My 12 year old DS is a good kid. Has always behaved well at school and never been in trouble. He came home from school today absolutely distraught and in floods of tears.
When he calmed down a bit he told me that he had got into trouble and had to attend a detention. He’s totally devastated, shaking and inconsolable and adamant he didn’t do what he is being punished for. I believe him so really don’t know what to do for the best. Looking for some advice from parents and hopefully teachers who might have a better feel for what’s reasonable.
The details are a bit vague because he says he didn’t do what he is accused of. And I want to be sure it’s not going to be outing so have kept high level. But this is what I can make out.
- 2 groups of kids had a disagreement at break, ending up with each group chucking the others ball out of reach and a bit of pushing and shoving.
- my son was in one of the groups, wasn’t the person throwing the other group’s ball out of reach and when the shoving started, he took himself off to stand with another group 20+ Metres away because he didn’t want to get involved. This sounds consistent with his personality and past behaviour. He is very risk averse!
- When it was all over after a minute or so - I think it was just handbags, nothing too serious, the groups went their own ways. The groups were apparently calling each other names and my son admits he joined in with that to support his friends. Which I told him is not ok.
- head of year pulls my son in today to tell him he has a detention for physically assaulting one of the boys in the other group. It’s unclear when this was supposed to have occurred but my son believes the HoY associated it with the 2 groups’ disagreement.
- My son is so scared of the HoY that he was totally petrified and doesn’t sound like he felt able to stand up for himself. He was still shaking when he got home he was so scared.
- Won’t go into too much detail about the nature of the allegation as it’s potentially outing but essentially alleged that my DS poked private areas of the other boy through clothes. Which I take pretty seriously as I am sure the school do too
- DS says he did not do and has never done what he is accused of.
- Apparently HoY told my son other people have confirmed they saw this assault happen so they know he did it.
Letter informing me of detention basically says not to ask to discuss the transgression being punished with the person awarding the detention, because school can’t discuss every behaviour incident with every parent and to trust they have investigated fully and acted fairly.
I just feel this is a serious allegation and I would like to hear more about when it happened and the circumstances and how they determined my son did it. He could be lying to me, but I really don’t think he is. isn’t it also possible it’s mistaken identity or that the other group of boys are picking on him and making this up? For me all 3 scenarios need to be considered and I just want to be sure that they have been.
If it was your DS what would you do?