AIBU to be angry after a girl faked pregnancy so my son could respond to her messages?

[PithySloth]

I'm a mum of four boys, in my 40s so I am not going to pretend I understand what goes on in the minds of 18 year old girls. I grew up at a very different time. My husband and I met in first year at university and have been together ever since, so I don't really have any personal experience of what it feels like to be rejected in the way my son apparently rejected this girl.

I can empathise with her feeling hurt. I really can.But I'm also incredibly annoyed for my son.The more I've seen of their messages, the more confused I am about how this situation got to where it did.

Before they even slept together, my son told her very clearly that he wasn't interested in a relationship with her. He said he liked her physically but only wanted sex and wasn't looking for anything more. He gave her a very clear opportunity to say no.

Her response was essentially that she was fine with that and didn't want a boyfriend either.So I'm genuinely struggling to understand why she then slept with him and subsequently became so determined to get his attention.

Afterwards, my son told her again that he wasn't interested in anything more. He has shown us messages where he was very blunt about it. He wasn't leading her on. If anything, he was probably too blunt.
He told her he wanted to meet other girls at university and that he wasn't looking for a relationship with her.She continued messaging him, asking to see him. He stopped responding.Then came the pregnancy.And that's the bit I simply cannot get my head around.She wasn't pregnant. She invented the pregnancy because she wanted him to speak to her.

He believed her so completely that he deferred his place at Durham. He was prepared to spend a year working and putting his university plans on hold because he thought he had a responsibility to at least be there for her as she planned to have an abortion (she was already planning a gap year anyway) When he offered to go with her, she said she didn't want him there.
Then she eventually admitted the pregnancy wasn't real.

I am furious but I also keep questioning myself because I know I'm seeing this entirely through the eyes of a mum who is incredibly protective of her son.I don't understand the mindset of sleeping with someone who has explicitly told you, before you've even had sex, "I don't want a relationship with you, I only want sex", agreeing that you're okay with that, and then seemingly becoming deeply invested afterwards.I absolutely understand that people can change their minds. I understand that feelings can develop. I understand rejection can hurt.

But surely you cannot respond to rejection by fabricating a pregnancy?And now my son is saying he'll never speak to a girl again. I know as soon as he gets to university he will but it’s just upsetting to see him so down.
I don't want this to turn into "boys good, girls bad". My son is not perfect. He's 18. He can be immature, thoughtless and occasionally a complete idiot as parents we are to blame for that, he has 3 younger brothers and we thought an all boys school would be a good idea. He was unnecessarily harsh in some of those messages and I've told him that. But I don't think he deserves what happened either.

I'm trying to encourage him to take the gap year positively. He has a job he enjoys, some of his friends are taking gap years anyway and he may travel with them. We've also said we'll contact Durham to see if there is anything they can do in regards to reinstating his place for sept 2026 and not 2027 but economics is a popular course there so the chances are unlikely. He says he's now happy with his decision.
I'm just absolutely seething that this whole situation was manufactured because someone couldn't accept that a casual sexual relationship was exactly what my son had told her it was.

Sorry for the long ranting post. Just so confused why anyone would do this. My son was crying and upset. I didn’t really want to see my sons stash of condoms or his “sext” messages but it was the only way he could at least prove that he asked her if she’s on contraception,him telling her that he always uses condoms, told her he doesn’t want a relationship just casual, and her lying about being pregnant then apparently wanting an abortion for a pregnancy that didn’t even exist.

AIBU?

What a shame they did away with tarring and feathering as a public humiliation - eh?

So boys shouldn’t face the consequences for cyber flashing and harassment either ?

If he’d done that how could he share her increasingly desperate messages within his friend circle?

Wow so victims ask for it now!Would you say that if it was a boy sending harassing sexual images to a girl?

No she didn't. There were so much less inflammatory ways anyone with half an ounce of sense could have dealt with this!

If you read all the OP's posts, it clearly says that in one message to the boy, the girl agrees that he wore a condom, but that it possibly split. So this is not just speculation or taking only the boy's word for it.

Still dialing it up to 100, I see.

The OP said herself that the girl is vulnerable

He was shagging the lassie. It didn't just come out of the blue. He was presumably already well acquainted with her nether regions 🙄

Wow that is some leap from me suggesting some posters here would like to see this girl matched through the streets naked as they all yelled "shame"!

And for what it's worth regardless of who was sending the images, if it was late teens, who were already shagging each other - no I wouldn't think it was the crime of the century or want police time wasted on this nonsense.

Irrelevant. He repeatedly told her to stop and to leave him alone.

There are a lot of posts from the OP, I've read a page or 2 of their responses, skimmed some of the others, so perhaps I've missed something.

So far as I can tell:

• DS communicated clearly that he had a sexual interest, but was not interested in a relationship;

• DS used contraception, and verified the girl was also using contraception;

• There was enthusiastic, clear-headed, enthusiastic consent;

• He did not string her along afterwards. The worst I can see if that he may have been "too blunt" in reaffirming his previously-communicated disinterest in a relationship.

• All of the above is recorded in writing.

• After being (falsely) informed of the pregnancy, he put his personal plans on hold in order to support the girl.

• He has since been the victim of cyber-flashing and harrassment.

Honestly, a lot of the posts in this thread are absolutely appalling, and I don't even see that he has any real lesson to learn from it. On the whole, I'd be pretty proud of him.

He could just have tried you know IGNORING her,switching his phone off for a bit ffs.

Is the girls school considering that there might be some sort of "thing" going on within the school where girls might be goading each other to have sex with specific boys from the partner school? You said earlier in the thread that there were messages and photos sent to your son by several other girls, not just this one particular girl. It seems highly unusual for several girls to be doing a similar thing in isolation. If it is some sort of social contagion amongst the girls, then the safeguarding team at the girls school should be looking at how to deal with that.

So any girl sexually harassed has no cause for complaint if they didn’t switch their phone off?😱

Still replying I see.

Unfortunately the law has been changed.It absolutely isn’t nonsense and is now dealt with very seriously - thankfully. It won’t be treated as nonsense by police. Spreading this myth is hugely damaging for young people. She was an adult at one point and before that could be dealt with in the youth court. Both would be dealt with separately. They were not shagging or in a relationship. That is what she wanted hence the sexual harassment.

Kind of depends if they are willingly shagging the boy involved at the time I'd say.

It's not like these photos appeared out of the blue 🙄.

You have a very black and white view.

As a safeguarding professional, it is clear that neither the OP nor her husband understand safeguarding, its thresholds, or its procedures, and nothing she describes aligns with UK safeguarding law or statutory guidance. The way she claims the safeguarding lead has been involved is not only inaccurate but directly contradicts established policy, legal requirements, and the mandated processes schools must follow.

The early part of her story is a straightforward teenage messaging issue that does not meet any safeguarding threshold. If her son had genuinely been told to kill himself or had genuinely searched online about ending his life, she would have been outraged and alarmed from the very beginning.

Instead, she is calm, focused on the fake pregnancy, and presents her son as merely confused or upset.

Safeguarding concerns do not suddenly appear later if they were genuinely present at the start.

When posters begin challenging her, she starts adding increasingly serious claims, including her son searching online about ending his life and the girl telling him to kill himself.

These disclosures appear only after she is pushed to justify her narrative, which is not how genuine safeguarding concerns emerge.
Safeguarding relies on consistent, timely reporting, not reactive escalation.

She repeatedly references her husband’s profession as a solicitor and his role on the parents’ association, as though these give weight to her safeguarding interpretation.

They do not. A solicitor’s job has no bearing on how schools assess risk, record concerns, or escalate issues. Likewise, a parents’ association role carries no safeguarding authority, no investigative power, and no involvement in any statutory process. Neither position gives him any standing in safeguarding, and neither makes her claims more credible. In this context, both references simply highlight that they fundamentally misunderstand how safeguarding works.

By page 34 she adds police involvement, again only after sustained challenge and in contradiction to her previous post at 9am.

Safeguarding escalation does not follow the emotional pressure of an online thread; it follows evidence, risk indicators, and procedure.

Her narrative shifts with the responses she receives, not with any safeguarding logic.

The thread is stuck because posters keep treating each new claim as if it exists independently, when safeguarding relies on a coherent timeline and consistent evidence. Her account has neither. Instead, it has been steadily embellished at every point of challenge, and the pattern is now so pronounced that the narrative cannot be assessed as credible within any safeguarding framework.

il stop. As I’m boring myself now 😂

He wasn’t willingly shagging her at the time. Did you not read the op

The bar some mothers hold for their sons is truly in hell.

Well tbh the OP's time lines are so contradictory and garbled I think at this stage it's impossible to say if any of the unwanted photos were or were not contemporaneous with the shagging.

Imagine that. Almost like we’re posting on a message board, isn’t it?

why victim blame ?

It isn’t victim blaming.