Anyone have experience of dealing with nasty social media posts? don't know whether I should contact police

[Nitflix]

Sorry for duplicate posting - this is a more appropriate board for me to seek advice....I would be grateful if any parent could offer the benefit of their experience as I am going round in circles in my head here:

In brief - my Y10 dd and her friends were deliberately injured whilst on a school residential by a group of boys. This is being dealt with by the school and all the perpetrators have had a fixed term exclusion. Whilst on this ft exclusion there have been snapchats from one of the students using degrading sexualised language about the girls which I forwarded to the school. As a result the school say they are outraged and have extended the term of exclusion for this student. We still feel very angry that this student posted these images when he was already being punished for his violent behaviour, and feel that the first exclusion wasn't much of a consequence for him if he immediately posted degrading posts about his victims.

My question is - should we report the social media posts to the police? We have reservations as the girls have already suffered widespread name calling (snitch) for speaking up about the original assault they suffered and we are worried about further reprisals. But it seems terribly unfair for the girls to have been physically assaulted, trashed on social media, called names by large numbers of students who were not even on the trip for reporting the assault and the boys to get a fixed term exclusion (a few days off school in the sunshine...)

Does anyone have any advice or any experience in this area, please?
What would you do?

Thanks
Nitlix

I just wanted to send support to you, your daughter and her friends. Well done to them for standing up against this behaviour and reporting the assault. It's abhorrent the boy in question felt it acceptable to use such misogynist language about the girls and that he's already learnt this method of attempting to intimidate and exert power over girls. I hope others can offer some advice as it's a horrible and entirely unfair situation for your daughter and her friends to be in, victimised further for being victims of an assault from these boys.

That sounds such an awful situation. My dd was bullied almost 3 years ago. She had just left school to go to college. The bullies (ex friends), as well as sending her nasty messages, either hacked or somehow found out her social media passwords and plastered Facebook and Twitter with disgusting comments, pretending to be her, and forwarded all her private message conversations to all her friends (and strangers).

She decided she wanted to go to the police, who were very kind, but said as a one-off incident they wouldn't do anything, but if it continued they would take action. She felt happy that she had been listened to and taken seriously. Thankfully the bullying stopped, possibly because of the threat of a visit by the police (Word got out).

Your daughter is of course in a different situation as the cyberbullying was preceded by something else. Does your dd want to go to the police? Maybe it's worth going just to have a chat and get some advice. Should the police be involved with the first incident anyway?

Good luck with whatever you decide to do xx

I personally would speak to the police as you dont want things to escalate further and this student is obviously not sorry for what he did. My niece had trouble with a group of girls at her school who set up a fake facebook account in my nieces name and posted disgusting stuff . The police took it seriously and dealt with it swiftly and the girls stopped what they were doing. If the police feel they cant do anything then at least the police will have an official log of the assault and abusive messages. Hope your daughter and her friends are ok x

If you do decide to go to the police, the following may help you:

• Even if the messages were deleted, they remains saved on computers as nothing is ever permanently deleted from the internet. If the police request a copy, Snapchat would be obliged by law to provide it.
• The boy could be found to have broken the law under section 4 of The Protection From Harassment Act 1997; “putting people in fear of violence."
• The boy could be found to have broken the law under section 1 of The Malicious Communications Act 1988. This covers any communication which is "grossly offensive" or which "conveys a threat."
• The boy could be found to have broken the law under section 127 of The Communications Act 2003 which makes it an offence to send through a “public electronic communications network” a message that is “grossly offensive” or of a “menacing character.”

Personally I would report it. If he gets away with it, what's to stop him doing worse next time?

If he gets away with it, what's to stop him doing worse next time?

I think this is an important point. He's already shown a worrying attitude towards girls, both being willing to assault them then using degrading sexual language about them to demean and intimidate. This contempt for girls he already holds is concerning.