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.

Considering the other side. This is based on assumptions and conjecture based on the dozens of similar issues I deal with each term as a safeguarding (and pastoral) lead in a secondary...

Let's say we have a group of Year 7s, and another Y7 who's not not many friends (others in tutor group have him blocked). The singular Y7 says something with anti-muslim undertones. He has made an unwise choice and needs education. The larger group all report him, with undertones of "haha, got ya".

The schools response would be to ask him what happened. He will probably deny. He gets an educational conversation anyway about why racism is unacceptable, zero tolerance on it, effects of casual racism and do on. If the balance of probability is he said it, some form of sanction (isolation, restorative education work).

That's all that is needed, this is a very small-fry incident when you consider all of the Very Big Shit I deal with weekly in my role. There should at this point have been a line drawn under it and move on.

Sounds tho like the group would not allow this boy to move on. Events over the following week caused the group to get detentions. I would imagine that was some form of bullying. If a larger group kept needling the boy, for an incident that has already been dealt with, that's intimidation and harassment. Boys father, I would imagine, feels powerless to help his boy. He knows his son made an unwise choice, all children do from time to time. He's had consequences. Now others think it's OK to treat him unkindly too. They don't see that the unkindness they were aggrieved about is not best dealt with by more unkindness.

And so the situation escalates. Parents get involved and no one wants to back down. All parents belive their child is in the right. Police and school are trying to help de-esculate. But parents see that as not being interested. But the point is, its the escalation thats the real issue. Not the original incident. The best outcome is to help all parties deesculate. Yet here we are, with a parent talking of solicitors involvment.

The best outcome here is not police. Or solicitors. Its teaching children healthy responses to conflict. When to strategically ignore. That consequences are not always visible and arent always immediate. To understand what the future would look like with a constant cycle of one unkindness responded with another unkindness and no one having the maturity to step away from the drama.

Intimidation can be financial as well as physical and an adult choosing to contact a child by phone is rather different from him having his solicitor send out a letter.

The likelyhood that the father actually believes that he can file a court case to allow his 11 year old to sue another 11 year old and not to be laughed out of court by a judge?

Exactly how did he think the OPs child will come up with the money to pay the 10k(?) legal fees and £1 award after the Judge hears the other children all testify that the OPs 11 year olds statement to the school was true and the other child is a a bit of a thug but finds in favor of him anyway?

mindutopia you employing a solicitor will have limited benefit you are better off calling in to the local station in person with the phone and asking to speak with someone on the youth team or get an appointment time. The police will likely advise you not to escalate the situation or to expect much by way of police action as police intervention may be "water off a ducks back" for the Dad.

So thinking of laughing at him more than nailing him.

I would go through DD's phone as check who she has listed and if she can ID them by what appears on screen and where possible limit her involvement with the social group this is kicking off in.

[(Edit) LittleHangleton has imo given great advice ]

I spoke to the police and they won’t do anything. Even with her having been a witness to the bias attack and submitting a statement, they don’t consider it harassment or intimidation of a witness because she received only one message from the dad. If she received a second message, they said they could pursue it as harassment. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@LittleHangleton I absolutely agree with you about escalation and parents not teaching their children about conflict resolution (or modelling it appropriately themselves). This has been rumbling on for weeks now with the child in question making threats to fight other children and so it keeps firing back up because various children keep taking the bait.

That said, my dd has never been in a fight in her life or been pulled up by the school for any behavioural issues. She just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed something that she reported. It’s not okay for a grown up to make threats against her for that, whatever other issues may be going on within the school.

But I agree laughing at them may be the best medicine. From what I’ve heard, because a friend’s dc plays a sport with the child that had practice this weekend, apparently the parents are already angry that the group of children the message was sent to telling them that they were being reported for harassment is now “excluding” their child and won’t hang out with him or respond to his messages. 😂

Christ, no one can win. Either everyone is harassing him and is being sent letters to stop any contact with him, or they are being mean and not meeting him at the park because he wants to play football and now he’s being bullied and excluded.

@mindutopiaI don’t think a solicitor’s letter will do anything. A solicitor can write whatever you ask them to, they have no powers.
You need to chase the police and absolutely tell the Scouts.

Sound advice

Have you escalated this through the school and ultimately to the Governors?

Well if the police won't do anything, I'd report to scouts and get back to school as he's inappropriately used a number that was given for tutor group purposes.

I'm not sure I would have blocked him immediately in the first instance.

What I would probably have done (and maybe this is misjudged but there you go) is replied back to the boy's phone saying "Hi, this is X's parent and this is my number. Please contact me directly and if you contact my child on this number again or approach my child, this will be reported to the police as an adult harassing a child"

Then if he called me, I would have blistered his ears about the complete inappropriateness of an adult contacting a child directly about a school complaint, forbade him from contacting my child again and told him to go through school or a lawyer if he had an issue, but not under any circumstances to contact me or my child directly.

Of course they can - it just needs a bit of gumption from senior teachers but they can be so supine