Police and social services

[colourfulautumnleaves]

I heard the most shocking story today about a friend of a friend.
Large family, several young kids. One of the kids asked parents for a very expensive toy, was told no they can't have it.
Next thing, the said kid (aged 8 or 9 I think) phones the police, claiming that dad had been touching them inappropriately, and that mum was allowing it to happen.
All because they said no to buying the new toy.
Next thing, police and social services turn up at the address and immediately remove all the children from their parents - putting them into foster care out of the area.
Parents were taken away to a police station for questioning (again, out of the area).
Questioned and held for more than 12 hours before being told the case is being dropped. Sounds like the police and social services realised the allegation was unfounded, I'm not sure. Parents weren't charged with anything and were both told they're in the clear.
Said child was given a talking to about the dangers of making up false allegations as a reaction to not getting own way at home.
I just find it shocking that a child and phone the police with (what turned out to be) a false allegation against parents, not even flinch or retract it with "i was making it up.." (or similar words) when the police and SS turned up on the doorstep and removed all the children.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had to say no to my children when they ask for things, but would never in a million years expect them to make up some bogus claim that we'd been abusing them.
Does this sort of thing happen a lot? Or am I just easily shocked??!

There’s more to this than that. What child of that age would know to make something like that up?

Are you suggesting the police/ss didn’t act appropriately. What if the child was telling the truth? I doubt this kind of thing would be investigated and dropped in such a short period of time either

My dd has done similar. Said her dad hits her. Said her grandad hit her. Now it's on record she has a form for lying. They will obviously still look into things if she makes another allegation but with that in mind. She was 8 when she 1st did it then 11 both because she couldn't get her own way

my daughter is 5, she is the most emotional person I know and when she is tired and doesn’t get her way she says all sorts of things, sometimes she says that her dad told me to kick her. We have explained to her that saying those kind of things would get us in a lot of trouble, but I could actually see her doing something like that phone call in a few years.

If the child had said dad was hitting me that would be one thing. But the fact they were able to come up with being touched inappropriately and that mum was allowing makes me wonder where they heard something like this. My children are 10 and have wild imaginations but i can’t imagine them being able to spin a yarn like that.

This is why I would never work with children.

Because they make malicious allegations when you say the word "no" to them.

Police and social services did the right thing.

I hope they get support in the aftermath. The traumatic effects on the relationships in the family could be massive, especially against the child who made up the lie. They probably do need social services help now, but due to the false allegation damaging the parent-child bond (not to mention the effect on siblings). There will be huge consequences to this kind of behaviour

I worked in child abuse investigation for a number of years. This is a problematic, complicated issue and I’m not comfortable with simplistic explanations about kids lying. It’s not straightforward. Sometimes a kid will disclose something that has happened without understanding the actions that will result. Once professionals start knocking on the door they can become frightened & retract the allegation thinking everyone will just disappear. The retraction is in fact the lie and are labelled as liars (despite the fact the initial allegation was truthful.) I’m not saying this is an example of that but the professionals need to have a good understanding of child psychology and know how to tread sensitively. I doubt many do. That being said they in this case did the only thing they could do which was to take the initial allegation seriously. I would be interested to know what happened to establish that firstly the initial allegation was false and that it was related directly to the refusal to buy the item. This issue of the “mum allowing it to happen” adds another layer of complexity to the whole thing which I find interesting. Just my 2 pence worth.

Much more to this.

Sometimes traumatised children will say Dad did X when in fact Uncle who they haven't seen for two years did it, but their traumatised memories have got confused.

MN will deny false allegations happen but they do, my son went to school with a scratch once and told them I did it, I did not do it, him and his brother had a fight and he scratched him, he didn’t want to tell them about the fight so he blamed me and said mum did it not realising the seriousness of the accusation. Ss was called.

Kids do make this stuff up - some children can’t be left alone with a single adult because of false allegations.

All sounds like Chinese whispers you don’t know what happened And all these comments on here saying this or that don’t know anything either

They can access it online.

Police and Social services acted appropriately.
Children have to be believed until it can be proven otherwise.
Unfortunately, children do sometimes fabricate ( although not often IME).
It must be awful to be falsely accused of something and I hope that all involved can put it behind them.