Son with disability falsely accused of sexual assault

[Nikki136]

Hello,
Our nightmare started 10th December 2009, and now 7 months down the line we have both police and the school blaming each other for the way the situation was handled, but still nobody will admit they made a mistake and apologise, in the mean time our son has been put through an absolutely horrendous time.
He has a form of Autism and when pressured withdrew into himself and was not able to defend himself.
He was in a special needs classroom with his then girlfriend of 9 months who had lost her cat he was consoling her but placed his hand in her waist band (thats all no intimate touching) she told him not to put his hand there, he apologised and removed his hand.
later in playground she confided to we now know the school trouble causer who did not like our son, and she fabricated the whole incident in her own words and reported it to the Head Teacher as rape(ridiculous as this sounds this sensitive experience was handled with absolutely no sensitivity).
Upon hearing this word alarm bells rang and the police were called in and he was then put in a police van on his own(no teacher accompanied him) and the police held him for over 6 hours in a cell.
My husband and i were not contacted until 3pm incident happened at 10.30am in classroom but not reported to head teacher till afternoon plenty of time to fabricate story and spread Chinese whispers amongst other students and also trouble causer arranged our son to be called in a pastoral room where a so called linch mob waited for him to do there own interrogation and bully him into asking why he had done what he obviously hadn't done,

This is when our son withdrew into himself an when questioned by so called professional people was unable to give a correct answer to defend himself.

I feel so useless, i have lodged a complaint against the head teacher but it seems they are covering there back and authorities and governors are defending her actions.
Police say school handled it wrong the school are saying the police handled it wrong, but if the head teacher hadn't called in the police but parents instead into school we could have sorted this out sensitively the only victim in all this is our poor son.
i have called endless amount of solicitors but because the police were involved they seem to back away
but now the police say he has done nothing wrong and our son was not charged i am hoping we can take serious action against the school or the head teacher for neglect i have also received a letter falsely accusing myself of writing something on a social network which deeply distressed myself as i would not humiliate my son by publicly announcing what happened, lots of people have said i should write to the news papers, but i do not want our son involved in anything so damaging but we do not want this to happen to anyone again, I was put on anxiety medication and spend 3 months off work as i work with the public and found it hard to put on a brave face when our son was being victimised with this ridiculous false allegation.

desperatly need advise about which direction to go with this.

[RFLH]

Hi Nikki, just to let you know I've read and am trying to find some info for you.

Hang in there.

[Saffron]

Hi Nikki

what a terrible ordeal for you, your son and your family. It is absolutely outrageous. You must be going through a bewildering range of emotions, from anger, disbelief and mistrust through to relief that your son wasn't charged.

The school should have a "best practice" procedure that they follow for incidents of assault, so they should have applied the same procedure to this alleged rape. They have a duty of care to all their pupils, including your son. I assume you have already written to the Board of Governors and the Local Education Authority? They should have launched an internal investigation, and even after an investigation has been completed, you still have the right to take it further. Perhaps you should think about writing to your MP, or going to your MPs surgery to see him/her in person.

I'm so sorry you find yourself here. We will do all we can to support you.

Saffron

[Rights Fighter]

I don't know what you can do. What is it exactly that you want out of this? If you are thinking about a private prosecution (against the school? Police?) then you need to know that you will spend £K's on something that is not guaranteed to work.

[witsend]

not alone

Dear Nikki 136. Glad you found your way here, hope some of us can offer support and advice. First off, you are not alone. Our son, who also has a form of autism found himself in a very similar situation your son has found himself in. The only difference being that he had consensual sex with another adult with learning difficulties and then she accused him of rape. luckily his case was NFA'd. The way the school and police handled your son seems awful and I feel for your son and you. You know your son better than anyone else and to see the pain this puts him through is horrendous. Make sure you and your son get the support of your GP. I know that you will find the strength to help him get through this, putting it bluntly you have no choice. We didn't think we would ever get through the ordeal but we did, please keep coming back here.

[friday]

i don't know how old your this girl is but if under 16 then they have to involve the police due to child protection and perhaps due to the special needs of students they may have to contact police even if over 16 due to their vulnerabilities. you should be able to get a copy of any guidelines (often called things like 'parents' charter' or 'guidelines for conduct') either from the school or their website if they have one. from there you will be able to check if they have broken their guidelines.

when your son was questioned were you or an appopriate adult there?

[Nikki136]

Thankyou all so much for the advise and support, this is the first time i have been able to talk about this without breaking down, my husband was present at the investigation and a criminal solicitor who insists that our son should never have been arrested in the first place, even another officer said he was shocked that the school involved the police.
I do realize that because this 15 year old trouble causer blew the whole incident out of up into a totally wild accusation, our problem is that it happened in a special needs classroom with 1 teacher and 4 student 2 being our son and his girlfriend and they were allowed to sit and cuddle each other and not be kept properly supervised the teacher was not aware of anything as no assault took place i have 100 questions that have to answers, we have been to a board of governors meeting but this was so the head teacher could defend herself and i was desperately trying to ask the relevant questions but she kept interrupting saying "but we cant discus that"
we went to countless meetings with the head hoping she would see sense, just for her to dig her heels in she kept saying certain things were irrelevant like our son and the girl had been in a relationship for 9 months and really they were both to blame not just our son, I was beside myself totally distressed and our son was treated horribly going through all the exclusion, and expelling process,

Luckily the SEN (special education needs)got involved and our son chose which school he could go to because they knew he had been mistreated and needed help and reassurance that he had done absolutely nothing wrong, he has settled well into his new school and has sat his mock GCSE recently with thank god good results hopefully, at least one professional authority saw sense
and assisted my family we had the head officer involved from the SEN she was wonderful he has a wonderful taxi driver taking him to school very day and equipment that he was promised at his old school but never given, our son wants to study law as he does'nt want anyone to go through what he has in the future, Dyspraxia he is extremely clever and a whizz on the computer he has been doing his own reasearch