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.