Boy 'accidentaly' touching my daughter at school

[Starsugar]

My daughter is 11 (Yr 6) and a boy in her year has been repeatedly touching her chest, elbow, leg, bum etc and claims it is an accident. This started about a year ago and I have been in touch with the school several times. It did stop for a long while, so I thought they must have resolved it, but now he has started doing it again and I fear he had just moved on to someone else in that time. My daughter does not like it and feels he is doing it on purpose. She is quite developed for her age, has her period and it makes her feel very uncomfortable. I have no idea whether this child has issues or what his home life is like. In my mind I just assumed the school would deal with it in the best way as they know the child. The school have down played this and have said he didnt mean to do it, but it keeps happening. They said they would split them up but this obviously hasn't happened. If this was happening to me at work it would not be acceptable and I dont want my daughter to experience this. Im not sure what the next step would be here, am I getting worked up over nothing?

I don’t believe that you’re undecided about what to do. Ridiculous.

This is a HUGE safeguarding issue that needs reporting. The school are failing in their duty of care. Massively. Your poor daughter is being sexually assaulted. Report it. Please.

Those voting 'unreasonable' might be because OP seems undecided about whether any action needs to be taken.

Its a sad indictment of society that women are socialised to just suck it up and not make a fuss, to the extent that mum's worry about protecting their daughters or even question whether they should.

Make the fuss! Its not your/her fault this is happening. Any consequences for the boy are entirely justified, do not feel guilty!

I’d be going straight into that school and demanding action. If they don’t take this seriously, it needs to be reported to the police—this is sexual harassment, regardless of his age. It’s completely unacceptable.

You are not being unreasonable.

I know of a school that took a similar approach to this sort of behaviour and was put into special measures, as a result. And this is knowing from the inside, having spoken directly with the Headteacher at interview when she maintained that it was harmless.

It is not acceptable at any level. Take it further. Report it to Ofsted as a safeguarding concern. Ofsted will want to know.

Your poor daughter. Reinforce that she is absolutely meant to feel uncomfortable and angry at being on the receiving end of such behaviour. Do not downplay it with her or give her any reason to think she should concede in any way that this isn't serious. It is. We cannot normalise this in any way otherwise who knows what unwanted attention she will question as being acceptable in future.

The home life, additional needs whatever of the other child are irrelevant. One's freedom ends where it impacts on another's liberty.

This is a big red flag for a boy of this age to inappropriately touch her and the safeguarding lead of the school would/should have been informed. Seek advice from local family centres and tell the school you are doing this. The parents need to address this immediately, though part of my reaction is learned behaviour through home life but it may be outside the home the child has perceived it as acceptable.

Situations like this can be so much deeper and serious than a seemingly playful fumble.

Your daughter should knee him in the balls....accidentally of course.