This testimony from a parent makes for very hard reading. The boy is clearly easily led, and after being a victim of ‘sexting’ he then became a victim of gender ideology. This is what a safeguarding failure looks like.
My son has autism, ADHD, epilepsy, mental health problems, suicidal ideation and learning difficulties. He finds it difficult to keep friends, he makes friends and then falls out with them. My son is easily led to fit into friendship groups. He is vulnerable and has been encouraged via social media to take inappropriate photos of himself. He was told that his first girlfriend would not love him if he didn’t take a picture of himself. He did this and it was spread all over social media, they also bullied him opening an Instagram account just to do this. They put pictures of him up which they had photoshopped to make him look fat as an awful. The police got involved and all the children were spoken to and the appropriate action taken. Due to this incident the police have recorded my son as vulnerable on their system. I have also found messages on my son’s phone encouraging my son to transition from which looked like an older person rather than a child. I told his social worker about this and she stated as we had accessed his phone without his permission there is nothing we can do as he is 16. My son already has mental health issues and these are being made worse by these situations.
My son was encouraged to go to the local TAGS group, he went for a few sessions but did not like it and did not go back. I feel that these groups encourage rather than help our children with autism who are already struggling to fit into society.
My son finds friendships, communications on social media really difficult, he has horrific meltdowns when he cannot cope. He is confused about his sexuality and at the moment says he is gender fluid, then he says the next minute he is gay. At High School there was a group of girls that were encouraging him to wear a skirt at school. They brought skirts in for him to wear and encouraged him to go into the toilet and change into it. When he came out, they cheered, which in my eyes is encouraging him. They also gave him tights to wear with the skirt. My son then went into his maths intervention where the teacher cheered also when he saw my son wearing the skirt. He wore the skirt for a few weeks for certain lessons not all of them. This shows to myself and his mental health worker that he is maybe wearing it for certain lessons where these girls were to please them. He wasn’t leaving the house wearing the skirts and tights too he was changing into it for different lessons. School contacted ourselves and asked us to write a letter saying why we did not want our son to wear a skirt for school which we did. It was affecting our younger son as he is at the same school. He had groups of children queueing to ask him why his brother is wearing a skirt. They also asked my son to write a letter to say why he wants to wear the skirt, he did not do this and stopped wearing the skirt. When we spoke to school about this situation, we aired our concerns about these girls encouraging him, schools’ response was these girls are lovely they would not do this they are supporting your son. My son was then encouraged then to wear a dress by these girls to the prom and to go to one of their houses to get ready. I had already bought a suit for him to wear. School contacted me to say they have offered to fund a dress for him. I really did not know what to say to them at that point as I was dumbfounded. I stated to school that I had bought a suit and they said they did not realise this. I also reiterated the lengths I had gone to, to buy the clothes for the prom as he will not leave the house as he cannot cope with shops. They again mentioned that these girls were lovely and would not lead him on. The year leader then mentioned that my son was going to transition at college. This was the first we had heard of this. My son did not want to attend the prom it is too much for him and he did not attend in the end. These girls were trying to encourage him to go and wear a dress. We were so relieved when he did not go. My youngest son who attends the same High School was taken to one side by my autistic son’s year leader stating that school are supporting my son with his transition and they know that your mum and dad are not happy about this but we are still supporting your brother.
We have found out recently from my youngest son who still attends the High School that there are posters in all the toilets and corridors saying it’s okay to be a girl if you are a boy and vice versa it’s okay to be boy if you are a girl. He stated that a company came in to do a talk in assembly about pronouns, he mentioned the Z one and about the 100’s of sexualities giving them colours. In my opinion this is encouraging vulnerable children especially if they are autistic or have other difficulties.
Schools need to do more to help children with autism and sexuality confusion, instead of encouraging them they need to find out if they are being coerced into changing their sexuality to fit in with friendship groups due to their social and communication difficulties. This is social contagion.
Mother of a Son
