school so it could be dealt with. I’m sorry you’re going through this.

I think you did the best possible thing about the racist picture and it sounds like your intervention worked. Well done!

Re: the WhatsApp groups, I don’t think it is the school’s responsibility to police what kids are doing on social media etc, but if you feel strongly, you could just make the head of the school aware - maybe the head needs to have a talk to the kids and send a message to the parents? Ultimately, the school can’t parent these kids though. Teaching is hard enough without the impossibility of moderating the kids’ social media use. That’s on the parents…

Your son won't be the only one who's been bullied, so they won't know it's you who's reported it.
This has to be reported OP. Turning a blind eye isn't right. They are kids and need guidance.

I work in a school. Ignore what others have said, definitely report! They can compile evidence that might be meaningless alone but consistent reports can add up.

I think you should take it to the school. I don't know what policies the school has in place or how effective they may be dealing with social media. But since it's a child welfare issue - and they are a central part of Child Safeguarding - I'd hand over everything you have and leave it to them and go have a cup of tea.

You absolutely should go to the headteacher with the screenshots, and I am sickened that anyone has said you're being unreasonable to consider doing that. Shame on those people, because the kinds of messages you have mentioned, are the kind that you see when these poor kids commit suicide. Please ignore those who say you're being unreasonable, and who comment to say anything like that. This really needs to be dealt with, before another young life is sadly lost!

This isn’t the schools problem, as a parents it’s you and your son that have got yourselves in this situation. Firstly, he should’ve have given his number out and secondly don’t get involved and remove from the group.

These children are probably jst doing what adults do when they get together - if you don’t want to get involved don’t read the messages.

Schools have enough problems to deal with,

It is shocking you say one young girl is telling another to kill herself, and another offering oral sex, and you wonder whether to report it, whilst your husband actively tells you not to. The racist meme is awful too and you need to decide whether this matter is yet solved for you or also needs reporting.

This is not a good example you are setting either, one by considering ignoring what you have seen and two by using derogatory, misogynistic terms yourself.

Why not when there’s so many reasons why she should bloody inform the school of the whole situation? Wouldn’t you want to know if you’re daughter was bragging about being able to perform oral sex possibly before she was 13yrs old and be worried how she knew if she was being groomed and who by after all that has been going on? We all expect our children to have some common sense and recognise these issues but they don’t, they are soon drawn in as we’re the Rochdale girls and threatened by the perpetrators, with intimidation! Nobody listened to a word they said till the damage was done 🙄😱😡as per usual! Here they can nip it in the bud! Assuming it is going on!
Racism hate crime that involves telling people to kill them selves and any form of child exploitation especially if it’s sexual should be reported ASAP! To the school and the authorities!

What???? And what about all the sexual shit? Wow just wow

That's not true at all, my buy asked me for WhatsApp, told him I woudm think about it and next day got email from the school regarding bulking etc going in via WhatsApp. Where I agree parents need to parent, schools also need to know when these things are ongoing

Yup my sons half sister tried to end herseof cause of the same exact behaviour, the school and the other parents need to know what is going on, I would be apoplectic if my son was being bullied in this manner and I found out a parent knew and did nothing

As someone who works in education, I would definitely advise taking this to your school. They can contact the parents and support with safe Internet training for those involved. You can ask for anonymity.

Update : So after going back and forth with my husband and reading all of your responses I decided to tell the school about the WhatsApp group chat . So I emailed the principal 2 days ago but there was no response . I called the school yesterday and the receptionist notified me that the Principal was aware of my email and will get back to me as soon as possible. It was only today that he called and basically he said that because the conversations happened outside of the school and with pupils using their own personal devices he has not control over the devices . He mentioned that the Safeguarding lead in the school has been made aware and there will provide pupils with pamphlets on internet safety and will try to arrange this Friday on the school assembly to address this as well . He said he will not do much with the WhatsApp group but only to encourage parents to monitor their children’s internet history and will post the details on the weekly parental mail .
To be honest I felt like I hit the wall as this will not do much and my husband had the ‘I told you so ‘ look on his face but was supportive as the phone was on speaker . As for my son he is okay he was not aware of the second group with 900+ messages. He was aware of the first one with the racist meme and he doesn’t seem to be bothered much . Also I would like to apologise for using the K word to describe myself as I have been labelled a K before . I did not know that I would cause an online war but I now know that is a derogatory name and I have learnt from my mistake . I dont think they will be any more updates on this post . Thank you everyone

Omg, that's horrendous. I'm glad she obviously didn't succeed, this seems to be a massive problem these days, and far too many youngsters are lost because of it. It's disgusting that the school are not doing more to help crack down on it, there's no point in just going on about "safeguarding" and "Internet safety", when it's not actually being dealt with and it's basically not the Internet, it's a messaging app!

You would imagine that if any of these messages were being sent in school hours that they would have some control over this. This is their way of copping out I would imagine.

To have this on record, I would email the school and just clarify what was said in your phone conversation and ask them to verify this. This way, if anything happens to any child as a result of this whatsapp group then they will have no comeback, saying that they knew nothing about it etc.

I hope your child is ok.

I would email the school and just clarify what was said in your phone conversation and ask them to verify this

100% always do this.

You may feel dispirited but I can assure you that there will be serious words said in Assembly on Friday!

You still have the option of going to the police for hate crime. They will also involve the school. You would need screenshots for this. And you could mention that the school is aware.

The "oral" comment - hopefully the school have alerted their Safeguarding team. If you know the name of the child you can report it to your local Safeguarding Team who will fully investigate independently of the school. "Oral" is illegal under 16 these days.

Oh, and if your screenshots happen to have any timecodes within school hours...

If you’re not happy with the re response you still have the option to either take it to the social Service’s or the police department but I’m afraid police might say it’s a school district matter 😱😡 despite the content and concerns of possible grooming 🙄 same with social services it depends on who you get, and their resources 🙄😱😡unfortunately however unacceptable it is! And despite these hypocritical failures leading to more grooming issues 😡

It’s a real shame they dropped the ball. They could have acted, but chose not to. Here’s an email I received from our school (I’ve made some redactions):

Dear Parents / Carers,

It has been brought to our attention today that many of our Year x students who have WhatsApp have unfortunately been exposed to what we believe was xxxxxx material.
This was as a result of being in a large chat group that did not appear to have a name, other than a group of xxxx emojis.
The group appeared to have members from several different schools and some of our children here reported that they did not purposefully join the group but were added to it by others. We have taken the appropriate steps to report the content.

There are two helpful links here:

Changing privacy settings - this will help you to stop your child being added to groups by other people without consent

A parents' guide to WhatsApp

Furthermore, WhatsApp does have a user age of 16 so it would be worth considering whether you feel they should have WhatsApp on their devices at all; please do continue to check your child's phone on a regular basis and hopefully we can avoid any further upsets.

We are proud of the students who came forward to report this incident; if your child reports that they did come to speak to a trusted adult please do praise them.

Alternatively you could privately speak of the record to the press about what these kids are saying online and the little and poor reaction that you got from the school involved and ask them to get parents to check their children’s social media accounts not just for your children’s school but generally as you never know what sharing these days on social media 😱it’s a scary thought and something needs to be done about this!
obscene images, threatening messages to other children, ordering other children to kill themselves when doses someone take a stand and say it has to stop Now!?
when will they learn that they can’t keep doing this and their actions will have consequences eventually for their victims their families and themselves and their families!!