Abuse and the failure to prevent it.

westerlywind
I wouldn’t expect anything less

Holdingotometeeth I have decided on which car I want to get. I will not give the detail on here in case it is seen. It is part of a bigger thing.

Glad you are bearing up.
Have you decided which car you are getting yet as per your thread "A New Car" ?
I am on tenterhooks.

holdingontometeeth Thanks. I am picking myself up now. I cant believe how I was so put down. Had it been a husband I would have known how to deal with that but when it is your own DC it is a whole different game. Mums are supposed to provide care etc which I did and that is why I didnt fight back. Also had to consider DGC. I have stepped away now and gathering strength

I am so sorry for your experiences westerlywind.
Keep your chin up.

EllanVannin As the girl or possible daughter was wearing a school uniform she would be classed as a child. However being in a Secondary school would mean that the girl has access to a very wide variety of people in a very large school. No matter how much we teach our children our own values once they start mixing with other young adults outside of parental involvement they are likely to learn things that we would have preferred they did not learn.

I have personal eperience of this. I know how much I was destroyed by bullying DC. They shouting screaming swearing and put downs are what I had to struggle with. The scene was so close to my own experiences

If the one with crutches was the mother then she failed to teach the girl respect. That's all I can say.

I would never question you westerwind. Just like Elrel, I am captivated by your posts.

Elrel This all hapened some time ago. I was put off by those on here who thought I was being intrusive and not minding my own business. I wonder how much those posters know about the various forms of abuse. Unfortunately I do know a lot about abuses.
I hope the lady with the arm crutches is ok and the abuse never escalates to physical and other methods. I was not happy that the girl was a pupil at a school I know very well and shouting and swearing in uniform. It is a disgrace to the school too.
Abuse is unacceptable to me in any shape or form.

OP I agree with the several posters who say you should have contacted the school. Hopefully there would be a senior member of staff available with appropriate responsibility who had time to listen to you. They would be able to identify the girl and your comments would help them to know what was going on in her life.
They would, I hope, tell you nothing but would be better informed about her relationship with her (possible) mother. I have found schools receptive to reports of pupils' behaviour ranging from playing on a railway line to bullying of a child from another school. They want and need to know.
They also like to know if a pupil in uniform is especially courteous or helpful.
Before someone brings it up:
1) Several passengers told them to get off the tracks and they ran off
2) The bullied girl fled into a small shop and was followed by two separate female passers by who stayed with her until she felt able to get her bus.

In both cases I phoned the schools and a receptive member of senior staff knew exactly who I was talking about.

westerlywind Could that be a scammer?

Could that be a scammer?

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This type of abuse is so awful. When it is a DC who we have loved since before birth it is so much harder than dealing with a nasty husband/partner. The current trend of not smacking children certainly appears to be breeding some uncontrolled children/young adults. I am not sure I actually agree with smacking or physical punishments in schools.

What made me start to surface from the abuse was when people started speaking out on my behalf. I have been in shops when being abused and some passerby made a comment loud enough to hear, or a person said that is no way to speak to anyone and a man spoke out for me at another location. That is when I had it confirmed to me by strangers that what was happening was not right. Sadly I did not get away before things turned physical and I was seen bruised by a nurse who made a report. There have been notes made on NHS files about me being seen getting verbal abuse.

I am grateful to those people who started me thinking my life was wrong and those with the courage to speak out and the nurse who reported their findings. I had a visit from SS but I did not think their suggestion was going to work. I also noted that they did not think it through and ask if there are other vulnerable people around the same person. There are. There should be a record of another event which took place years ago to a very vulnerable person at that time.

The state at the moment is that I am staying well out the way of the abuser. The abuser may realise that I am no longer controllable. All my abuse my now be transferred to another vulnerable and dependant person but SS have not impressed me with their suggested cure. I doubt if they would be any use for this other person.

Contact the School. Most schools have a policy that if you are in uniform you are under School rules & no school would accept this as ok. If they can’t identify then they will do a school or year group assembly on it.

The adult used crutches so was a recognised vulnerable person. Reporting the abuse is not interfering, no one vulnerable through age or illness should be subjected to public stress and humiliation by even their own child.

There is currently a murder case on where a teenage boy killed his stepmother . That behaviour doesn't occur in isolation, it is always part of a history of abuse of some sort. Who knows, someone might have witnessed bad behaviour between the two but never reported it?

The repeated bad language in public is also offensive to most. No one goes shopping in a store to hear a bad mouth. If the police heard it they would have interfered.

There are far too many vulnerable people being made utterly unhappy because they become the verbal punch bags of bullies. There is a clear definition of "vulnerable adults" online, it is not for the observer to decide if they think they are vulnerable.

We have boundaries defined by law and if we see abuse we must report it. It's not for us to "know the people", let the police do that.

In the last couple of years we have coersive abuse, where a family member/s hound and bully another family member almost to death. If the girl is disrespecting her mother because other family members are doing the same then the police can take action. Sometimes the only outward signs are a public spat.

Thanks Cold, that's a very good point.

What I cannot work out is whether the "disabled woman" was actually distressed and in need of help?

I am disabled and had a dd with autism who in the past been known to have the odd afterschool rant when the stress had got too much - I would not be happy at all for some random stranger to unilaterally decide to intervene in my parenting, or worse call schools, social services or the police, because of patronising assumptions that my physical disability means that I am unable to decide what to do myself.

OP makes it sound as if this was the teenage girl’s Mother.
If so, it is hardly “elder abuse” is it?
Arguments always sound worse to outsiders and interference rarely a wise move.
OP could have offered to help I suppose, but I suspect it would not have done any good, possibly even inflamed the situation, teenagers being what they are.

When we witness a volatile family row it is hard to judge the seriousness of the situation. My DGD1, aged 13, had a furious OTT tantrum the other morning. A combination of acne, raging hormones and worry about something in school. My DD2, her mum, took the brunt of DGD's distress. It looked awful! DD1 ignored what she could. To an onlooker it would seem that a child had been thrown out of a car and abandoned.
Mother & daughter were soon reconciled & back to a normal calmish relationship ...until the next time! They love each other dearly!

We don't need to know the back story. Things have changed a lot in the last few years about reporting abuse. It is always better to be safe and report something that alarms us. We are not expected to investigate but we have a duty to protect anyone we see being abused in particular a child, a disabled person or the elderly, anyone vulnerable.

All abusers have a back story, an excuse to why they treat another human being badly and it's not always up to the victim to report it. Why all official advice is to report anything of concern we witness. Lives have been saved that way.

The stress on that poor mother must have been overwhelming. The store might be able to identify them so no need to contact the school. The police would do a welfare check and maybe that would help get them the right support.

Coconut I don't know if they would but, difficult and often impossible, though she is, I do think that she has a difficult life and I don't think that publicity would really help. I have also found that there is blowback to action. When I complained to the police, their reaction was not to deal with the men who were abusing her but to raid her flat which involved smashing her door down. They put my complaint on the computer so it comes up if I ring 101 or 999 and I get a very unpleasant reaction from the operator. Getting publicity would just cause difficulties with the Council down the line.
I spoke to a builder today who said that they keep going to her flat but she doesn't keep the appointments. We are hoping that they are getting the flat in a fit state to be transferred. He said that she was sleeping on a sofa and there is no other furniture in there so we are still a bit hopeful.

I would ring the school and arrange to speak to the person who deals with pupils conduct. This example could be used as a teaching topic on relationships and the girl might well realize that this could possibly be her.

BlueBelle - Alas I am very aware of my past and how things affected me. I could be projecting or I could be seeing the start of what affected me and not wanting it to go on for the lady or be as destructive as it was for me. It started when DC was a teenager at school and I had been in hospital with a serious situation (can kill people) but also leaves a lot of weakness, Since then other conditions have been added to my list and proportionally the abuses increased. I just don't want that for me or anyone if I thought I could do something about it.
Obviously after last night and today I can do nothing about it and such conduct will only increase and affect more people especially as we are supposedly living longer. That is not what I expected at this stage of life.

I do feel that as you stated you'd had 10 years of mental abuse and your confidence shattered you have projected your own fears and memories into this situation Westerly which is understandable but the mother sounds perfectly able to sort her own issues out Nothing you have reported sounds as if the mother was anything other than calm and quiet and taking little notice of the girl The fact she was on crutches is really irrelevant
I was imaging the girl was having a loud melt down screaming and shouting but you say she was swearing and talking in a quiet tone
To be honest swearing unfortunately is seen as ordinary words to many of today’s teens and doesn’t have the shockfactor it does to us In my parents time damn, blast and ruddy were seen as dreadful words now they are mild and barely seen as swearing
I think you meant well but over reacted nothing you have reported makes it a police or social services situation