Nutty friend

[doggydogg]

I met my friend 4 years ago, our DD's are the same age and started school together.

I noticed at first that she was quite strict with her DD but nothing out of the ordinary.

As time went on she invited me over for a cuppa, I went and everything was fine, she seemed lovely but then on a couple of occasions when we were walking the kids home from school she would completely lose her rag with her DD for the slightest thing and really shout at her...again not too out of the ordinary.

Anyway after a few months she invited me and my DD's down at the weekends and this is when I saw the full extent of her temper, her DD would do the slightest thing wrong and my friend would scream and shout very aggressively at her, one time she was combing her hair for her and her DD said she was hurting so my friend hit her over the head with the brush and said "there, now it hurts doesn't it?" , her DD was blatently terrified of her and my own DD's were getting that way too so I stopped taking them down as much.

Anyway over the years this behaviour has got worse, she's since had another child and is like it with him too screaming, shouting and really hitting him for the slightest thing. A few weeks ago we were there and her DD asked for a drink...my friend then picked her up by her throat, dragged her into the kitchen and started screaming and shouting in her face, my DD started crying and asked to go home is was that bad. Another time her DD threw the cat down the stairs and my friend went to do it to her as a punishment but was thankfully disturbed (I wasnt there at the time, heard about it from another friend).

She's just as bad with her pets, she beats her dog if it does anything wrong and she hits and bites her cats for bad behaviour, she is also violent towards her husband.

In the past 2 months she's had 3 huge arguments with people, one was with a close friend after she shouted at her child, she then accussed her of child abuse etc... another argument was with a neighbour which resulted in her grabbing this woman by the throat and the final straw came when another argument broke out with a different neighbour who threatened to report her to the SS and said the whole street had heard her shouting and swearing at her kids.

She genuinly doesn't think she's doing anything wrong and she comes to me complaining about people constantly picking arguments with her...how on earth do I tell her that they're right and I agree with them? My own DP has wanted to report her to the SS himself.

if she does this in front of people, what on earth is she like behind closed doors.

Doggydogg- you have a duty of care as an adult to report this behaviour.

So you won't report her to Social Services because they won't do anything.

And you not doing anything achieves what, exactly?

What do you expect the head teacher to do? Schools have no powers in these cases.

If you won't report her to Social Services, call the police.

I will phone the SS too, hopefully they will show a little more interest then they did last time.

Thanks for your help, I'll let you all know what they say.

so you're doing it now?

If you are concerned that SS may not take you seriously ( for whatever reason) give me her details and ill gladly report her to SS and the Police.

Hate the thought of children having to put up with this kind of shit.

When i reported a neighbour for neglecting her children the ss couldn't get in to see her and phoned me up a couple of weeks after I had contacted them to ask me to ring the police if the children were left alone over night again. Thankfully in this case the letter from the ss did the trick and she stopped leaving them alone so I didn't have to call the police. Basically what i am saying is that if this women is being violent towards her children they are at risk and if you don't feel the ss will act quickly enough then do call the police.

or someone can just let the police have a copy of this thread and then they will be able to trace who you are/where you live and they will be round to interview you.

If you don't trust ss, why not the nspcc - and the rspca, sounds like the animals are getting pretty rough treatment as well

The Rspca have more powers unfortunately than social services! I was in a similar position and ss told me to call rspca cos they can get instant access to a property when ss have to give notice and the abuser is often on best behaviour to them.

SS were bloody useless when I had to report someone and the situation still isn't perfect now.

The situation with SS might not be perfect, but sitting back and doing nothing because SS aren't perfect doesn't achieve anything.

Reporting her might not have much effect, but something has to be done, and SS are the obvious starting point. If they fail, then other agencies like the Police and the NSPCC may need to be involved.

But not calling the SS simply because they might not get it right is a cop out, and would make the OP just as responsible as the children's mother if anything more happens to them.

I agree the op must shout to as many agencies as possible, she is duty bound and guilty if she allows this to continue.
All I'm saying is unfortunately it's not always easy to get listened to. Child services in this country are appalling in some areas.
We had to talk to ss, nspcc, rspca and the police and still struggled!

I got in touch with the NSPCC who told me to speak with child's school or to phone SS directly. I told them I already had an apointment with the school and that the school has a social services department within the grounds and they advised me to see what comes out of the meeting tomorow, if I'm not satisfied that something will be done to contact SS myself after the meeting.

Again thanks for the advice.

well done doggydog, you are doing the right thing, please pursue it now until something is done about situation. good luck

Well done DD, hope the head can help

Whats happened? are they going to do something?

DD, how did it go? Hope you were able to make some progress

Doggydogg

My mum treated me this way. She would go into one (usually alchohol induced) and then let total rip (screaming in the street, pulling my hair, hitting me with things)

It totally screwed me up as a young adult. I have had to have counselling in recent years to come to terms with her violent behaviour. All I wanted as a little kid was to be shielded from my mothers erratic behaviour (but it was compounded that my Dad was also physically and verbally abusive to me too).

Please go to SS, you may end up actually helping her to help her kids.

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