DS has been falsely accused of assaulting a woman at Uni - what can we do?

[RhythmNBooze]

My head is all over the place and I don’t know where to even start with this. Probably going to be a long post as I want to get all the details down.

Got a phone call from 19 year old ds yesterday asking if he can come home for the weekend. He is in his 1st year at Uni. He said he’s been to see the welfare officer who has suggested it would be a good idea and said he would tell us why when he gets here. Dh picked him up from the station at 9pm so we’d spent the afternoon and evening wondering what the hell was going on. All sorts going through our minds – he’s got a girl pregnant, he’s ill, he’s gay etc.

Upshot of it is the following. He got a call from the welfare officer at Uni telling him to go to the office as the Police were there and wanted to talk to him. When he got there 2 police officers interviewed him (he thinks under caution) and he was video recorded. He was on his own. Wasn’t told he could have someone with him. He has been accused by a girl he had been seeing last term of assaulting her by pushing her. He denies it and says he wasn’t even at the place she says it happened. They told him to stay away from her and that if she reports anything else he could be arrested.
She has also asked the college to move him from his accommodation as his room is opposite his and she can see him. This is not true and he does not overlook her room.

Background to all this is that he started seeing her during freshers week. He thought they were ‘exclusive’ but she was getting off with other people when she knew he was there, usually at clubs. He says he confronted her about it a couple of times and admits he did shout at her. By the time the Xmas holidays came round he believed they were not together while he was upset he was coming to terms with it.
Last week he says he was walking back to his halls from a club with his mates and she was walking in front of him snogging another student. He admits he saw red as he thought she was doing it deliberately to wind him up and so he confronted her and shouted at her. Apparently he said some nasty things to her but he didn’t say what. The guy she was with pushed him away but he says he didn’t touch the girl. This week her friends have been saying to him that he has treated this girl really badly. He then gets the call about the police.

Of course I only have ds’ side of the story but he says he has tried to tell us everything in an unbiased way as possible and whilst I understand there are 2 sides to every story I believe ds when he says he has not physically assaulted this girl. He says he can prove he didn’t do what she has accused him of as he has witnesses to say he wasn’t with her and there are cctv cameras where she says the assault took place. He does admit to verbally abusing her at other times. We have told him that when he goes back he needs to completely blank this girl and not engage with her in any way. When he spoke to the welfare officer about it afterwards she advised the same.

My question is what else, if anything, can/should he do now about the fact she has falsely accused him of something. Should we do anything? Should he have been allowed to have the welfare officer with him when he was questioned? He is already upset that his experience of Uni has been tainted by this girl’s behaviour in the first term. I don’t want his whole Uni experience being affected by it. Can we put something in place that stops her from going near him?

Any advice gratefully received.

IWannaSeeHowItEnds - That is exactly the point I am making - I agree completely, there is a whole world of difference between the two scenarios.

Op whatever happens don't let him contact her. None of us know what happened actually. I had a couple of slanging matches In the street with ex's when I was at uni. Nothing to be proud of but I didn't report them to the police because we had a row, and they didn't report me. No one pushed me though and that's the crux of it.

You need to line up some decent legal advice, just in case this resurrects itself. Look after your son through this whether he did it or not, I'm haunted by the boy (med student) that took his life in Swansea after being investigated for a whats app message. Huge waste of life and worth remembering that our young boys are also vulnerable.

howhowhow - Wise words.

IWannaSeeHowItEnds - from what I understand the incidents before Christmas were when he thought they were still seeing each other. They took place when they were both drunk and at clubs. The incident last week was on the way back from a club. They weren't together (he knows that) but thought she was rubbing his face in it. Again they were both drunk and having a go at each other.

I would be worried that if her kissing another man in front of him "made him see red" how he will react if he sees her now she has made a false allegation against him to the police.

I would want to make very sure he could control himself before he goes back to university OP or he is going to get himself into far worse trouble.

RCohle - good point

They weren't together (he knows that) but thought she was rubbing his face in it. Again they were both drunk and having a go at each other.

Snogging a bloke on the way home from a club is NOT the same thing has having a go at your ex ffs. In that incident the girl involved had done absolutely nothing wrong. Your son was totally out of order and, tbh, I'd have contacted the uni welfare officer after that incident if I'd been her mother.

I just want to thank everyone for all their comments. They are really helping me to get my head around what I need to say to him later.

flip that round though and we'd just call it an argument.

I agree.

OP, could you point out how scary it would be for one of his sisters to have an ex who get really angry and aggressive if he saw them with someone else. I'd be pretty frightened if one of my ex's saw me in the street snogging DP and decided to come over and have a go. And I'm 33.

So he "confronted" her more than once about her seeing other guys.

Why not just not see her?

Then, weeks after knowing they aren't together anymore, he shouts at her for "snogging" someone when it was absolutely none of his business whatsoever.

He needs to get a handle on his temper.

Perhaps ask him to write down everything that happened so he has a record of what happened with dates and times etc

He doesn't need to show it to anybody just so that he can refer back to it if it goes any further

He needs to seriously work on the "saw red" bit of it. It's not an excuse for this behaviour.

It doesn't matter if she was dancing around in front of him with a tshirt reading "RhythmNBooze's ds has a teeny willy" - it's not ok to get in someone's face and it's not ok to get verbally agressive with someone. No. Matter. What.

He needs to learn to ignore, walk away. This will help him in all sorts of situations going forward.

Someone spills your pint and gets mouthy with you? You walk away.
Someone treats you badly in a relationship? You walk away.
Someone starts egging you on to wind you up? You walk away.

But in the media and society nowdays, if a woman accuses, she is believed.

How I wish that this was true.

Alas, it's not true,

It also seems to me like a lot these altercations have taken place when your son has been out drinking.

What is his relationship with alcohol like?

A politician has just been charged with multiple sexual offences by different women and I'm seeing more people believing that he has been framed by our current prime minister than that yet another man has turned out to be abusive.

Alternatively....

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice.

I'm in my first year of Uni and found myself in a really difficult and upsetting/frightening situation.

During freshers week I met another student. We hooked up but it wasn't anything serious as far as I was concerned - a few dates and yes some sex.

I never said our relationship was exclusive, but he seemed to think that it was and when told otherwise he didn't take it very well - shouting and being insulting.

There were a few incidents when we've been in the vicinity together on campus where he's been verbally abusive but after the Xmas break I thought he'd finally got over it and we could move on.

However last week I was with my now boyfriend walking back to Halls and by chance bumped into him.

He totally lost the plot - screaming, shouting and being really aggressive. Whilst he didn't touch me, he was right in my face yelling at me until the point my boyfriend had to push him away from me.

Honestly I've never been so frightened. I thought he was going to really hurt me and am not sure what would have happened if we had been alone.

Anyway, I decided that to just couldn't go on like this. I'm on edge all the time when I'm on campus. Looking to see if he's there and worrying about another incident (which not only is it frightening but also embarrassing - being "slut shamed" in public all because I didn't want an exclusive relationship with him).

I went to the Uni Welfare who advised me to talk to the Police.

I believe they've now spoken to this guy and I'm waiting to see what happens next.

He's been told to keep away from me, but given we are the same campus I'm not sure how that's possible.

I've asked Uni welfare if he can be moved to accommodation of campus.

Am I unreasonable to ask this? I'm really anxious and wondering if I should just quit Uni altogether. I can't go on feeling frightened all the time that this guy is going to verbally abuse me (or worse because it's not getting better and I'm worried about his behaviour escalating).

---

Ok I don't know if that's a fair representation, but it's perfectly feasible.

Your DS needs to own his behaviour and realise it's totally unacceptable.

We are talking a girl he "dated" at the most for a few weeks and his response to her not wanting a serous relationship with him has been totally disproportionate and unacceptable.

Rather than thinking about what he wants maybe he should start thinking about what the right thing is to do, which is to stop minimising (I didn't physically harm her doesn't make his behaviour any more acceptable) and get some anger management therapy ideally and move away from this girl (ideally to another Uni).

Have none of you ever heard of Roxanne Pallet??
Not all 19 year old girls are perfect and honest at all times.
So he shouted at her - she treated him like shit and humiliated him - but she's a girl so it's ok??
There is probably fault on both sides but involving the police for something which he can prove is untrue is disgusting and I can't see why so many people are defending this girl

Do you think so nothinglikeadame? The OP didn’t say anything like that, but you think being gay is a terrible scenario? Wow, you sound awful.

She also shouted and was verbally abusive towards him, they've done the same thing as each other..

So he's shouted at a girl and bullied her to the point that the police are involved, and then run home to you to protect him from the consequences?

I don't know how you turn that around, but staying calm and talking it through is a good first step. Whatever you do please don't just accept it all blindly.

Have none of you ever heard of Roxanne Pallet?

What, so because one woman behaved badly, it follows that all women behave like this does it?

she treated him like shit and humiliated him

Snogging someone else when you are not together IS NOT humiliating. I don't blame him for getting angry at her cheating (presuming she had actually agreed to be exclusive - loads of freshers don't). But they aren't together.

Nobody is defending anyone making false accusations. What a lot of posters are pointing out though, is that the behaviour the OP's son admits to is, in itself very worrying!

Did he have a solicitor for his police interview? He is entitled to one free of charge. If not, contact a local (to him) criminal firm ASAP and ask to see someone. You can go with him if you want, he can tell them everything first hand and they can advise how to best proceed. They can also approach the university to ensure the cctv is secured as the police can be slow and it may have been recorded over by the time they seize it. They can also advise whether what he told the police may amount to an admission of assault or threatening behaviour. There isn’t really anything else that can be done, he needs to learn to control himself to be honest.

She has every right to walk home with a new bloke and snog him, without looking round to see if any exes are there. Hopefully this will be a lesson learned for your ds and he’ll go on to behave better around women in the future. But he won’t if you’re all “poor ds nasty girl”