>#My son, 14, touched a girl’s leg. He was called a rapist
>__MeToo-style accusations against a teen snowballed into exclusion from school, a police interview and a stabbing threat, reveals his father__
>Saturday February 18 2023, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times
>Last year our 14-year-old son was accused of sexually assaulting girls at his school. I was at home when the phone call came from my son’s private school near London. He was being sent home early. I was told he had been accused of inappropriate touching and was suspended till further notice. It was the start of a 14-month ordeal which included him being excluded from school, threatened with expulsion and reported to the local authority’s child protection service and the police.
>I am sharing our experience as a warning. If you are the parent of a preteen or teenage boy, I hope my family’s experience will make you think hard about how you prepare him for dealing with the opposite gender in the post #MeToo and Everyone’s Invited school environment. That day on the phone, the school informed me that he was being sent home following “an incident”, and that he was suspended until further notice. When he arrived home, he told me he had been accused of “inappropriately touching” a number of girls.
>This was, not surprisingly, a great shock. I knew he was friendly with several girls in his year, although he has never had a girlfriend and tells me he has never kissed a girl, but I found it hard to imagine him molesting or groping one. We are a tactile family, but he has always been taught that there are boundaries. He explained that he had put his hand on two girls’ legs, just above the knee and on top of their clothes. In one instance, this was during a breaktime game involving several other pupils, male and female; in the other, it was during a conversation with a girl with whom he often talked on the phone at weekends and in the evenings. Neither had reacted in any way. They hadn’t told him to take his hand away, but another girl had seen both incidents and began telling others that he had been “touching up” girls.
> That found its way back to the teaching staff, and he was called in. Naturally, he was very distressed, not just at being singled out for something that he had seen other boys doing on a daily basis, but also at the thought that he had caused girls that he thought of as his friends, with whom he thought he was innocently flirting, to feel uncomfortable. He had clearly made a mistake, he was contrite and wanted to apologise and move on. A few days later we were summoned to see the headmistress. We expected that there would be a telling-off, commensurate with the offence, that he would be required to apologise, and that would be the end of the matter. Lessons learnt.
>Instead, we were shocked to be told that there were allegations from other girls in addition to the two incidents our son had described. He denied there were any others and, in a Kafkaesque flourish, the school did not give us any further details. The headmistress then said that as far as the school was concerned, he had committed sexual assaults and had already been reported to the local child protection officer and the police. We were told he might be expelled. It was hinted we should withdraw him — but we refused. He was starting his GCSE years, and we wanted him back in class as soon as possible. He was also determined to go back. He said: “If I do not go back, they have won.”
>Meanwhile, we were contacted by the child protection services from our local council, who told us that they thought the school had overreacted and there was no need for them to get involved. When he was interviewed, under caution, by the police, the two female officers read out the other accusations, which were that he had groped a girl’s bottom and touched another’s thigh.
>Having seen his horrified reaction to hearing this accusation for the first time, and his categorical denial that he had ever behaved in such a way, they also concluded that there was no need for any action to be taken.
>However, while he was suspended, the school held an assembly on the topic of consent, and reference to “an incident” at the school was made. The rumour mill quickly span out of control. When he did return, he was frequently shoved and jostled in corridors and accused of being a rapist, of “touching up” girls and of being a sexual predator, among other things. At the same time he became aware that his name and allegations about him were circulating locally on social media. A pupil at another local school said that if he turned up there, he would be “shanked” (stabbed). He gave up one of his extracurricular clubs when a girl there objected to his presence.
>A year on, he remains largely ostracised at school. He will complete his GCSEs there, but we have had to choose a school in another area for him to continue his education, because of the things that have been said about him on social media locally and the threats he has received. He has had several thousand pounds’ worth of therapy to help him reduce his anxiety about school and other social situations.
>Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he now avoids any contact with girls of his own age — even those he has been friends with since he was a toddler. In fact, he rarely leaves the house other than to go to school. Could all of this have been avoided? Certainly, both my son’s therapist and other educational experts I have spoken to have told me that the school’s reaction was disproportionate, but in the current environment it’s easy to understand how its first response was to slip into a defensive mode, wanting to protect itself from any suggestion that it was not taking alleged sexual harassment of its female pupils seriously.
>I don’t wish to downplay the importance of #MeToo, Everyone’s Invited and other platforms that, at last, are giving a voice to the genuine harassment that many women and girls endure. Writing this account has prompted me to visit the Everyone’s Invited site for the first time, and I have been sickened by the stories I have read there. The fact that society is now more likely to listen, believe and act on sexual harassment is a step towards giving women and girls the power to call out unacceptable behaviour. But against this backdrop, it is more important than ever that schools are prepared for situations like this one, and able to handle them proportionately, with sensitivity and care. In the meantime, all we can do as parents is teach our boys to be very, very careful.
As a parent of 2 young boys, this terrifies me. Everyone should be safe at school, but false or exaggerated allegations take away from real victims.
>all we can do as parents is teach our boys ~~to be very, very careful.~~ *consent*. Teach them about consent.
Shame on the Times for putting out an article like this. Essentially this is a longwinded onesided “my son would NEVER!! The girls and the school must be LYING, it’s all a CONSPIRACY!!” piece.
E: thanks for sending me a ‘reddit cares’ based on this. Wow.
E2: Not sure what to make of the people coming into this extremely one-sided article and taking the defendant’s claims “we were friends when I touched her”, “I thought we both wanted it” and denials as absolutely true accounts of the situation rather than… a defence when he was caught.
Obviously this wasn’t handled right, but I HATE how the parent talks about it as ‘post the MeToo movement’ as if that didn’t come about as a result of hundreds of years of women and girls being sexually assaulted. This attitude towards this movement makes me think that yeah, maybe something fishy WAS going on if this is how his parents speak. It wouldn’t surprise me if it rubbed off to some extent.
Also, they call his touching of girls thighs ‘harmless flirting’ and how he ‘didn’t think he was doing anything wrong’ and ‘other boys do it.’ NEVER do they say ‘he asked his female friends if he could touch their thigh and they said yes.’ If a boy had been seen doing that at my secondary school he’d also have most likely been seen as a creep and ostracised and that was YEARS before MeToo.
Either the parents didn’t teach the boy proper consent and he mimicked boys with their girlfriends who did have consent from them, or they didn’t teach him consent and he was picking the habits of other boys in a school with a ‘boys ignoring gaining consent and inappropriately touching girls issue’ or the boy did understand consent and just didn’t care.
As an adult if a male friend just placed their hand on my thigh without asking I’d stand up, call him the creep that he is and damn well make sure to let my other female friends know. You wanna flirt and show affection and see if it goes further? How about a hand on the shoulder, or hand on her hand, or asking for a hug? Y’know the myriad other ways one can physically flirt that doesn’t involve touching a girl in a private or private-adjacent area. I can’t imagine what I’d do as a scared, inexperienced teenager who hadn’t been touched like that before. If this boy is happy to touch my thigh without asking me if it’s ok first, where else would he touch me? Will he flip out if I tell him no? Just don’t touch girls’ thighs!
Boy did creepy shit. Boy got ostracised for doing creepy shit. Happened to all the kids, girls and boys included who did creepy shit, shit much less severe than this, at my secondary school. Tale as old as time. Not that hard to not touch girls’ thighs.
> When he was interviewed, under caution, by the police, the two female officers read out the other accusations, which were that he had groped a girl’s bottom and touched another’s thigh.
> Having seen his horrified reaction to hearing this accusation for the first time, and his categorical denial that he had ever behaved in such a way, they also concluded that there was no need for any action to be taken.
Top police work!
Anyway – I don’t really get this piece. He ‘admits to the crime’, what’s the school supposed to do exactly, if multiple students are reporting the same guy is touching them?
I also think… we are only getting half the story here, the mother’s, who of course believes her son is innocent. So… hard to know if he has been wronged really.
> Naturally, he was very distressed, not just at being singled out for something that he had seen other boys doing on a daily basis, but also at the thought that he had caused girls that he thought of as his friends, with whom he thought he was innocently flirting, to feel uncomfortable.
Oh well if the other boys are doing it, it must be ok. As my teachers would say to us at school – ‘if they jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?’.
From a school point of view this is an absolute nightmare to deal with and I am not surprised that the school reacted as it did.
Pretty much any questioning of a victim, even the slightest bit of an open mind about the accusations or even seeking evidence and you are right in line for being accused of not believing victims, not taking reports seriously and brushing things under the carpet.
You wouldn’t believe how often we are accused of not taking seriously stuff that has never even been reported to us.
Anything you do that gives the slightest suggestion that you might not believe the victim unquestioningly and the parents will be complaining to ofsted. And right now, if it’s anything to do with me too Ofsted will be straight in for a safeguarding inspection. On that they will pick a bunch of girls, ask if they have ever heard any sexual language from boys or heard the word “slut” used. They of course will say they have, and the inspectors will immediately say “hypothesis proved”, downgrade the school and the headteacher at least is highly likely to lose their job.
That’s the context we are operating in.
This kid has touched a girls thigh and it has been reported. On these, the school can’t really seek proof or evidence for any of the allegations, because that is construed as not believing the victim. So unfortunately, children are wide open to potentially false allegations on things like this.
It’s all well and good child services saying the school overreacted, but if the school reacted any other way and the parents went to ofsted or the local press they’d soon be blaming the school for not contacting them.
So a boy touched girls without consent and got in trouble for it? Wow, what an extreme miscarriage of justice. Thank god The Times are here to support all the poor boys who get punished as a direct result of their actions.
It’s good he’s been caught and his behaviour put a stop to. His parents should be taking him in hand right now rather than whinging in the press about how unfair it is that he should suffer consequences for his actions. Disgraceful article for The Times to publish.
Sending him back to that school has caused the issues with his mental health. He’s admitted touching. Working in schools, yea, the rumour mill is vicious. Particularly if he wasn’t well liked anyway.
A fresh start would have been better for the girls, and for him.
The parents arrogance has made everything worse, for the girls and their son.
Interesting to see someone grapple with the cognitive dissonance of “my little Johnny could NEVER be a gross person that commits sexual assault” and then jumps through several mental gymnastic hoops to reason that it’s not their progenies fault, it’s everyone else and society.
It was sexual assault before the MeToo movement, it’s sexual assaults after. The only change is that instead of turning a blind eye, people have actually started calling it what it is.
There was a boy in my year who would touch girls’ thighs, grab their hands – like he was sexually harassing us from the age of 12. I eventually stopped him from harassing me again though…
14 comments
>#My son, 14, touched a girl’s leg. He was called a rapist
>__MeToo-style accusations against a teen snowballed into exclusion from school, a police interview and a stabbing threat, reveals his father__
>Saturday February 18 2023, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times
>Last year our 14-year-old son was accused of sexually assaulting girls at his school. I was at home when the phone call came from my son’s private school near London. He was being sent home early. I was told he had been accused of inappropriate touching and was suspended till further notice. It was the start of a 14-month ordeal which included him being excluded from school, threatened with expulsion and reported to the local authority’s child protection service and the police.
>I am sharing our experience as a warning. If you are the parent of a preteen or teenage boy, I hope my family’s experience will make you think hard about how you prepare him for dealing with the opposite gender in the post #MeToo and Everyone’s Invited school environment. That day on the phone, the school informed me that he was being sent home following “an incident”, and that he was suspended until further notice. When he arrived home, he told me he had been accused of “inappropriately touching” a number of girls.
>This was, not surprisingly, a great shock. I knew he was friendly with several girls in his year, although he has never had a girlfriend and tells me he has never kissed a girl, but I found it hard to imagine him molesting or groping one. We are a tactile family, but he has always been taught that there are boundaries. He explained that he had put his hand on two girls’ legs, just above the knee and on top of their clothes. In one instance, this was during a breaktime game involving several other pupils, male and female; in the other, it was during a conversation with a girl with whom he often talked on the phone at weekends and in the evenings. Neither had reacted in any way. They hadn’t told him to take his hand away, but another girl had seen both incidents and began telling others that he had been “touching up” girls.
> That found its way back to the teaching staff, and he was called in. Naturally, he was very distressed, not just at being singled out for something that he had seen other boys doing on a daily basis, but also at the thought that he had caused girls that he thought of as his friends, with whom he thought he was innocently flirting, to feel uncomfortable. He had clearly made a mistake, he was contrite and wanted to apologise and move on. A few days later we were summoned to see the headmistress. We expected that there would be a telling-off, commensurate with the offence, that he would be required to apologise, and that would be the end of the matter. Lessons learnt.
>Instead, we were shocked to be told that there were allegations from other girls in addition to the two incidents our son had described. He denied there were any others and, in a Kafkaesque flourish, the school did not give us any further details. The headmistress then said that as far as the school was concerned, he had committed sexual assaults and had already been reported to the local child protection officer and the police. We were told he might be expelled. It was hinted we should withdraw him — but we refused. He was starting his GCSE years, and we wanted him back in class as soon as possible. He was also determined to go back. He said: “If I do not go back, they have won.”
>Meanwhile, we were contacted by the child protection services from our local council, who told us that they thought the school had overreacted and there was no need for them to get involved. When he was interviewed, under caution, by the police, the two female officers read out the other accusations, which were that he had groped a girl’s bottom and touched another’s thigh.
>Having seen his horrified reaction to hearing this accusation for the first time, and his categorical denial that he had ever behaved in such a way, they also concluded that there was no need for any action to be taken.
>However, while he was suspended, the school held an assembly on the topic of consent, and reference to “an incident” at the school was made. The rumour mill quickly span out of control. When he did return, he was frequently shoved and jostled in corridors and accused of being a rapist, of “touching up” girls and of being a sexual predator, among other things. At the same time he became aware that his name and allegations about him were circulating locally on social media. A pupil at another local school said that if he turned up there, he would be “shanked” (stabbed). He gave up one of his extracurricular clubs when a girl there objected to his presence.
>A year on, he remains largely ostracised at school. He will complete his GCSEs there, but we have had to choose a school in another area for him to continue his education, because of the things that have been said about him on social media locally and the threats he has received. He has had several thousand pounds’ worth of therapy to help him reduce his anxiety about school and other social situations.
>Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he now avoids any contact with girls of his own age — even those he has been friends with since he was a toddler. In fact, he rarely leaves the house other than to go to school. Could all of this have been avoided? Certainly, both my son’s therapist and other educational experts I have spoken to have told me that the school’s reaction was disproportionate, but in the current environment it’s easy to understand how its first response was to slip into a defensive mode, wanting to protect itself from any suggestion that it was not taking alleged sexual harassment of its female pupils seriously.
>I don’t wish to downplay the importance of #MeToo, Everyone’s Invited and other platforms that, at last, are giving a voice to the genuine harassment that many women and girls endure. Writing this account has prompted me to visit the Everyone’s Invited site for the first time, and I have been sickened by the stories I have read there. The fact that society is now more likely to listen, believe and act on sexual harassment is a step towards giving women and girls the power to call out unacceptable behaviour. But against this backdrop, it is more important than ever that schools are prepared for situations like this one, and able to handle them proportionately, with sensitivity and care. In the meantime, all we can do as parents is teach our boys to be very, very careful.
As a parent of 2 young boys, this terrifies me. Everyone should be safe at school, but false or exaggerated allegations take away from real victims.
>all we can do as parents is teach our boys ~~to be very, very careful.~~ *consent*. Teach them about consent.
Shame on the Times for putting out an article like this. Essentially this is a longwinded onesided “my son would NEVER!! The girls and the school must be LYING, it’s all a CONSPIRACY!!” piece.
E: thanks for sending me a ‘reddit cares’ based on this. Wow.
E2: Not sure what to make of the people coming into this extremely one-sided article and taking the defendant’s claims “we were friends when I touched her”, “I thought we both wanted it” and denials as absolutely true accounts of the situation rather than… a defence when he was caught.
Obviously this wasn’t handled right, but I HATE how the parent talks about it as ‘post the MeToo movement’ as if that didn’t come about as a result of hundreds of years of women and girls being sexually assaulted. This attitude towards this movement makes me think that yeah, maybe something fishy WAS going on if this is how his parents speak. It wouldn’t surprise me if it rubbed off to some extent.
Also, they call his touching of girls thighs ‘harmless flirting’ and how he ‘didn’t think he was doing anything wrong’ and ‘other boys do it.’ NEVER do they say ‘he asked his female friends if he could touch their thigh and they said yes.’ If a boy had been seen doing that at my secondary school he’d also have most likely been seen as a creep and ostracised and that was YEARS before MeToo.
Either the parents didn’t teach the boy proper consent and he mimicked boys with their girlfriends who did have consent from them, or they didn’t teach him consent and he was picking the habits of other boys in a school with a ‘boys ignoring gaining consent and inappropriately touching girls issue’ or the boy did understand consent and just didn’t care.
As an adult if a male friend just placed their hand on my thigh without asking I’d stand up, call him the creep that he is and damn well make sure to let my other female friends know. You wanna flirt and show affection and see if it goes further? How about a hand on the shoulder, or hand on her hand, or asking for a hug? Y’know the myriad other ways one can physically flirt that doesn’t involve touching a girl in a private or private-adjacent area. I can’t imagine what I’d do as a scared, inexperienced teenager who hadn’t been touched like that before. If this boy is happy to touch my thigh without asking me if it’s ok first, where else would he touch me? Will he flip out if I tell him no? Just don’t touch girls’ thighs!
Boy did creepy shit. Boy got ostracised for doing creepy shit. Happened to all the kids, girls and boys included who did creepy shit, shit much less severe than this, at my secondary school. Tale as old as time. Not that hard to not touch girls’ thighs.
> When he was interviewed, under caution, by the police, the two female officers read out the other accusations, which were that he had groped a girl’s bottom and touched another’s thigh.
> Having seen his horrified reaction to hearing this accusation for the first time, and his categorical denial that he had ever behaved in such a way, they also concluded that there was no need for any action to be taken.
Top police work!
Anyway – I don’t really get this piece. He ‘admits to the crime’, what’s the school supposed to do exactly, if multiple students are reporting the same guy is touching them?
I also think… we are only getting half the story here, the mother’s, who of course believes her son is innocent. So… hard to know if he has been wronged really.
> Naturally, he was very distressed, not just at being singled out for something that he had seen other boys doing on a daily basis, but also at the thought that he had caused girls that he thought of as his friends, with whom he thought he was innocently flirting, to feel uncomfortable.
Oh well if the other boys are doing it, it must be ok. As my teachers would say to us at school – ‘if they jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?’.
From a school point of view this is an absolute nightmare to deal with and I am not surprised that the school reacted as it did.
Pretty much any questioning of a victim, even the slightest bit of an open mind about the accusations or even seeking evidence and you are right in line for being accused of not believing victims, not taking reports seriously and brushing things under the carpet.
You wouldn’t believe how often we are accused of not taking seriously stuff that has never even been reported to us.
Anything you do that gives the slightest suggestion that you might not believe the victim unquestioningly and the parents will be complaining to ofsted. And right now, if it’s anything to do with me too Ofsted will be straight in for a safeguarding inspection. On that they will pick a bunch of girls, ask if they have ever heard any sexual language from boys or heard the word “slut” used. They of course will say they have, and the inspectors will immediately say “hypothesis proved”, downgrade the school and the headteacher at least is highly likely to lose their job.
That’s the context we are operating in.
This kid has touched a girls thigh and it has been reported. On these, the school can’t really seek proof or evidence for any of the allegations, because that is construed as not believing the victim. So unfortunately, children are wide open to potentially false allegations on things like this.
It’s all well and good child services saying the school overreacted, but if the school reacted any other way and the parents went to ofsted or the local press they’d soon be blaming the school for not contacting them.
So a boy touched girls without consent and got in trouble for it? Wow, what an extreme miscarriage of justice. Thank god The Times are here to support all the poor boys who get punished as a direct result of their actions.
It’s good he’s been caught and his behaviour put a stop to. His parents should be taking him in hand right now rather than whinging in the press about how unfair it is that he should suffer consequences for his actions. Disgraceful article for The Times to publish.
Sending him back to that school has caused the issues with his mental health. He’s admitted touching. Working in schools, yea, the rumour mill is vicious. Particularly if he wasn’t well liked anyway.
A fresh start would have been better for the girls, and for him.
The parents arrogance has made everything worse, for the girls and their son.
Non paywall link
https://archive.is/DNMJB
Interesting to see someone grapple with the cognitive dissonance of “my little Johnny could NEVER be a gross person that commits sexual assault” and then jumps through several mental gymnastic hoops to reason that it’s not their progenies fault, it’s everyone else and society.
It was sexual assault before the MeToo movement, it’s sexual assaults after. The only change is that instead of turning a blind eye, people have actually started calling it what it is.
There was a boy in my year who would touch girls’ thighs, grab their hands – like he was sexually harassing us from the age of 12. I eventually stopped him from harassing me again though…