Mum catches teen son bullying a girl for nude pictures

A DEVASTATED mum has reached out for advice after she saw a string of manipulative messages her teenage son sent to a girl bullying her to send nude pictures.

A MOTHER has turned to the internet for advice after witnessing a series of manipulative messages sent by her 14-year-old son, pressuring a girl to send him nude pictures.

The mum reached out about the situation on parenting site Mumsnet, detailing the string of disturbing messages her son sent that she said made her “feel sick”.

Writing under the username simplypinky she explained that she has access to her son’s Instagram account so she can check up on his activity, something he knows she does.

She said sometimes she catches him swearing or uploading pictures she doesn’t like, but never anything really bad — until recently.

READ: The disturbing new cyber-bullying trend

“Tonight I check in, I’m surprised to see he’s text chatting on Instagram at 11pm as the rule is not to have his phone in his room," the post read.

“What I witnessed for the next hour was my son bullying what seems to be his girlfriend to send him pics of herself. I feel sick. I froze. I didn’t know what to do.

“I never imagined him pressuring someone to do such a thing.”

The mum reached out to people on Mumsnet for advice. Picture: Mumsnet/Supplied

According to the post it was obvious the girl didn’t want to but her son manipulated her by saying “you would if you loved me”, “I just want to go to bed happy” and “don’t you trust me?”.

Eventually the girl gave in and sent through a picture of her cleavage. At this point the mum screenshotted the conversation and confiscated her son’s phone, telling him that they would be talking about it later.

The stunned mum asked other Mumsnet users for advice on how to handle the situation, but later added that she was worried about getting the police and school involved because she didn’t want to ruin his “good record at school”.

“I’m so torn. He has such a good record at school. I don’t want to ruin it. I want to get the school and police involved but I’m worried he will be stuck with this on his record. Living with autism can make things very difficult,” she said.

“But I do understand how this poor girl might be feeling. I just don’t know. There have been no more messages. I think if she was worried she might of said more but I don’t know.”

The boy was using the messaging component on Instagram to pressure the girl into sending pictures. Picture: iStock

A flood of Mumsnet users were quick to tell the mum that the police needed to be contacted and to think about what she would want to happen if it was her daughter in that situation.

“You say of (sic) this was the other way round you would call the police, why can’t you call the police on your son? for them to speak to him as what he is doing is very wrong and that poor girl, at least if he speaks to the police now things might not escalate with him doing it to other girls as he gets older,” one user said.

Many also pointed out that she should delete the picture of the girl as it is a criminal offence to have explicit images of an underage person.

“Please delete the cleavage screenshot immediately op, you could get into trouble for having that,” one user wrote. “No advice about your son I’m afraid other than his behaviour is disgusting and evidence of a real disrespect for women. I’d go through him with every punishment I could think of.”

Mumsnet users were quick to give their take on the situation. Picture: Mumsnet/Supplied

Some of the other users advised the mum to contact the girl directly to assure her the photo had been erased, get in contact with the girl’s parents and inform the school about what was happening.

There were multiple people who criticised the mum for not intervening sooner and instead just watching the conversation unfold.

One wrote: “I don’t understand why you didn’t barge into his room WHILST he was bullying an underage girl to send him photos. Why didn’t you intervene before she humiliated herself and before he potentially came into possession of illegal photos given she’s a child sending potentially nude photos!!”

“So you sat and watched him bully someone for an hour just so you would have evidence to talk to him about it??? I’ve never heard anything so dreadful, you should have intervened as soon as it started to avoid that poor girl being bullied and sexually harassed by your abusive son,” another added.

The thread has since been removed from the website over “privacy concerns”.