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?

I think the child needs some counselling and discussion about what is and isn’t apperopriate for sure. But he sounds awkward in the first place and now his screenshots has been shared he is really screwed- he needs support in understanding, not condemnation and fatalism about his character

Something must have happened; either that or the OP is delusional, and neither of us knows if that's the case....and dont be so bloody rude.

Not really sure why you needed to swear at me

I very much doubt that your average 15 year old boy is going to be writing about butterflies exploding in his tummy and the innocence of young love. And even if he was, he’s writing it about an age group that he is too old to be involved with in that respect. The children are right; it is creepy.

A bigger concern, if accurate, is that the school are singling out girls and telling them that they don’t have the agency to decide for themselves who they do or do not want to associate with. Instead, they are being informed that they are to be this boy’s support network because nobody else wants to talk to him. If his parents are phoning other parents, I sincerely hope that they give them short shrift indeed. Not physically or verbally bullying him is a perfectly reasonable demand. Attempting to force girls to associate with him is reducing them down to support humans for males. There’s enough of that sort of nonsense going on already, without encouraging more of it.

This

From what you have shared I am unsure as to what he has done wrong.

My diary from back at that age was similar to @ExtraOnions in that I wrote about boys I fancied and how they made me feel. Sometimes we would have school stuff circulated with their photos on (newsletters etc) and I remember cutting out one of the boys pics and sticking it in my diary to swoon over at my leisure.

I have turned out okay.

I think at that age you are making sense of your feelings as a sexual being and have no-where to put that or share it with, hence the diary type stuff that teens keep.

Calling him a creepy boy for doing stuff that I think loads of teens do is a bit off.

If the photos and wording were of a violent or overly sexual nature then there would be more of an issue but that is not the impression I am getting here.

Obviously the girls should not have to do anything that makes them uncomfortable. But without knowing the content of the writings we can't judge how creepy it is. I remember some girls doing really weird shit when they had crushes in school. One had a box and kept a piece of used chewing gum from a lad she had a crush on as well as pencils and random shite.of his.

Think it is shocking it was shared by someone with the clear intent to humiliate and shame him.

Why must something have happened?

Kids are cruel and make up shit.

Op has said no-one has the ‘evidence.’

The school have said it didn’t happen.

The boys parents have said it didn’t happen.

What’s the likelihood that this happened?

Op’s only ‘proof’ is that she says there’s no evidence as everyone that had it was threatened with suspension unless they deleted it.

Does that sound more likely? Or more likely it’s mean vicious rumour about some poor boy?

Her child has been asked to stop bullying the boy.

Have you actually seen what was on this boys iPad OP or are you going by what you have been told by your daughter?

What has not happened?? I saw screenshots of the folder view and each folder labelled with girls name. These are girls are friends with my child. I know their parents. FFS.

The kids all know they have a license to bully this boy now.

It's a bit unclear what the 'evidence' was tbh.

But no parent should be contacting other parents telling them that their child has to talk to their son, if they don't, they will be reported to the school for ostracising their son.
They should go directly to the school with any problems.

Obviously the girl should not be bullying anyone, but if she feels uncomfortable around ANY boy, she should not be made to feel it's wrong to not want to interact with him beyond what is necessary.

And you think this bit happened too? Like all the other bits that didn’t happen. The boys parents are phoning random girls telling them to be nice to their 15yr old son?

what are you on about? For last few hours I’m on this thread to understand what I can do to help my child and you are on and on about this? I have see 2 images on her phone the day this happened. Not every child had all the images. When the guy who passed the images was suspended all the kids deleted them to avoid getting suspended.

are you troll? Is this a joke to you????
this is my last message to you. Please leave if you have reasons to believe this is made up.

I don't know, I do know if I think a thread is codswallop, I tend not to stick around arguing about it....so why are you?

Fgs… School also have to safeguard the boy (who, by having his content leaked by someone, could become the victim of bullying). If he has reported that your child has been mean to him, school are well within their rights to speak to your daughter about that. They are also doing the right thing by coming down hard on anyone with screenshots, to further minimise the risk of bullying.

Meanwhile, none of the students who are concerned about his files should be expected to be friends with him…

But, have a little understanding and maybe look up age-appropriate behaviours by Brook. A 15 year old boy may well have innocent fantasies. The iPad may well just be used as a sort of diary.

Let school and his parents deal with him. You deal with your child by telling her to keep talking about her concerns and to keep away from him.

Sorry, did the kids delete the screenshots in fear they would get in trouble or because the school explicitly told them to delete the screenshots?

Also can you give some examples of what the notes actually said?

Some kids are creeps, being a child doesn’t mean he can’t be a creepy child. If it was my niece (my DD is much younger, but my niece is your age) I would be telling her to steer clear of him and trust her gut. I’d also be telling her if she ever catches taking photos of her to kick up a massive fuss in the moment, even if it’s “not a good time”.

Is this iPad a school iPad? If it’s a school iPad then it’s absolutely not the same as a diary and you can’t compare the two. I agree with you OP he is a wee creep and good on you for not going along with the school. Best your daughter and her friends avoid him, if he’s ostracised for being weird… oh well, that’s life.

You seem intent on demonising this boy without any evidence or comprehension of the situation. I hope the boy who stole and shared data has been dealt with by the school as his actions were malicious. However, I think your attitude is vindictive and you seem intent on spreading malicious gossip. Young adolescents don't always know how to navigate relationships especially if they are ND. If you have concerns go and see the head and if you're still not happy take your daughter out of the school.

Such common sense.

There are questions you could reasonably put to the school.

How, in future, will they prevent students from taking photos of classmates without their permission? Is there a need for better discipline around digital devices?

When they say 'no wrongdoing', does that mean they checked the content of the ipad, or just the screenshots that the other boy created and circulated?

What rumours?

Ask for reassurance that the girls, particularly the targeted ones, will not be expected to treat ipad boy with more than basic politeness. Obviously, they should not be bullying him. But nor should they be forced to be his friends.

I’m a bit confused about what happened and how your DD is involved. It sounded like the school investigated properly. The boy who leaked it quite rightly was suspended, that was not his place to do so, if he was concerned he should have spoken to a member of staff. It sounds like it was passed around and several others are probably lucky to avoid consequences as they deleted it and quickly.

You will never know what happened or what is going on with the boy who wrote and kept the folders. It is confidential and quite rightly so. The problem is now is that rumours are flying around, I suspect he is being ostracised and it feels like there’s now a witch hunt going on.

If you want to help your child, you tell her to be polite to this boy, she doesn’t have to be friends with him, but if asked to work with him, she gets on with it professionally. You tell her don’t get involved with bullying and you stay out of it. You keep listening to her, and if anything is raised that sounds like a safeguarding concern, you report it in line with the school policy.

School reminds kids not bully another child. This isn’t groundbreaking. What do you think should happen to the boy, who has already been hugely embarrassed and hasn’t done anything morally wrong - some publicly available photos and some notes? It’s the kind of thing people do in their own head/ iPad… but this is basically his diary being published. poor kid. Yea I see it’s made people uncomfortable And upset but they were never meant to see this!

It’s like when people were worried there was a way of seeing who’s viewed your Facebook profile… I knew girls who were obsessively combing through photos of guys they knew (when fb was mainly uni students and had every photo ever taken of a night out)

Sorry, but I wasn't sure if I'd understood it all correctly.

I'm not sure if "activities and clicks when no one is watching" means wanking and taking photos, for example, or if clicks are something technical that I don't know about.

It sounds like someone has screenshot his (modern equivalent of) diary and sent it to everyone. Absolutely awful behaviour and definitely worthy of a suspension. It’s bullying and some children have taken their own lives after being humiliated by their secrets being shared so widely.

I do understand it must be distressing for the girls involved. I wouldn’t like to know what people write in their diaries about me tbh. I don’t keep a diary any more but when I did I often used it to write down things I wouldn’t dream of saying to someone’s face.

And I wrote some pretty shocking stuff in my diary at that age too. Some truly nasty stuff about family and close friends. Lots of daft things about how to get a boy I had a crush on to fall in love with me, our future children’s names, even some magic love spells I’d found online! Pretty stalkerish by adult standards, but also a reasonably normal teenage fantasy life.