DS has kicked a hornets nest at school today

[IcyBob]

Not literally! DS is nearly 15. We live overseas but he’s in the equivalent of year 10. He has ASD/ADHD, but is extremely bright, pretty sociable and is happy and doing well at school… until today. Earlier this week he was sitting with a female friend when she received a message from her boyfriend; she opened it and it was a video of him masturbating in the school toilets. DS says she closed it immediately and said she didn’t want to see it, and seemed uncomfortable and upset. DS thought she should report it to the school administration, and she agreed, but then changed her mind after talking to her boyfriend. DS - who because of his ASD has very black and white thinking on right and wrong - took it upon himself to report it anyway. Apparently the boyfriend has worked out that it DS, and is behaving in a threatening way. He’s also worried that the girl and the boy who filmed it (not the boyfriend, and also a friend of DS) will be in trouble too.

When he told me all of this, my heart sank. He was bullied in his old school in the UK before we moved, and I was so relieved that he was doing so much better socially here. I don’t know what to say to him; I can’t tell him he was wrong to report it, because obviously the boyfriend shouldn’t be filming that in school and sending it unsolicited! And it’s done now anyway. Any advice?

Does your son know how to defend himself if anyone was going to attack him. Maybe you should consider judo, karate or kickboxing. Your son done the right thing reporting the video but you are not helping him if he can't defend himself against bullies.

So you believe it would be right for any teen who is aware that two of his under age classmates are in a sexual relationship to report that to the police?

Even if that relationship is not abusive in nature?

Okay it's misandry

Exactly. Even if they were adults there is a time and place for this, and a school is not one of them.

It's not (simply) about the masturbating. Making that content in school, then distributing that content drops both the originator of the vid, and the receiver, and anyone else that they may have passed it on to, right in the sweet stuff.

It’s a fair comparison in response to the comment made. The creating and sharing of the explicit sexual content of the video is a criminal offence. To suggest that it was reported from a place of envy is as ridiculous as suggesting that someone would only report report rape from that viewpoint.

Glad you agree.

Due to his ASD he may not have understood the different ways this can play out for both of them.

He is not ‘wrong’ for reporting, and we rely on whistle blowers to act honourably all of the time. It does not seem that he realises fully that he both breached her trust and did not have her consent and that definitely required more discussion.

Would you have been happy to know that another boy was filming what you were seeing, and may have been with him when the video was sent to see your reaction?

O wad some Pow'r the giftie give us, to see oursels as ithers see us

I hope your DS knows how important what he has done, is in your eyes

Isn't it a criminal offence if the video was sent without consent? He wanted to send it to his girlfriend. Wouldn't it come under sexusl harassment if the girl felt pressured?

To be fair to your son this was a complicated situation. These teenagers had behaved inappropriately, potentially illegally towards a vulnerable girl. But his peers' understanding of the situation is very, very different to that of the adults around him and indeed his own. I think many adults struggle with other people's slightly odd ideas of what is appropriate in romantic and sexual relationships (look on MN threads!) and this is just a tough thing to navigate.

Read OP’s updates. The girl is vulnerable because of her home situation and has already been involved in previous abusive relationships. It’s a safeguarding concern. Being in an underage sexual relationship is completely different to what’s going on here, which is clearly illegal, and from OP’s account of the girls’ reaction to opening the video, abusive. The girls’ only reason for not reporting was that she didn’t want to get anyone into trouble. She’s a victim and she doesn’t even know it. Given those circumstances, would you believe it to be inappropriate to report ?

He absolutely did the right thing. What you do is you have his back and you speak to the school to make sure they have structures in place to protect him. You keep reinforcing that it was the right thing to do.

We had a similar incident with dd last year. A child at school racially abused another child. Dd witnessed it and reported it to the school. The child who said the racist abuse worked out it was dd, told his parents, and then the dad got dd’s number from his son’s phone and started sending her threatening and harassing messages. Of note, these children are 12. So this was a 40 year old man harassing a 12 year old girl for reporting his son for racial abuse.

I reported it to the school and to the police. The school chose not to pursue any punishment for the racial abuse as it was he said, he said as far as they were concerned. 🙄 The police wouldn’t pursue charges against the dad for the harassment, but I did get it on record so it is sitting there against the dad in case of future incidents. Document everything in case you need to. Give your ds reassurance and support. This all will blow over but he will remember that he felt supported in doing the right thing.

So he shouldn't report?

Because that seems to be your argument.

It's not about teens having sex. It's about teens producing child sexual abuse images.

Firstly, it is illegal.

Secondly, anything uploaded onto the internet is no longer private. Right at this moment some sexual predator somewhere might be watching the video of a 14 year old boy wanking. That video could be making the rounds even decades later.

Teens do stupid stuff. Sometimes they also do illegal and dangerous stuff. As adults we shouldn't simply shrug and leave them to it.

It’s a criminal offence for anyone to create or send explicit images of under age children, full stop. The fact that he was also under age and the video was of himself makes no difference. The girl he sent it to was also under age so not capable of consent to open the content.

This. In a nutshell.

I'm not 'comparing' them.

I specifically stated that I was applying the PP's logic to another form of non-consensual behaviour. I didn't say they were directly comparable (they're not). Both however are non-consensual sexual acts and I would be interested to know where PP thinks a line should be drawn.

I'd rather make sure that the child sexual abuse victims are safe and that the abuse stops.

Nah. Never even crossed her mind.

Exactly this.

Upthread, a former safeguarding officer has said that the conversation s/he had with his or her sons included "I cannot (and will not) protect you from this if it is something you do carry out." It's true. You may think it disproportionate and unrealistic for people under 16, making videos as often as blinking, but it is true. School may be annoyed that they have to step into this minefield, that, essentially, girl, boyfriend, and filmers, have got caught, because the video was openly showed - but that's a huge great core of trying to safeguard young people with rather flawed judgement for you.

When it comes to adults with capacity, yes.
But this is a child, living in difficult home circumstances (which often means abusive or neglectful parents), who already has had bad experiences with boys, which seem to have eroded her self esteem and boundaries. Her instinct here was to protect the boyfriend- why? I wouldn’t assume a child like this knows how they could or should be supported, so no, it’s not up to them to determine the outcome.

If wanking in the boys toilets and having your mate film it so you can both see the girls’ reaction when you send her the video is an example of forming a ‘relationship’ and interacting, I don’t see much to be envious of to be honest.