This happened a few years ago now, but every now and then it plays on my mind and I wonder if I did the right thing?
My daughter made a friend when she started primary school and me and the mum became friends too. At first it just started that we would help each other with school runs. But then we started having each other kids around and eventually we started spending time together. Now we both had quite different parenting styles and although I have been guilty of " losing it " every now and then with my kids. I am quite calm, mostly. Well this mum yells all day every day and there was a few incidents when I saw the girls mum and dad raise their hand as if to hit them. The kids would also flinch a lot. Honestly never really thought much of it at the time. Anyway, one day on a school run the mum opened up to me, she said she had found her daughters knickers stuffed down the headboard of her bed "hidden" with blood on. She was six at the time. I obviously said that’s worrying, but she said she had spoken to the school and called the doctors etc and never mentioned it again. I obviously saw red flags then, but also she seemed a really happy child and nothing really called out to me with her behaviour. A few months later she is playing over after school and she is refusing to go home, crying and just point blank refusing to even leave my daughters room. I called her mum to say she won’t come home, her dad came and got her and in the end had to lift her over his shoulder to get her home. But he went to hit her, looked at me and stopped himself. Anyway, a year or so later her daughter stays over for a sleepover. All is going well until it’s time for her to go home the next day. She refuses again, this time crying hysterically, saying she can’t go home because they hit her and treat her badly. She was shaking and she showed me a bruise. She said she wanted to call the police. Now at the time I worked for Barnados and my best friend worked with children from abusive households. I wanted to help her but it also wasn’t easy, as if I got this wrong it was my friend and my daughters friendship would suffer. Anyway me and my daughters dad were really stuck but I sought advice from my friend and colleague. They both advised me on some questions to ask her and then depending on her answers they said I needed to take it very seriously and call the police. I ended up calling them anyway. The police then advised me that she had to stay with me until further notice. Anyway long story short, she ended up going home and it all ended up apparently that the girl had lied. I was obviously made the bad person and all the school mums stopped talking to me or associating with me at all. I just wonder, would you have done the same thing? It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make but at the end of the day, if my daughter was being abused in anyway, I’d like to know that there is someone out there ready to help and protect her. Was I in the wrong?