Threats to a child by a friend’s parent

[mindutopia]

Several weeks ago, my 11 year old daughter witnessed what she perceived as racist abuse from one student towards another at school. She came home that day and spoke with us about it, and we agreed together that the remark did have anti-Muslim overtones to it. The child who made the remark comes from a family who, let’s just say, is known locally for their far right views and the child the remark was made to is non-white and non-British born (no idea if he’s Muslim but you get the picture).

My daughter went into school the next day and made the report along with several other students who witnessed it. It was investigated by the school and police were also brought in as part of the investigation. In the end, there was not enough evidence to do anything about it and it was dropped.

This week it’s all kicked off again with the boys who were involved. I think resulting in them getting detentions. Anyway, it’s angered the parents of the boy who made the anti-Muslim remark.

The father of the boy has messaged my 11 year old dd on her personal mobile to say he has reported her to the police and his solicitors are preparing legal action against our family for making the claim that his son made a racist remark to a fellow student.

It was a long and rambling message, which is what you’d expect of these sorts who are used to ranting at everything and everyone on social media 🙄, but it was quite a scary and aggressive message for a child to receive.

I have blocked this man on dd’s phone (after getting screenshots) and on advice of the school, I have made an online report via 101. The school said they can do nothing because it’s parent harassing a student and not student to student. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I wanted to get some advice about what we might expect from the police. Best I can tell harassment seems to be repeated unwanted contacts, and this was only one. But threats were made in it and it was from an adult to a child and it appears to me to be an act of retaliation against a child making a report in good faith of racist abuse. Which all seems pretty serious to me frankly!

Would the police be more likely to action this if there is evidence of him doing this to multiple other children? My understanding from talking to other parents is that some but not all of the children who reported the abuse received the same message. I think we are the only ones so far who have made a police report.

I’m just so furious at this complete snowflake threatening my dd, who was only trying to do what she thought was the right thing, and I want to make sure we do what we can so the police take this seriously.

How did he get the phone number to send the message?

I'd be going full nuclear.

Absolutly get the police involved. If you haven't heard back I'd be calling them now.

It really not that hard. He has a child in the OPs child school.

He sent the message from his son’s phone, who has my dd’s number, because they are in the same tutor group and they all have each other’s numbers. He identified himself in the message as the father though and it was not written by a child because of the legal language used.

If you haven't had a response from 101! definitely follow it up. He should be charged.
Good luck

Encourage the parents of the other kids to report to the police about the messages they received.

That must have been scary for the kids.

I just feel like we are going to be fobbed off by the police just like we have been by the school. It’s just been a whole week of trying to get the school to do anything and they just aren’t interested. It’s a private matter apparently. It’s been 4 days now and not even an email around to parents to ask them to kindly remember the code of conduct or whatever and not to harass the children. 🙄 I suspect they have also been threatened with legal action and are consulting their lawyers and trying to not say anything.

As Dh said though, they’ve messed with the wrong mum now though!

So ralley together.
Get all of the parents affected

Take to social media.
If the law won't help make it so this man is known publicly.

I have no idea what legal action he could take leaving aside that you can not take legal action against a minor

Could this not been seen by police as trying to intervene with a witness/police investigation?

The investigation is closed. They didn’t do anything because it was just one child’s word against another and apparently the cctv has no sound so couldn’t record what was said. But I will inquire if it’s possible after the fact.

I bet the school can do something - our school took action (banned from school grounds including parents evenings/sports day etc) against a parent who had a go at another parent whilst holding a baseball bat.

If Funds allow I would engage a Solicitor and get them to write to this pathetic excuse for a human and warn him that any contact with your child will be seen as potential Grooming (or whatever your Solicitor says is appropriate) and basically tell him in legalese to back the F off.
These morons like to throw around badly spelt nonsense they learned from watching LA Law and usually back off when confronted by an actual Solicitor

As a minor your child could get league aid. Worth a look.

Threatening messages can be considered malicious communications, which are illegal. But I'm not sure whether threatening with legal action comes under that law.

Sherlock Holmes over here

I'm pretty sure it's unlawful to victimise someone who's reported someone for breaching the equality act so I'd tell him you'll be taking your own legal action https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/your-rights-under-equality-act-2010/harassment-and-victimisation

If the police were involved I would bring the phone to the local station and report it as an attempt to intimidate your child. And ask that other parents do the same.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/51

51Intimidation, etc., of witnesses, jurors and others.
F1(1)A person commits an offence if—
(a)he does an act which intimidates, and is intended to intimidate, another person (“the victim”),
(b)he does the act knowing or believing that the victim is assisting in the investigation of an offence or is a witness or potential witness or a juror or potential juror in proceedings for an offence, and
(c)he does it intending thereby to cause the investigation or the course of justice to be obstructed, perverted or interfered with.

It may come down to timing as to if the investigation was officially closed with a decision of no further action.

As for his say he has reported her to the police

If he has tried to reported your 11 year old to the police he will/should not have gotten far.

However the police do keep non-crime records so I would ask if there is anything recorded and submit a SAR if you are not happy with the reply.

and his solicitors are preparing legal action against our family for making the claim that his son made a racist remark to a fellow student.

His solicitor is not involved and not going to file a legal action in the Courts as you are not sueable for supporting your child and she has witness who also agree a comment was made.

But I would be looking at the school bullying policy if a number of children all reported the same event of name calling and the school took no action other than see if it was a criminal offence.

If the other parents also put the school on notice I would expect the school to inform the officers involved in taking the report that witness intimidation appears to be happenning.

The next issue is that your daughters data was obtained via the school?

And I guess the children involved who received text were also contactable via data obtained from the school?

And the message only came to your dd's phone as the adult was able to access data which you did not give him permission to access?

The school have a legal obligation to manage their data process so if the school do not have a policy which covers parents bad acts they need to get one in place asap.

And as a security issue I would make sure that you DD knows not to answer calls from any unknown numbers or open text and just let them roll into voicemail.

Thank you, still no response from the police. We’re now beyond the 24 hours when they are meant to respond to a harassment report. I will ring today probably though I’m conscious it’s a weekend and they probably have bigger fish to fry.

I’ve done some more investigating with other parents of the children who reported the bias incident and it seems their children were told they had been sent the message and were being reported to the police (in a group chat or f2f), but all of them have this child blocked on their phones because of previous incidents of harassment by the family (!!) so dd is the only one who actually received the message. My understanding of the law though is that it doesn’t matter if the message is received, it’s the sending of the message that makes it “malicious communication”. Anyway, that gives me hope that if the police actually do investigate and look at the phone, they should see lots of harassing messages to a number of children.

One final question, is there any benefit to us engaging a solicitor? I really want to nail this idiot. Dh reminded me last night that he’s a Scouts leader in the next town over. I want something to stick that’s going to come up on his DBS because there is no way he should be a Scouts leader. But they are very litigious. I’ve been told they currently are attempting to take legal action against a former employer and also the school their child was at before coming to this one. 🙄 I don’t want any civil action, but I do want the police to take me seriously and investigate. Would a solicitor be of any use if the police try to fob us off? Or is that more if we want to send them letters or build a civil case? (I don’t because they are complete loons.)

You could report him to scouting HQ without police action. Hopefully given historical issues they're really hot on safeguarding and won't risk keeping him on

I feel an adult sending threatening messages to children is going to get him in some major shit! Good on your daughter and her peers for staying up to these bullies!

This is awful, your poor DD. I'd report to the scouts actually via https://www.scouts.org.uk/volunteers/staying-safe-and-safeguarding/reporting-a-concern-to-safeguarding/

Even if he had a legitimate reason (and he doesn't) to bring up something about your DD, texting her and abusive threatening message is not the way to go about it.

You are doing a good thing here OP, you've supported your DD in doing the right thing and not letting it go either. I think school.have been a bit woeful tbh

How did the boy find out which children reported the incident to the school. Surely the school should make sure that information is kept confidential.

Well done to your child for doing the right thing and horrible to receive that. Hope they take it seriously as unacceptable.

He is informing your family via her that he is starting an action for defamation against her. The police won't do anything because only threats of violence are illegal.