Mum o’ Four
I have a son in his late teens with an intellectual disability and high needs. As such, he is in a learning support classroom at school with a range of other similarly disabled children across a range of ages. Most of these children need 24/7 care and monitoring.
Earlier this month I was waiting outside the school to pick my son up and a teacher came out with him and a younger boy who is also disabled. This was unusual, so I got out of my car to speak with her, wondering what was up. She measured her words carefully and explained that she’d walked in on both boys in the bathroom and that ‘something’ was clearly going on. She smiled and reassured me that she wasn’t worried, as, ‘We all know it’s normal for boys this age to ‘explore’ and ‘experiment’,’ thus painting it as a sexual issue.
She said she hadn’t actually seen what had happened because she’d let them go ahead while walking back to the classroom from the field and had entered the room late. She also said she hadn’t said much to them about it. Then she walked further down the road with the other child to speak to his guardian.
Gosh…on the way home I wondered how to handle this and what the implications were. Once inside, I gave my son the stern ‘mum’ look and said, “That can never happen again!”
He responded with, “What?”
“You know what!”
He became instantly angry and yelled at me that it wasn’t him: it was the other boy. “He poked me in the butt!” Because of his unusual anger, I decided to leave the discussion until later when he’d calmed down. His vehemence told me he was telling the truth. I retreated to my office. He came in later and apologised for yelling. It transpired that he’d been going to use the toilet, had his pants down and the other boy walked up behind him and poked him with his middle finger. My son indicated he’d been poked in the anal region.
OK. Boys being boys. Nothing sexual here: just hijinks. I expect my son got a shock and turned around and that’s when the teacher walked in. Did she think my son was exposing himself?
I immediately emailed the learning support group and repeated what my son had said. They thanked me for the information and I expected that to be the end of it.
No.
A couple of days later I realised the other child was absent from school. Then came the phone call from police. I retold my son’s version of events and laughed, saying it was a mix up and that perhaps the teacher should have asked what had happened instead of assuming. My son got ‘goosed’, that was all. I sent a copy of my email to the school to the police and my son kept going to school happily.
The same policeman rang back a few days later to say he’d been out to visit the other child to get his version of events. I remarked that that was good, so police now understood the level of intellectual disability that child has. The policeman said he’d probably come out to see my son the next week. All good. Two weeks later he still hadn’t been out to see us. Then, last week, I got an email from the policeman:
Could I bring my son into the station for a video recording explaining what happened?
What?! No, surely this wasn’t happening…
I responded that I wasn’t comfortable with that: my son is unable to consent or understand what a statement is. Further to that he has hearing loss (he’s aided) and can be very hard to understand at times. I asked if he was in trouble and did I need to get him a lawyer?
This was ridiculous! How did we get from ‘I’ll visit you’ to ‘please bring him in to be recorded’. What had changed over the past three weeks? Ah…the school! Have they been questioning him? Remember: the teacher who was supposed to be monitoring the boys was MIA then walked in on them and assumed it was sexual. Have they mucked with his memory and suggested things? I’d not touched on the subject with my son since: to me it had been a non-event.
Had I got what had happened wrong? Did the teacher see something that I didn’t know about? The other child is below the age of consent. I could see how two young mentally impaired boys could get stitched up and things be taken completely out of context. And the school opened them both up to accusations. They allowed this whole event to occur by not monitoring!
Deep breath. I withheld him from school. I emailed the policeman and requested that he ring me the next day. Then I decided to gently ask my son some direct questions to check my understanding – the first time I’d mentioned it in three weeks.
“When [redacted] poked you, what did he poke you with?”
“His finger.” My son held up his hand, again showing his middle finger.
“Has he ever done that before?”
“No.”
“Did he ask you if he could do it?”
“No.”
“So you didn’t know he was going to do it?”
“No.”
“That wasn’t very nice, was it…”
“No.”
Whew. I wrote down my questions and his answers.
The policeman rang. He explained he thought video would be best in case my son’s language danced around, so videoing might be easier than taking notes. He said nothing was going to happen and apologised for stressing me: he just wanted to close the case. Then I listened to a lengthy lecture on the age of consent and how police normally treat cases of underage sex by explaining to the participants that they can’t do it. I’m a mother of two adults and two teens: I know all this.
When I finally got my chance to speak, I reiterated my son’s version of events. The policeman said, ‘Oh, like we boys used to do all the time in the bathrooms at school? Just a joke.’ Uh huh. Finally! I then read out my questions and my son’s answers from that morning.
That wasn’t good enough: that was me saying it, not my son.
Brainwave: “I’m on my cell phone and have you on speaker. What if you ask my son directly and I won’t say anything unless I need to interpret?”
“Uh, yeah… We can try that.”
The policeman asked my son the exact same questions I had and got the exact same responses again.
Case finally closed.
Technically my son was violated but why would I do anything about that when the offender is severely mentally compromised and underage? Least said, soonest mended. I certainly didn’t want a trip to a big police station in a big town and a formal interview to further cement the incident in my son’s mind. And I’m sure the other boy’s guardians will stress that he cannot do that again.
No, my anger is aimed at the school enabling this to happen – not the young boy. It really bothers me that my son and the other lad were put in this situation and the teacher immediately framed it as sexual and that’s what was conveyed to police.
Why was an unfortunate, if distasteful, gesture construed in such a way? Is it all about sexuality education and inclusion? Why did no one bother to ask the questions I did on the actual day? When I was at school, that’s exactly what would have happened. Instead it was escalated to police – in this age of ‘respect’, ‘feels’ and ‘sexuality education’.
