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?

Perhaps this is something the police should be made aware of? Especially as some of the girls are so young.
His parents should be removing his devices, not spending their time phoning around parents to bully them into accepting this behaviour.
The schools response is shocking.

Yep, a 15 year old fantasies are very different to an adults. I really feel for the poor lad.

But...we have no idea what he actually wrote; it could have been the most mundane of stuff, all we know is the photos of the girls were nothing he shouldn't have had.

You have two options.

1. Take a hard line , complain, complain, complain … which will probably get you nowhere , and you might end up having to change schools.
2. Whatever happened, happened and you and your child will draw a line under it. However, your daughter can not be expected to be nice/kind to this other kid. Polite, “pass me the rubber “ kind of thing fine. They do not have to socialise, be friends , spend time together etc. She will not be threatened or punished for it.

She has the right to feel safe and comfortable at school and to choose her friends. In your place , I would go for 2. If the school didn’t agree or continued to threaten/punish/pressure her then I’d be looking at a new school while complaining as far as it would go.

So, are all the PP who have described writing down all sorts of weird stuff about their teenage crushes also “wee creeps”?

I don’t believe you are making this up. I’m saying children are cruel and they quite often make things up to bully other kids. I’d speak to your daughter about doing so

Were you 15 and some of the boys 12?

I think you are over reacting. It all just sounds a bit The Virgin Suicides, romantic rather than creepy. I also think that the boy who shared the images is the one to blame, not the boy who kept the diary.

I really hope you don’t have children, especially daughters.

You're definitely not being unreasonable and I'd be rallying a group of parents who feel the same way (or the PTA if you have one) to sit down with the head about this as it's not on at all; especially the part that other children shouldn't "ostracise" him.

If it’s in your locked diary under your pillow it’s between you and god, but I do think writing details about their location a bit weird, especially if you’ve got pics of them. If it’s a school iPad, or an iPad that’s brought into school it should absolutely not double as a diary. Lock your diary up and keep it under your pillow and that’s one thing, bring it into school and you’re asking for trouble. If my son did this I would definitely not be calling parents and telling them it’s not that bad, I’d be apologetic.

What on earth do you expect the police to do? These images were not explicit, or the police would have already been involved. You essentially seem to want to punish this boy for a thought crime, which is creepy in itself.

Sounds like you're more than happy to be part of a witch hunt involving a teenage boy. Poor kid - I bet school is a total nightmare for him.

‘999, what’s your emergency’

op - a boy in my daughter’s school had a folder on his iPad where he had some (freely available) photos of girls and some notes on them like whether he liked them or not. arrest the ‘wee creep’

Being a mum and nan to boys, I too sympathise with him.
We have no idea if what he wrote was sexual or in any way worrying, if it is, he needs help not being made to feel like a pervert. If it's normal lad stuff....hopefully it'll pass over quickly.

His so called friend, who shared the kids private files, is the one who should be feeling bad.

Usually the other way round with girls and boys but, yeah, I dated boys 2-3yrs older and crushed hard on boys older still than that. Didn’t you?

Ok. So you're saying it's fine for teenagers, male or female, to write down all sorts of saucy fantasies. But if they carry them around with them, as they might do if they stored them on their own personal mobile phone or iPad, even though they don't intend to show anyone the contents, that changes everything, and means they are creepy and deserve to be ostracised? That's a rather strange distinction to make.

I still think writing them down is weird but no one knows if you’re being creepy in your diary. It’s still weird, but if no one knows then I guess there’s no harm in it. If you carry around documented evidence of your weirdness you are asking for problems. If you show socially undesirable behaviour (like being creepy) you will be ostracised. That’s just life.

This.

All the way

I hate these witch hunts. The school have investigated- one would assume thoroughly as otherwise Ofsted will come down on them like a ton of bricks. They say it’s not an issue - if it were, they’d have to escalate it to the police. I’m sure that most teenage boys that are interested in girls (ie not gay) will have taken photos of girls from school or who they see on the street. When I was 15 I - like lots of others - wrote about boys I fancied, and at one point, my friends and I had a fascination with whether boys wore y-fronts or boxers and used to ask boys for a laugh. None of us turned into sexual deviants. I hope this lad doesn’t get driven to the point where he is so alone and ostracised that he does something awful.

I see. So, you are saying that PP who wrote about the best looking boys, who they had a crush on, how they'd kiss them, what they'd do with them in bed etc are creeps, it's just that they 'got away' with being creepy, because no one else saw that they had written? And this particular boy is especially creepy, and deserves punishment for being so, because he had the misfortune to have someone access what he had written and share it without his consent?

I agree with you 100%. The boys behaviour is creepy. Don’t force your daughter to be kind to someone who makes her uncomfortable at all. Women have been told to do this for too long!

It’s impossible to tell from this. I think many of us had a “Dear Diary…” type of journal. If that’s what this boy has done, move on.
pictures of underage girls who are below his age on the other hand is a different matter. If you’re not sure OP, go to
police. Let them decide

I think if you’re gonna be a creep have the common sense to lock it away. From what OPs said, it’s multiple girls, some of who are 12. I don’t blame the girls for not really wanting to be around someone like that but you do you. And if I was a boy who read any of the same stuff I wouldn’t want to be near the girl either.

It was on his personal iPad, saying people carrying personal things around are asking for problems is ludicrous. Does carrying ones mobile around mean we should expect to have share contents of our messages? Emails? Amazon history?

It sounds like the most serious action here was the person who violated this boys privacy. OP hasn't shared any of the actual content so it could be harmless teenage ramblings about crushes. Which it most likely is due to school action.

That’s a really horrible thing to say. Actually really nasty. Would you say that to someone in real life?