Would you always believe the child?

[historiccastles]

So this has happened to a family I know, not me, but it has grated on me.

A mum and a stepdad together since the kid was a toddler. The kid, now a pre-teen, alleges the stepdad hits him and yells at him. A referral is made to social services.

The mum sticks by the stepdad, says he can't possibly have done it. Eventually social services determine not sufficient evidence to take action and they think kid may have exaggerated or lied. So she now feels vindicated.

Bear in mind I've heard all this second hand.

If I had been in her shoes, I'd have ended the relationship. Whether it were true or not, if my child felt strongly enough against the stepdad to say this, there is a problem.

What would you have done?

I don’t think you should automatically believe anyone, as without context and facts, you can’t possibly know what is the more likely scenario. An automatic assumption of guilt / innocence is a dangerous thing.

My first instinct would absolutely to believe a child. In most instances it has taken courage for a child to speak up to an adult about about another adult. If it was determined things weren’t quite as the child experienced them I’d still support my child and aim to understand why they are unsettled and unhappy enough to make such an accusation. Either way, my child would be my priority.

Side with the child. Any good partner will understand why you need to do this and support that course of action. Even if the accusations is unfounded the child has enough going on they will need the full support of all their care givers because they feel the need to go down this line. 100% whatever the outcome support the child.

First post absolutely nailed it.

I think kids/teens lying about the behavior of adults for completely selfish reasons is more common than a lot of people want to believe.

Obviously some kids are telling the truth and they shouldn't be dismissed out of hand without any consideration, but equally sometimes the adult is genuinely innocent and their life shouldn't be ruined in the name of ALWAYS believing the child.

I wouldn’t automatically believe a child but if a child is saying this about their step parent then there is a reason for it and they clearly aren’t happy about the step parent that has been forced upon them. I certainly wouldn’t dismiss it as a lie, even if I didn’t completely believe it.

@historiccastles does she just 'stick by him' regardless, or does she look at the evidence and know there's no truth to it? *

@doreenontill8 I don't know as I don't know the details.

Lots of people lie, including children. The mother might “know” it’s a lie in a “Not My Nigel” sense, or she might actually know in the sense that she has witnessed the incident(s) and knows, even allowing for points of view, that the child’s version of events isn’t true - either it’s a distortion or it’s just bollocks.
For a child to make something up like that suggests that something big is going on. Happy, settled, secure kids don’t do things like that - even if they are very inventive and create huge fantasy worlds. The children at the centre of the Hampstead Hoax were being abused, just not in the way that they said. They lied, but the lie came out of abuse.

I think there will always be a reason if it is a lie that the child has said such things which needs to be looked into deeper.

Happy children don’t tend to want to get their parent/granny / step parent arrested for abuse. So there is an issue to be resolved.

Yes, I would always believe the child.

If it turned out it wasn't true I wouldn't regret it either. In that moment, my child would clearly need to know that I was on their side for whatever reason. If I went against my child our relationship would likely never recover.

I think that you should always begin by acting as though the disclosure was the truth. Which means removing the person who has been accused from the house. Yes, sometimes it may be the child has lied and that's awful but you cannot take the chance that the child was telling the truth and you didn't protect them.

It depends entirely on the child. If it’s a child who is normally honest and trustworthy and is kind then I would believe them because they know not to lie and I’d imagine they would have a good reason to make a disclosure, even if the set of facts weren’t entirely black and white.

But if it was a kid who had form for lying or being manipulative to get their own way and had a vendetta against the step parent and wanted them out of the way then I wouldn’t believe them, no. I might suggest for the step parent’s sake that we live separately for a while but more to protect them than anything.

And when I say kid, I’m talking maybe early teen. At that age, there will be some that will tell really malicious lies. If we’re talking six then that’s different- I don’t think a child of that age could sustain a lie.

And if it’s malicious then telling the child you believe them doesn’t help them or you

It would also depend on whether the child had previously made threats to lie about the step parent. If they have form for saying “if you don’t let me do X I will tell the school you hit me” then that would cast any allegation into doubt. I would also assess whether they seem scared or subdued around the step parent.

But remember some kids tell serious lies against their biological parents for various reasons. It’s easy to dismiss lies against a step parent as “well if they feel that strongly then I will end the relationship”. But what if the next target is you?

I don’t know if you should always believe the child, but I think you should always stand by the child, until you can ascertain the truth – if you can. If there is the possibility of truth, it’s just not worth sacrificing the relationship with your child, and if they are telling lies to this degree then something is going on that needs a parent’s full support and attention anyway.

I would hope the other adult would understand this process, and realise it isn’t about trust or being offended, it’s literally just an awful situation to find yourself in. We know, without doubt, that people can be blindsided every day in discovering being betrayed, so trust can only take you so far in this world.

I would believe my children but also want it investigated. I would rather lose a relationship with a partner due to not believing them than lose a relationship with my children.

Don't think it's as black and white as you make out OP. Your friend might have been absolutely sure of her partner not having done what the son claimed. I think caution should always be exercised to properly investigate any claims but as a PP said, kids lie for all sorts of reasons and it might not be really anything to do with the stepdad in this instance. I do agree that a child's claim should never just be ignored though.

My DH caused a huge issue requiring social services involvement in his childhood when after falling from a shed roof and suffering a head injury he told the hospital staff that his dad had thrown him across a room in temper. Complete lie he made up on the spot for no reason whatsoever. He was a perfectly nice kid with nice parents.

Children do distort the truth / lie though. One of my dc told me I was committing child abuse and she was going to tell her teacher. Dear reader I’d told her to tidy her room and removed electronics till the task was completed. Apparently preventing communication is a breach of a United Nations charter on rights of the child.

I think context is really important. If you don’t know the facts / didn’t witness the event. It’s hard to say one way or the other what is reasonable in the circumstances. That said I’m a single parent and I’ve made the decision not to get involved with anyone till Dc are grown as I’d rather not balance competing needs of a relationship and teenagers.

Through work I've been involved in a situation where a child lied about a member of staff hitting them. We know they lied because another member of staff was in the room at the time.

Child lied because they were angry about something else (and had complex home life).

Went to court and was dismissed.

Children don't always tell the truth because they don't always appreciate the magnitude of the allegation and the potential consequences.

Exactly, my friend's DD put a plaster on her head and when we were at a playgroup the leader asked her what happened and she said 'mummy smacked me round the head with a bat'.....kids are inventive, obviously they always need you to stand by them but to say you believe them 100% of the time would be bananas.

This is a really important distinction and I've said similar about the importance of "believing" women who say they've been sexually assaulted or domestically abused, too.

If you didn't witness something and there's no concrete evidence then you have to accept that you don't know the truth and maybe never will. And that uncertainty is inherent to most sexual assault and domestic abuse because of the nature of the crime.

But despite that uncertainty, if this happens to someone in your life then your action/lack of action will signal belief/disbelief either way. So choosing to believe a potential victim isn't actually about whatever "the real truth" is, it's about standing up for and giving support to someone who may need it (and in the case of your child, someone who literally depends on you for it).

'We need to talk about Kevin'

Children can lie, he's is at that age, my SD put me through the ringer at the age of 13, she was acting out and I took the brunt of it, she lied a lot about the way I treat her and then I would hear her laughing about it with her mates. She would ignore me when no one else was in the house and absolutely take the piss out of me

Her dad knew exactly what was going on and had SS been involved (which they were but for something else) and I had been accused and he would have told them it was absolute nonsense

If you search on here there’s loads of posts from mums whose DC have lied to the school about being hit by their mum and social services being called in. Children definitely do lie and one thing I’d think about is whether the adult in question had opportunity to hit the child. Do they spend long periods on their own with the child? Also I’d think about how do they react when the child misbehaves. Obviously if others are around, they wouldn’t hit the child but someone who is violent like that would most likely display signs such as extreme irritation or shouting. The OP’s friend might have known for instance that the step dad is very rarely alone with her son apart from a few minutes here and there and always leaves all discipline to her. That would make it quite unlikely that the story is true.

Also sometimes the child IS being abused but not by the person they named. They name a “safe” person to take their frustration out on.

A question for the people who say they would always believe the child: what would you do if the child accused you of child sex abuse but you knew you hadn’t done it?

Our job as adults is to guide children, help children, keep them safe. Sometimes that entails helping them when they are lying because they’re immature and don’t know better. Has anyone read the Crucible?

Yes I have seen this happening too. Teens and preteens can be extremely manipulative and they know that if they lie about things like violence and sexual abuse that people may believe them and it will cause their target serious harm.

I remember when I was about 11 at school and we hated our new male teacher (non UK country so at this age still one teacher for a whole class rather than different ones for different subjects). In hindsight, he was a nice guy and our hatred was misplaced. He was just a bit annoying and we didn’t like that he told us off for things. Some of the girls came up with an idea that we should say he was a pervert and that he kept coming into the girls changing rooms and were encouraging us all to say this. It all escalated but one of the class parents had a really sharp word with the girls and outright called them liars. He used to be a teacher himself and volunteered at the school and I think he sensed what was happening. This was in the 90s and I think things would have been handled very differently today. Basically the lie was shut down right from the outset and the girls were told that nobody believed them. Good thing really as it was totally fictitious and would have ruined this man’s life. He did leave the following year and I do still feel bad even though I wasn’t one of the ringleaders. But children 100% tell lies in some circumstances and automatically believing them is dangerous.