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.

Yes that was very wrong of him. But it’s - allegedly - not what he’s accused of.

I’ve said above I think there’s a high chance the OP’s son is lying to her. But we don’t know.

Also why would the girl make this up? What’s in it for her making a false accusation?

This is a legal forum so I will answer the legal questions.

If your son wasn't interviewed at a police station using PACE approved video audio equipment then he wasn't interviewed under caution.

He was interviewed as a witness by police officers trying to gauge the nature of the complaint.
He must be offered the opportunity for legal representation if interviewed under caution. He must be subject to PACE (police and criminal evidence act) structured interviews . These are not voluntary. Any other interview is voluntary. I would advise speaking to a lawyer and finding out what gas actually happened. Who has been interviewed, where, and on what basis. Too many inconsistencies at present.

YOU can't do this, or get copies of interviews (if he has been iuc'd at a police station). He is an adult and all this is only his business. HEhas to make these enquiries. If you have the money to spare then I would get him to give his account to a lawyer ASAP.

Yes - women can be highly manipulative. They can lie through their teeth and accuse entirely innocent young men of the most life changing horrific crimes. I have interviewed such girls and women more times than I care to mention. I have also interviewed sly, manipulative, coercive men who believe they have ownership rights over women they have barely set eyes on.... and both sexes who fall into all kinds of situations in between .

Women DO provoke. (Especially inexperienced young men, many seem to get a power kick out of it)
Men DO behave appallingly believing they have rights over another.

We none of us were there. But as a mother your interest is to protect your son.
Right or wrong and with police hat removed I would look to move him and give both parties a new start.
Hoping he has learned a lesson on how not to respond to provocation and how to deal with anger.

Also why would the girl make this up? What’s in it for her making a false accusation?

Well people do make things up don't they for all sorts of reasons. We don't know her, the OP's son or exactly what happened so nobody can say why she might have made this up. But people do.

Kissing a man is not provoking FFS!

Fontofnoknowledge v good post. We must also remember the girl is inexperienced too - at 19, inexperienced at life if not sex etc (which we don't know).

But her lies are blatant and can be easily found out to be lies. Surely she must realise this?

And it's for this reason alone that she can't be called manipulative because her lies are so transparent. Manipulative people by definition are clever where as this girls lies are just bloody stupid*.

*Going off the assumption that the OP's DS is being honest and that she is lying through her teeth.

If I decide to screw around, that's my choice, is perfectly legal and up to me.

It is NOT perfectly legal for somebody I've screwed to then start harassing me when I'm out and about and/or with somebody else over the course of several weeks because they don't like the fact I'm not interested. If they were to do so, they would certainly be on the receiving end of words along the line of 'Fuck off, you creepy little stalker weirdo, leave me alone', would be lucky to get away with a shove from whoever I was with at the time and I would be asking the people in charge of wherever I was/responsible for my safety to get the creepy little stalker the fuck away from me.

No means no. I'm not interested means I'm not interested.

And approaching, getting close enough to be within shoving range of anybody I'm with, shouting, being abusive and not giving it a rest after over two months is more than the heat of the moment, it's stalky, it's threatening and scary. I'd be shouting to try and not show how fucking scared I was.

If your DS doesn't get kicked out or prosecuted, it would probably be better for him to start again at another University - as he's now likely to be known by all around to be the creepy, clingy one that no girl wants to be near.

Kissing a man is not provoking FFS!

We only have the one-line summary that she was snogging another man and the DS thought it was to wind him up. We don’t know the full context: who is the man, whether she had said something to the DS before doing it, whether she was ensuring he saw her ... So many variables.

He shouldn’t have been verbally aggressive, and personally I think there’s more to this than he’s saying, but legally it’s importent to get the facts including the full context.

HowHowHow - did I read it right? You're teaching your sons how to behave with women so that they avoid the chance of false allegations that could ruin their lives? Is this really the emphasis you're putting on it, rather than teaching them about consent and not ruining any women's lives?

But her lies are blatant and can be easily found out to be lies

Which is what makes me believe there is some error in this story. Either the op is confused, or the son is, or he has lied to his parents, it's quite common for someone lying to tell partial truths and withhold the worst part.

The lies she's seemingly told are so very illogical and make her complaints pointless, so I think it's safe to assume there is some confusion somewhere between the op and her son, either deliberate or accidentally.

There is a lot of conjecture and moralising creeping on to this thread. Not to mention extreme opinion. This is a legal forum and not really the place. I think if OP wanted a bun fight and to be screeched at she would of posted in AIBU... just saying.

The other option Bluntness is that some of the ‘facts’ of the allegations weren’t correctly relayed to the son by the welfare officer. (ie the room move.)

Or that the girl accused him of something he didn’t do as well as something he did (the verbal abuse), and the son is missing out the latter. Something like that is quite comment.

Yes absolutely, the son could have misunderstood if he was emotional at the time, so easily some confusion here. Either way it doesn't stack up as written.

Yes if neither she or him are outright lying then some things have been misinterpreted along the way somewhere.

There just seems to be quite a bit of talk here about women being manipulative and just manipulative behaviours in general when it doesn't really fit here. If she is lying then they aren't the lies of a manipulator. They are lies of someone stupid who has clearly not put much thought into them.

Either way they need to get hold of that CCTV that he claims proves his innocence ASAP.

I'm a bit concerned that there doesn't seem to be much rush to get to it tbh.

Don’t think you can judge that Plants.
The DS told the OP about the CCTV. Presumably he told the police too. They have the authority to request it, the OP doesn’t. Which is why many of us have advised she appoint her son a solicitor.

Your son can contact the Students' Union and ask for an advocate for any subsequent interview, whether with the police or the university. This will help to make sure everything is done by the book and also give him some support. Depending on the severity of the threatening behaviour - which is difficult to assess from what you have said - it may be that he will need to agree to move accommodation and confirm that he will never speak, look at or cross her path again. If he does this, the situation has a high probability of being put to bed and he can move on, and the young woman can feel safe from him. If the severity of the behaviour turns out to be much worse than you have been told, then a disciplinary process will be invoked internally and possible arrest by the police. Either way get him to contact the SU for an independent advocate. Meanwhile, whatever the outcome, his is an adult and you cannot manage this for him. All you can do is to get him to reflect on his behaviour and suggest therapy.

Why was my comment deleted, mnhq? I didn’t break any rules.
What a joke of a website, stifling free speech.

Probably because you told the OP that her son was likely to kill himself would be my guess.

So shouting at someone is verbal assault? As if the police haven't got enough to be doing without having to deal with lovers' tiffs 🙄
It's a storm in a teacup but I would get legal advice just to make sure that your son protects himself against any future allegations.

And? The gist of it is everybody needs the support of their family

Yes everyone needs support but you could have expressed that without scaremongering the OP into thinking her child was going to top himself 🙄