18 yr old son made supid comment in group caht with serious consequences

[helgarr]

My son has got involved in a group chat where he went to defend his friend but said something stupid to the girl involved related to a footballer which had horrible misogynistic connotations. Understandably his school have taken it seriously and he now likely to have serious sanctions at school and possible police action if the girl's parents take it further. He seriously regerets what he said and is really worried about his future. He does have aspergers tendencies and finds relectinig on his actions difficult. Does anyone have any advice on what may happen if the police are involved or he gets expelled from school.

Actually, debate about what autism is and means, and how useful or otherwise labels like 'mild' are, affects the lives of millions of us. Perhaps you shouldn't attempt to gatekeep that and suggest it is illegitimate to discuss. It isn't. We don't have to agree.

As a parent of a child with ASD, I detest it being used as a reason to minimise vile behaviour. You can have ASD and not be misogynistic, thoughtless and unkind, plenty of people manage it. Those aren't 'aspergers tendencies' !! They're the tendencies of a nasty person.
Yes but people would perceive certain things someone with AS as rude/blunt etc. eg my brother, when my dad died my brother said to my mum ‘but to be honest, he was old so …’ He thought nothing of it. My other brother was furious. He meant nothing by it and I got what he meant, it’s just a case of things you think but do not say (but he’ll say them)

I really dislike it when posters ask for advice while withholding relevant information necessary for any advice to be given. I mean, not sure what anyone can offer without knowing what exactly the OP's son said or did. It's just a frenzy of speculation and assumptions at this point...

My DC received a diagnosis of Asperger's a couple of months ago. I was surprised, but shows it is still used by NHS/CAMHS.

With regards to the school, the fact it has been intimated this is a legal matter is a bit of a gift. If they make contact advise them that all communications must go via your solicitors.

I would disagree with this. If OP's son is sitting A-level exams this May/June, then her first priority will be trying to get the school to allow him to sit his exams at the school. Sitting exams as an external candidate is difficult and expensive, and the closer you get to the exam period, the harder it is to organise.

If the school decide to exclude, they hold all the cards in this area (to some extend). Depending on what has actually happened, there may still be an option for OP's son to sit his A-levels at the school for free with various arrangements in place.

Achieving this for her son should be her priority, and if she starts going down the route of "all communication via solicitors" it will be relatively easy for the school (assuming they do decide to exclude) to "communicate" that he cannot sit his exams on their site.

OP's ideal is presumably, actually, for her son to not be excluded. To achieve this, it is very likely she will need to work with the school- especially as the time frame before exams is really relatively short.

For him to be allowed to go back to the school, the school will have to feel confident he is not a threat to any of their younger students, and this will likely involve some show of remorse/responsibility from OP's son (obviously depending on what has been said etc.), but hopefully this can be done verbally.

FWIW, I agree writing a letter of apology would be a bad idea for lots of reasons.

I mean, we know it's serious enough that OP considers the threat of police getting involved to be credible, which suggests it rises above the level of, a personal insult, for example.

I think we can safely assume that it's either a threat (given the mention of misogyny, I think we can also assume sexual in nature) or part of something that could constitute sexual harassment- both of which schools need to be seen to be taking seriously at the moment.

I do think the age of the "girl" is a key detail.

But I can also see why OP would want to keep things vague.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl , being misogynistic doesn't necessarily have to be sexual in nature. Yet, everyone seems to have jumped to the conclusion that this bloke threatened to rape a girl who is a minor. I mean, if he did threaten to rape someone, yes, that's very serious. If the person in question is a minor then that's even more serious. But we just don't know. We don't know if he threatened to rape someone. We don't know if that someone is a child. What he said to whom is kind of critical if we are to give any advice.

I agree it's hard to advise without knowing at least roughly what was said. Interestingly a friend was telling me yesterday about a school saying very similar things to a student about possible exclusion and police involvement, this was due to posting a selfie on social media that had another student in the background. That student reported her to the school and it all escalated. So, a stupid thing to do but no malicious intent. I'm not suggesting at all this is the case for OPs son, and I'm definitely not excusing any misogynistic comments at all, but I do think schools have a fairly low threshold for threatening police involvement for incidents relating to SM or online messaging/bullying/trolling etc. It doesn't necessarily mean he threatened a minor or spoke about sexual violent.

Fuck sake. Another thread totally ruined by nit picking posters. It's the same shite on every single thread now.

I agree some communication with the school may well be required in the terms of arrangements as you suggest, but I would advocate strongly that the case itself not be discussed except via the solicitor.

It could well be that the school are the ones that have reported or have said they have reported the matter to the police.

Involving the solicitor in any communication to the school about the case will flush out if they have actually reported it, as no school head is going to write to a solicitors themselves, they would use the schools solicitor, and at £200 a letter that soon becomes a pain and they will desist have they not already reported the matter.

Likewise if the police rock up at the school to discuss the matter with the lad, he should be forearmed with advice from his solicitor, which would probably be, "yes I will discuss the matter with you, at the police station at a time agreeable to yourselves and my solicitor" thats the way a grown up would handle it.

What he doesn't want to do is get in a lather having a voluntary interview at school and end up accepting a police caution which he might not need to have on his record.

But alas we don't know what he did, which makes it hard to judge what offence he may be charged under, if indeed he actually did anything bad enough for the police to get involved with any vigor.

No they didn't, you're mistaken.

Whether or not he is Autistic or has some other neurodivergency doesn't really come into it, although autism is in no way connected with criminality there have been several high profile criminals who are autistic and that diagnosis didn't get them any leniency.

The law uses a standard called the M'Naughten rule that simply has to establish if the person would reasonably know what they were doing was wrong at the time of the offence

the jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong

• and even failure in that regard doesn't mean you get away with it, you are just punished in a different way

This ^.

There is a horrible contingent of posters here who seem to derive their pleasure from posting nasty comments, thinking themselves superior and clever. They're not, just ignorant and hate-filled.

Particularly when the OP has posted something deeply personal and upsetting.

May those horrible people get piles and shit pineapples.

And this ^

Speaking as someone whose child is finally going through assessment process atm at the age of nineteen, I find your post really upsetting. You must know that it's not exactly a quick process to get diagnosed. You either have to go on a long waiting list or save up a lot of money. How dare you suggest that a parent just "hasn't bothered to put the work in" because they aren't sufficiently good parents. I certainly don't know any parent like that.

However I do know parents in my situation who have been deterred from getting a diagnosis because they didn't know where to turn, or their GP had been really dismissive, or any difficulties or differences have been missed at school for years.

My own family GP laughed at me when I suggested my child might be autistic. They had never heard of autistic masking. It took years to get a referral. Some parents are just worn down from struggling with every day life and after school melt downs or school refusal and don't have the headspace or money or time to go through all the stages necessary to battle for an assessment, or their teen is not cooperative.

And sorry if people find this difficult but my child was definitely more easily lead than her friends and is taking longer to mature in certain areas so I don't understand why this is not potentially relevant in this situation tbh.

I am frankly shocked that as a parent of someone with ASD you can accuse someone of playing "the autistic card" because it's an offensive thing to suggest in itself, and yes sorry but there very definitely are teen pupils wandering around with many autistic traits who haven't yet been fully diagnosed, but that's not because parents can't be bothered, it's because CAHMS and SEN services are underfunded and falling apart at the seams.

But the OP has not said that she is seeking a diagnosis, that he is on the pathway or anything. Just that he has "Asperger's tendencies" which really could be quite meaningless if it comes from an uninformed place.

If she had said that they were awaiting diagnosis (which I think she would have clarified in the second post if he were) then the replies would have been different.

Or the autistic residents in the home where I worked who would be quite likely to punch you in the face for some reason that might be hard to understand and was frequently unexplained. Sometimes you could avert the blow if you spotted certain signs and that is why they needed two carers with them if they went out.

What on earth has this got to do with anything. Firstly you're talking about people with a diagnosis whose support needs are such that they live in residential care. Not a teen who is in mainstream education, able enough to use social media, who may or may not be autistic.

Secondly, your residents punching people would have happened at a time when they were overwhelmed and couldn't communicate their needs/emotions. Which is not the same motivation as sending threatening messages.

If, if, if! The op has said very little but a load of posters on here have made many assumptions which may or may not be accurate. But as long as everyone can pile in and blame a mother eh? What happened to giving others the benefit of the doubt? Now posters seem to take delight in judging negatively without knowing the full facts.

My dd was far too easily influenced by others at school because she had few friends and was desperate to be part of the group. Until her assessment is over, I don’t know whether she is autistic or not, but I do know that her black and white thinking has made it difficult for her to interact socially with others so I can imagine a situation where she did something stupid in order to fit in.

And so much for solidarity among parents of dc with autism. If my dd is diagnosed with asc, then one thing I will certainly take away from this thread is that I must be very wary of who I speak to about it.

And so much for solidarity among parents of dc with autism.

I'm not entirely sure why this thread went in the direction it did. But.
If we can look away from everyone jumping in and defending their own autistic (with a diagnosis) children for a while.

A young girl has had words used at her that are seriously bad enough to (possibly) require police attention. Is anyone thinking of her in all this or is it just "well OPs son is easily led and can't help himself"

Should she just suck it up?

Oh fhs. Where precisely on this thread has anyone said the girl concerned has to suck it up? No one has said that and of course she shouldn’t.

The most anyone has said is that some autistic people can be easily lead.

That is not the same thing at all however hard you try and make it so.

I didn't say they had.

but all this defensiveness over whether or not the boy is autistic, and now nobody is thinking of her.

There is a discussion elsewhere about if you should call someone with a mental illness out (in this case Kanye) for being anti-semetic.
Same thing.

No sorry. If the mother of the girl concerned had posted asking for support then maybe more comments would have been directed towards her.

But it’s the mother of the young man in this situation who started this thread and who asked for advice and I can’t see why she shouldn’t receive it. It’s not automatically her fault even if her son has fucked up massively and as we don’t know what he said, we don’t even know that is correct.

And before everyone says the op was minimising she actually said her son had done something stupid, she called the subject of the chat horribly misogynistic and she said it was understandable that the school was taking it seriously.

FFS her mother didn't post for advice!!!

I despair.

Thank you. I found that post insensitive and ableist.