WWYD - teenager potentially a risk to younger people

[WorriedWifie]

This doesn’t affect me directly, but I have a really uncomfortable feeling about something and I don’t know whether anything should/could be done. NC as it could be outing.

There is a 16 year old boy in my child’s year at school. He is widely considered creepy, he is always hanging around the girls, particularly younger ones, trying to get them to go out with him etc. He developed an obsession with one of my child’s friends a couple of years back, and he pretty much was stalking her. It only stopped when her parents got the school involved. He’s been caught up-skirting by the school twice that we know of, potentially a third time. Each time he was reprimanded but never excluded or suspended, I’ve no idea what else happened with his parents etc.

The local schools have a work experience program where kids go to workplaces a day per week. The place where this boy went, found out about the upskirting and have now refused to take any child from local schools for work experience.

Here is the problem. He is a youth leader for Cubs and part of the Explorer’s unit, where they do camps and sleepovers etc. If my child was in these groups, I’d have a major problem with him being there. I don’t know what kind of checks etc they do on these kids before they let them be cub leaders. I know one of the other young leaders, she says he is always hanging around the girls and rarely interacts with anyone, although he has tried it on with her a few times. They are often left alone with groups of kids when they are on camps.

On the one hand, my child isn’t there, only has to deal with him at school and does so quite effectively so why should I be bothered about what else he is doing, not my circus etc. On the other hand, I genuinely believe he will, at some point, assault someone. I don’t want for someone to go through that.

WWYD? Nothing, or report to the Scouts?

Well done op.

Scout leader here - thank you for reporting. We do have safeguarding rules in place that apply to Young Leaders, so hopefully the risk from him would have been minimised. But unless we're told relevant information like this, we can't act on it directly.

OP, if you don't think the upskirting was reported to the police, you can also report the school to your local authority's designated officer (LADO) as that is serious safeguarding failure. It could be they did report it and there's more to it that you haven't been made aware of, but the LADO will be duty bound to contact the school and oversee an investigation into the concerns. School will need to provide evidence for what they did/didn't do and why. You can also report to Ofsted.

What Chipper said. Playing devil's advocate a minute, did the upskirting happen if nothing was done?
I'm glad you reported. He needs stopping and keeping an eye on to say the least.

You need to let them know. I’ve been in this position (person was older but hadn’t got a record so nothing on dbs) I had to report unsuitability to be a cubs leader which felt bad but safeguarding is paramount. In my case the person hasn’t committed a crime but it’s just not appropriate to have them around youngsters

The thing is if he doesn't have a conviction and hasn't had an allegation at Scouts is there anything they can do? Nothing would show on his PVG check. I'd report him anyway but I'm not sure what difference it will make?

I would absolutely report it to the scouts, they should have very robust procedures that they have to follow if a complaint is made. I would also report to police via 101 if I didn't feel the scouts were taking it seriously.

Up skirting is a criminal offence and this is a massive safeguarding issue. Of course it needs reporting and not just to the scouts. You need to contact the LADO at the local authority.

Good. I would forward a copy of your report to the police. They will then have a record if he does it again and you won't rely on the scouts who are understaffed and may be desperate for volunteers to volunteer the information.

If there was not reported / proven criminal act the school have a massive bullying problem and are allowing a child at 13 to be labled as a sex offender.

Nope, not for "young leaders" in these organisations.

Either way, no convictions or cautions and a DBS is just a useless piece of paper to anyone other than a perpetrator.

OP, just to clarify a couple of things, how do you know about the upskirting incidents if your DC is neither the perpetrator or the victim? Also assuming these incidents did take place, how do you know they weren't reported to the Police at the time?

People are telling OP that the school is grossly negligent by failing to involve the authorities and she should contact Ofsted etc but I can't see anything either in the original post or updates that makes clear how OP can possibly be certain what actions the school did or did not take. Unless I've missed something, the school may well have sought advice from the Police and Children's Services, they may have made referrals to specialist services who work with young people who display Harmful Sexual Behaviours. There are many things they could potentially have done that OP would have no clue about since she is not (unless I've misunderstood) the parent of either the victim or the perpetrator.

I absolutely agree that OP should report her concerns to the Safeguarding Lead for the Scouts, that's 100% the right thing to do. But OP is not in a position to hold the school to account for mishandling a situation that she has no way of knowing whether or not they have actually mishandled.

It definitely did happen. The school have confirmed it to me.

None of this applies where I am.

I would absolutely report the upskirting to the police as well as the cubs

The boy is well known to my daughter, they went through primary school together. I know his mum very well, albeit we have never talked specifically about this. My child was part of a friend group with one of the girls who was targeted, although they are not close friends, the group have been at my house a couple of times and spoke of it at the time. She never mentioned police involvement, but I think if they were involved that would have been spoken about. The second incident was the talk of the school at the time. I don’t know for certain whether the police were involved or not, there was a school community police officer who I would have thought would have been involved, maybe they felt that was enough. It doesn’t seem like the school took it as seriously as they should have, given they never even mentioned it to the workplace he was sent to, which was working with children.

I have spoken with someone at the school about it in the past, but they wouldn’t confirm what action was taken.

They are just “ok” when it comes to bullying. They have robust policies and do take it relatively seriously, but they don’t come down very hard on bullying, it’s more about restorative stuff which often doesn’t work. Where they fall down a lot is on the behaviour of girls which is clearly bullying, but because there is no physical violence they don’t think it’s as serious. They are very good at clamping down on racism or homophobia, but not so good when it comes to the sort of shit girls have to put up with from boys.

If you’re in Wales, the LADO structure still exists.

if you’re in Scotland, the equivalent to the LADO is through the local authority Child Protection Committee.

Absolutely, this needs to be reported to them.

This cannot be reported through the local authority CPC. In any event, I’ve reported to the Scouting Association.

That's appalling. So sorry.

Because the wronguns always seem to be protected. Our neighbour is a registered sex offender. He’s committed numerous other crimes including harassment and criminal damage.
He attempted to put a brick through our front window. My youngest DS chased him back to his house and kicked his front door. A police officer advised me to think carefully about pursuing my complaints against him for vandalising my car twice, blackmailing my 16 year old son and trying to smash our window because my sons footprint was on his front door!! It’s fucking ridiculous!

Definitely report it. He doesn't sound in any way a suitable person to be working with children. Sadly there are more and more cases appearing in the news of very young men/boys sexually abusing children.

We as humans should never have the attitude of “well it doesn’t directly affect me or my family so I won’t kick up a fuss.”

We should all be advocating for everyone to live a safe and happy life.

It doesn’t matter if we’re standing up for children, the elderly, gay people etc. We all matter and deserve to be protected.

One day there may be something that endangers your life and you wouldn’t want people to walk on by and ignore it just because it doesn’t affect them.

Yes but here the drawback. My mate has just got a £500 fine and a suspended sentence because his parents were "no he's a good boy" " he bought the knife because we asked him to get one" and other such protection lies.
The kid in question has also been battered twice by others and it doesn't seem to stop him.

Just an update. I discovered another report has been made independently of mine. Scouts have reported back to that person. No safeguarding issue apparently.

When they contacted the school, they were essentially told “boys will be boys.” So, nothing to see here……😡