AIBU to make DS16 reports sexual messages sent from his phone?

[BusyJoker]

DS (year 12) has been tutoring a year 9 girl for about a year. He told me that someone stole his phone without his knowledge during sixth form today and started mass sending sexual messages to all the girls in his contacts on snapchat. One of the people that was messaged is the year 9 girl DS is tutoring saying something along the lines of "Do you want to hook up I'm horny." DS was friends with the person before the incident and the person did it as a "joke". I encouraged DS to inform his school about this situation but he is refusing to do so as he doesn't want to be seen as a snitch by others and is saying his friend did a joke that crossed the line. What should I do? What action will the sixth form take against the pupil likely if informed?

He should at the starting point be letting school know if he’s sticking to that story.
my sd was sending explicit messages to a younger boy and police/social services were all involved. Your son likely sent those messages, has already been caught by friends and has now made up a story to cover his back.

if it wasn’t him his friend needs reporting, he needs to step down from his tutoring and a few home truths about online safety and passwords and who he chooses to associate with. That would be the softest outcome.

if it was him which I suspect is most likely he needs to be reported and dealt with. No child of any gender should be receiving messages like that from a what is a young adult

I agree. They were mindbogglingly stupid to allow this.

And op is ridiculous for not explaining to her son very clearly, from the outset. , that he must not have any children he is tutoring as contacts on social media

He is year 12, so sixteen or seventeen, which makes it much more serious.

Ah so it’s the fault of the girl’s
parents that she’s been sexually harassed? It’s not his fault as they shouldn’t have engaged him to tutor him - he can’t possibly be expected to avoid sending sleazy messages to a child?

I would be willing to bet that he wasn’t supposed to have had the girl’s number in the first place.

This shit starts so early for girls and the minimising on this thread is so fucking depressing

So your son would rather get a criminal record than grass on his so called mate? Some "mate" 🙄🤦‍♂️

He shouldn’t be tutoring other children, end of. And I’m very concerned that if the girl’s parents were so unguarded as to allow this in the first place, they may well not know or care about the disgraceful phone messages and the poor girl may be struggling with that on her own. I really hope she discloses this to a trusted adult today if she has not already told her parents. It’s so bloody bad and the OP is just shrugging her shoulders. She’d feel very different if the tables were turned and her 14 year old daughter had received those messages from a nasty little scrote.

If he won't report it then you need to both to the head and to the police.

Retired secondary headteacher here. I cannot predict with certainty what you son's school might do, I can only tell you what I would do if I were his head.

Unless he told us who was the student he claims did this (and I'm always sceptical in such cases, having heard this sort of excuse so many times), I'd assume it was - actually - your son. I would be involving the LADO as it's a safeguarding issue and the police.

I'd be considering what sanctions I might apply, including expulsion.

They are more than two years apart in age and he was in a professional capacity with this girl. If this was my son I'd be telling him exactly what the ramifications are and telling him that he needs to take action immediately.

It is partly the fault of the girl’s parents in so far that they have engaged another CHILD to tutor their daughter, who is an older teenage boy. Naive at best. I’m certain they haven’t done their due diligence and a DBS check on him and even if they had, what many parents are naive about is that a DBS check only tells you if someone has previously done something bad. There are plenty of paedophiles working with children with a clean DBS check just because they haven’t been caught YET.

The actual messages are entirely the fault of the boy(s) who sent them, but yes, the girl’s parents did not safeguard their child appropriately from the get-go. Total stupidity on their part.

If he’s old enough to have a responsible job like that, he should be old enough to be able to put boundaries in place. Obviously he isn’t so that’s a massive concern.

This could snowball into something very serious (and frankly, if it does, then he has to live with the consequences of it.

The messages are the fault of the son, regardless of whether he sent them. Even if the parents should have taken more care, that is no excuse for his actions.

I am just waiting for someone to
blame the girl as apparently the only one not to blame was him.

I guess he won’t be asked to tutor anyone again in any case.

The OP hasn’t expressed an iota of concern for the poor girl on the receiving end of this criminal behaviour. She only cares about her precious son, who is either the culprit or who is prioritising protecting his ‘friend’ who has committed a sexual offence, and himself from being called a snitch.

OP and her son are both a disgrace. I actually hope they do get a knock on the door this weekend - then he’ll have bigger things to worry about than being called a snitch at school. Pathetic.

That’s the problem isn’t it? Parents in one hand despairing that their daughters aren’t safe or don’t feel safe, yet as soon as something happens they rally to protect the guilty party - it’ll ruin his life, her word against his, victim blaming, the boys/men didn’t mean it or can’t help it.

Those saying it reflects well on him that he doesn't want to 'snitch' are completely wrong.

This is covering up and condoning a sex crime. This is rape culture. This is where it starts. A good man (or boy) protects women who are being harassed, he doesn't protect the man doing the harassing.

You son needs to send an immediate and sincere apology and explanation to everyone who received a message.

He needs to report today - as a minimum to the school, ideally also to the police.

He needs to send an additional message to the girl he is tutoring saying he assumes she will want to end the arrangement and he understands. That she only needs to contact him if she does wish to continue, and that of so he will be putting some ground rules in place for her protection - including only meeting in public places such as the library, and only communicating by a method that saves messages.

I think he needs to go into school this morning with you and his friend and his friend needs to confess what he has done.
The parents of the year 9 girl need to speak to you, him and his friend. His friend needs to explain and apologise, being clear that this was a joke that he honestly did not think about the consequences of and explain that he did not realise that the child's number was on his friends phone.
Moving forward, for any tuition, your son needs to only hold parental contact details unless the person is over 18.
Hopefully this will be a lesson learned for all parties.

You need to report this to the school, and you and you/ they need to make the parents of the Yr9 pupil aware. Poor girl is potentially sitting with that message. I work in this sector, and this is serious. The fact he is under 18 does not matter if he is sending sexual communications to child - or it looks that way. It's at the very least safeguarding, and the worst he ends up with a Police visit.

No, the perpetrator can be the same age as the victim. It's the act that is illegal.

Excellent post, agree 100% with this!

Exactly. It’s so fucking depressing. Protect our sons at all costs, and throw girls under the bus. I have been thinking about the poor girl involved since I woke up and actually feel like crying. Meanwhile OP is sipping her middle-class coffee in her nice middle-class house, not giving a toss about what her son has done/condoned. And so it continues…

As the parent of teenagers, I can with almost 100% certainty say that there is no way they would leave their phone unlocked, nor would they leave it out of their sight for even 5 seconds. His story is wildly, wildly implausible.

Secondly, if my 14 year old daughter received any kind of sexual message from a 16/17 year old male I would hit the roof. I have seen students expelled for similar incidents at our school. I might also report to the police as this is worrying behaviour from the male. This perpetuates rape culture and it must not be condoned.

And if her parents don’t know, they should know. This is a clear safeguarding issue.
You should be taking this very, very seriously indeed.

Yes we parents of girls are told by boy mums not to discriminate against their boys and how marvellous they are then this happens and it’s then the girls parents fault for hiring him in the first place 🙄. You couldn’t make it up

To be fair, if this was my son, I think my very first concern would be the decision how to handle this in the best way possible. Before approaching anyone. I imagine I'd be supporting him to send a message to everyone that got one apologising and stating that the message didn't come from him, his phone was stolen and used by someone else, and the matter would be referred to the school and police immediately. I'd keep him off school to go and report and go with him. I wouldn't want to go rushing in without some thought, though obviously would want to act promptly. For the sake of the girl too, rushing in with an emotional reaction might not be the best idea. Thinking fast would be right though. I do think the parents of the young girl need to be contacted and told about the situation today. Maybe get advice from the police if they should handle this or if you should call yourself.

If your son won't do any of this with full understanding of the ramifications of what has happened, chances are there is no friend or he'll break down and confess it was him after all. Assuming there is a friend, no friend who would put him in this position deserves his protection.

OP - be very careful and think about what your going to do next. I have been in a very similar position (it was my child who received a message like that) and I was first to speak to the headmaster - the boy was expelled immediately and the new school he got into, was informed of what he had done (it was a safeguarding thing). I dont know if he was later accepted into the new school either - last i heard he might not have been. You are coming across as a pretty bad parent for not even caring about this poor girl OP.

What us all this phone locking stuff? I have never had a lock on my phone - I might be in the minority but some on here seem to think all phones have this - maybe they do but not everyone avails themselves to this function. It would drive me mad unlocking it every time I wanted t use it.

Not great if its ever lost or stolen but I take that risk.