School not taking note of creepy behaviour

[Savethegirls]

Posting here for traffic and name changed for this question.

At my child’s secondary school, one of boys (15yrs)leaked his friend’s ipad contents. Screenshots of ipad had folders for several girls as young as 12. Its had pictures and text about how his interaction with these girls.

School suspended the boy who found it and circulated the screenshots, saying privacy violations. And all kids had to delete every evidence gathered. Parent of the creepy boy keep telling everyone its his habit to write notes and some of it was just “fantasy “.

Now obviously backlash no one is talking to the boy but the deputy Headmaster is now singled out girls and asking them to not believe these stories and they need to talk to him.

the creepy boy is in Drama tech crew and probably has a stash of pics from last few yrs.

the girls have seen the evidence and not ready to trust the school.

YABU - overthinking this
YANBU- call the Headmaster over this

parents and kids are feeling there might be repercussions at school if they complain. Any advice on how to handle this?

If I was you I would speak to the parents of the other girls and all go to talk to the headteacher. I would also see if it was possible to retrieve the photos that were deleted as the may be in the bin folder and make threats of;

1. pulling all the girls from the school
2. going to the police
3. going to the press If you don't get a satisfactory answer.

The school is putting these girls at risk. Where do people think stalkers and rapists start? Do they just spring out of the ground? No just like serial killers they all start somewhere and it is usually in adolescents. If some of the other teenage boys thought this was bad enough to hack his tablet and share screenshot of the folders it shows you that this is wrong.

Um wow. This is nonsense. Which ‘education department’ are you repeatedly referring to?

I assumed they meant the local authority, but was also a bit confused

Na the school can get fucked. He can't tell tales on girls because they won't talk to him. Creepy af

What Education Dept do you think I mean? Apart from the government theres only one locally and that's in the council. So wow how uninformed are you??

Our council education department deals with school admissions, term dates, transport, and special educational needs. Where exactly would this situation fit?

The other kid had no right leaking another kids private iPad contents. it’s the distribution of the content that’s the problem, not the having of them.

No, they are responsible for much more in law including dealing with criminal behaviour in schools and overseeing the discharge of a schools responsibility under statute. Schools have a responsibility to meet the outcomes of laws governing schools. That's what the local authority Education Dept. Is there to ensure, together withe the transactional stuff you've mentioned.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65ce3721e1bdec001a3221fe/Behaviour_in_schools_-_advice_for_headteachers_and_school_staff_Feb_2024.pdf

I called a guy at my school "creepy".

He wasn't. I didn't know him, and when I got to know him, he was lovely.

You are getting one side of a story here, and second-hand facts.

Both can be a problem. It’s not an either /or situation.

While the behaviour of those who shared the contents is a problem, it's not the only problem. The boy's behaviour is common, but it's not good. Focusing on your colleagues as an unreciprocated romentic/sexual focus is behaviour that needs to redirected, nto accepted as okay. It is creepy. And yes, lots of people of both sexes engage in that sort of thing when they are young and most grow out of it.

But a significant number do not. And when they are focusing on individuals in their social/school/work circles in this way it changes the way they treat them and others of the same sex as their targets. So there are two reasons to not just say - it's okay, it's normal.

One - it's not okay because it affects the atmosphere those girls have to put up with at school. I is particularly common for girls to find school environments treats them as less rounded than their male counterparts and find they are ignored other than for their potential as romantic/sexual partners and this sort of behaviour is part of why that happens.

Two - this is how stalking starts, an unreciprocated focus on others. Obviously, as said before, most teens grow out of it, but by no means all. Not realising that it's unfair on your colleagues to focus on them like this is not surprising in a teen, but to not be told that when it's out in the open and for your targets to not be given validation in their upset at it, gives the message that actually it's fine. It isn't. As I'm sure the female teachers in the school would feel if they found out one of the male teachers was collecting photos on them and making notes about how they felt about seeing them.

In what way is this 15year old boy writing about these girls he has compiled files for in his iPad? From what his parents have said about him writing fantasies about them indicates that he could have been writing sexual fantasies about them with their photographs. If the girls have been made aware of this of course they're not going to want to interact with him at all and the schools head teacher cannot force them to be friendly with him. What has this boy now done with the contents of the iPad? I know you said the kids who came across it all and took screenshots has been suspended for sharing them across school and been made to delete all those screenshots but what consequences has the boy had for his seemingly stalkerish behaviour towards the girls he has been writing about?

Important to remember that schools have a duty of care for children, not for updating parents about how they have responded to an incident. It’s right that you don’t know what they’ve done with the child who had his iPad stolen. That’s not your business any more than it was his classmates business to share his writing.

Well they're correct to say there's no evidence of wrongdoing. If he's saving publicly available photos or photos posted by them he can keep them can't he? He is also entitled to comment and keep notes about girls he fancies in his diary or journal or similar. He's not been accused of harassment or stalking so yes I'd be a little more concerned with his privacy. That is the kind of violation that can start a descent into suicide for young boys.
How would you feel if a diary written by your daughter where she fantasies about the boys she admires was stolen, photocopied and sent to every student - you'd be furious and terrified for her. You'd be extra pissed off if she was then labelled creepy and bullied for it for the rest of her school days.

You are assuming you know what’s happened to the ‘creepy’ boy, ie how the school have dealt with it, and you don’t.

if they’ve addressed his behaviour sensitively they won’t take out an ad in the local paper telling everyone exactly how they did it.

This sounds a lot like something may or may not have happened involving a boy your daughter doesn’t like. Your daughter has decided to involve herself, in something that really has nothing to do with her, and has been told to take her nose out of it. I would suggest she do that. It’s fine to avoid a boy she doesn’t like, anything else isn’t. It really it that simple.

There is a huge difference between jotting down your thoughts and feelings in a diary, whether paper or electronic, and keeping tabs on photos of very young girls, downloading, storing, categorising and profiling images of girls going about their daily activities and adding 'research' notes. The former is simple self expression. The latter goes way beyond simply expressing his feelings. It involves collecting and organising information about young girls, creating files on them, tracking them over time, and cataloging the girls and his observations. that is a lot more creepy, it's' voyaristic and objectifying. He is probably socially awkward and needs support to show him this is not the way to go about things.

If the school know a pupil is systematically downloading photos of girls form their social media, they ought to review what they are posting on their SM. Demanding that the girls he is tracking speak to him is coercive and I would 100% complain about that.

I imagine his parents are completely minimising their son's behaviour, which is exactly why he is unlikely to learn from it. If anything, that risks reinforcing increasingly unhealthy attitudes and habits towards girls and women.

He needs guidance from his parents, and possibly professional support, to understand why collecting, categorising and tracking girls in this way is inappropriate and objectifying. The fact that social media photos can be downloaded does not mean they should be. There is a difference between viewing public content and systematically (and probably obsessively) saving images and compiling notes about individuals, tra cking them.

The reaction he received is telling. His peers were disturbed by what he was doin because the behaviour crossed a line into something intrusive and unhealthy. If it were truly harmless and socially acceptable, people would not have reacted so negatively to it.

It doesn’t matter, if I found someone had files about me on their PC I would be concerned. The girls every reason to be concerned. It isn’t normal behaviour to find pictures of people and store them in a file with fantasy stories about them.

if you feel it is then fine, but this mum clearly doesn’t along with the girls.

the stories also don’t matter, it shows a clear level of fixation and a breach of privacy! He’s weird, it doesn’t matter why, what matters is he is told it’s not normal socially accepted behaviour now!

And please don’t believe a school will always follow the law, I can tell you they don’t! my daughters school didn’t follow safeguarding or LADO procedures because they weren’t trained adequately and didn’t understand the severity!

Would you take pictures of people without their knowledge and save them adding stories! I hope not.

RTFT !!!

I have read all your posts and I still have an awful lot of sympathy for the boy here. What is your actual ask? That he isn't an official school photographer anymore? That no one takes pictures of people at school?

There are probably millions and millions of photos of all of us - anyone can take our photo at any time while we are out in the world, and we are likely in the background of endless photos all the time. This boy surely has a phone so can take any photos he likes really. He hasn't harassed anyone, he hasn't been sneaking into locker rooms or anything like that, he didn't even share any of this - it was stolen from him and shared without his permission. This is the sort of thing that ruins lives.

I am 100% sure that many, many teenagers have secret thoughts and secret information - diaries maybe old fashioned now, but online files and such are perhaps the modern equivalent.

My daughter is a dancer and on the competition team. They have photographers at most events, but also the events are open to whoever and any number of other people could be taking photos at any time of my 13 year old daughter in a tiny clothes dancing on stage with lots of other children. Am sure not all the people taking these photos are total innocents, but I had to make my peace with it and accept I can only control so much.

What do you and your daughter want or expect to happen now?

Lowandhandhold · Yesterday 12:35
Imagine if your daughter’s bullying and your enabling of her and her friends’ behaviour results in this boy hurting himself or worse. Speak to the school if you’re worried. But creating a petition against the boy? Disgraceful.

But the school and the boys parents are forcing the issue here by not dealing with it.

YenSon · Yesterday 17:51
This seems like unusual behaviour and this child could have special educational needs / social communication difficulties that need supporting. I wonder if there is an element of bullying here.

As the parent of an SEN boy myself, there is no way that this can be blamed on SEN in a mainstream school. ANY SEN parent of a boy (or indeed ANY parent of a boy) would know that acceptable standards of male behaviour have to be hammered home in order to counteract dominant standards of toxic masculinity. Any family not doing this is massively negligent. This includes uncomfortable conversations about things such as social media use, photographs (let's be frank, parents need to be discussing stuff like porn and dick pics).

A boy that thinks this is acceptable as a teenager is at risk of not understanding the concept of consent. Which leads to risk of physical issues around consent later. The school and his parents are doing him no favours in not dealing with this.

Girls label their experience of being made to feel uncomfortable and knowing something is off and it’s dismissed

well I never ….

Is this a private school by any chance ?

I would be contacting the head and wanting to know what safe guarding is being put into place in the very least

Who said they’re not dealing with it. They said they’ve dealt with it. Case closed. It’s Op who’s demanding the ins and outs and witch hunting