What to do when your child is falsely accused?

Parent Cafe
1

Background information:

We live in “master planned” subdivision, we built our house more than 11 years ago, since then most of the houses near us have changed ownership at least once, some two or three times. We home schooled our three children until 9th grade at which point we gave our children the option of how they would like to continue their education. Our oldest opted to go to an out of district, top rated high school 45 minutes away, not something that is common or easily accessible to other kids in our area. My two younger sons followed her in her decision and had the high stats to get in to the same out of district high school. When they were younger their friends were other area homeschoolers but when they started high school most of their friends were from the high school they attended. They really didn’t have much contact with “neighborhood kids” we are friendly with our adjoining neighbors but never had much contact with other new neighbors, most with much younger children.

My youngest (16 years old) has the job of getting the mail 3 or 4 times a week from our mail box (community style). To do this, he carries a messenger bag, crosses the street to get on the side walk, goes two houses to get to the corner, turns west, proceeds on the sidewalk past about 6 more houses to get to the mailboxes and reverses his route on the way home.

My 18 year graduated high school this week and we have a house full of elderly relatives and had to do some major shifting of sleeping arrangements so they didn’t have deal with stairs. This meant DH and I were in DD’s room upstairs that faces the street. Sunday night every time I managed to doze off I was awakened by loud music and very loud voices (a women screaming) the windows were actually vibrating! and by midnight I was done! I got dressed and walked outside, went around the block to find grown adults blasting music, playing with bouncy balls and ridding kids scooters in their driveway. I ask them to please turn their music down since it was midnight on a Sunday night and was told it was a told “it’s a holiday weekend” so noise resections didn’t apply. I said if they didn’t quite down I’d call the sheriff’s office and they turned of the music. I thought this would be the end…

This is where things went crazy…

They asked where I lived and I told them, they said my “grandchild” had threatened their daughter 6 months ago. I informed then I had no “grandchildren” and they must be mistaken and my children have no contact with with their children as they don’t even go to school in the same school district. The women replied, “yes, we KNOW you home school your kids” hmm… my two oldest have graduated after spending four years at a public high school and my youngest has already completed two years at the same public school, none of my kids have been home schooled in recent years.

She went on to say that 6 months ago my son stopped her daughter while on her bike and threatened her and “scared the crap out of her” and that they called the cops and the cops did a “door to door search” for my son. They know it was my son because he was barefoot and carrying a “purse”. Her DH went on to add that my son was “clearly drunk” at the time. Really? The only time ds gets the mail is when I make him go get it (a personal family issue - he hates this chore) so I would have been home and I’d know if he’d been drinking, not that he has ever shown ANY indication of drug or alcohol use what so ever. We were never contacted in this “door to door search” and we’ve lived here for 11 years and our ajoining neighbors all know our kids.

If she thought my son was threatening her child, why in God’s name would she wait 6 months to bring it up to me? She obviously knows where we live. I did call the Sheriff’s department and they have NO RECORD of anyone reporting a child being “threatened” on our street or their street, I also asked them to look up any reports from their address and their neighbors’ addresses and they still couldn’t find any report. The sheriff joked while running the records search that the neighbors must be drunk and if they had been called there would be a report on file even if they decided the report was baseless.

After they made these crazy accusations, my DH showed up because he was worried about what was taking me so long, as we were leaving, I was explaining the accusations they were making about our son (still trying to wrap my brain around it!) and the crazy wife’s dh said I was being “petty” for telling my dh what his dw said and he had backed up!

At first I thought I’d just wait a few days, after our guests leave and I have a chance to catch up on sleep (I am very sleep deprived for many reasons and Sunday night was really my only chance to catch up on sleep for another several days) and then go over to with youngest son to meet with them. I’d have DS apologize to their dd if he somehow, unbeknownst to him, manage to frighten her. (Which I don’t believe ever happened!) We will also ask for a copy of the police the report (which we don’t believe exists) and urge them to contact us if they ever have a problem with us or our children in the future. Now I’m thinking it’s better to get our HOA involved.

Plan B is to have our lawyer send them a letter about making false accusations. I have no idea about the legality of this and realy don’t want to pay to find out that this is a “they said” “we said” situatation and nothing can be done legaly.

Plan C is posting the situation on the neighborhood social media and I really don’t to do that but I hate that I know they are telling people that my son did something he didn’t do!

Any other ideas? I feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole - this is just so crazy!

I have no disire to be friends with these people but at the same time we have no plans on moving and I don’t want people to make false accusations against my children. I also don’t want younger kids in the neighborhood to be affraid when the see my son going down the sidewalk to get the mail because of the lies these people are spreading.

2

De-escalate.

Drunk people and trashy people who feel defensive say crazy things. Unless this family brings it up again or you find there actually was a police report, let it go. Visiting them, sending a letter or posting on social media will add gas to their spark; any one of those actions says “I see your crazy and raise you one!” Starve their attempted fire of fuel and let it die instead.

Given that this crazy family may still be riled up, I’d even change up which kid gets the mail for a few months. Maybe you even get the mail. But don’t send your son past this house with his “purse” for a while. Again, de-escalate and do not engage.

You can’t win neighbor wars. You can only hope to avoid them. De-escalate.

3

Ditto

4

I agree with @milee30 . You can’t rationalize irrational behavior. Stay far away from these neighbors.

5

I agree entirely, and exactly the word that came to me: de-escalate. Don’t have your son talk to the girl and he should not apologize in any way!

Avoid them. Give them a chance to save face and back off their claim. I’m guessing they regret having ever said it.

6

I don’t think any of the plans are needed. The door to door search story sounds made up and the neighbors seem nuts. Are you very involved in your neighborhood? You might discuss the nutty accusations among your friends in the neighborhood. They might have their own stories to tell.

7

I totally agree with the other posters. They were drunk and were mad at you when you said to turn down the music so they made up the story. They tried to walk it back when they realized you were telling your DH. You already verified with the sheriff that it was false. Now is the time for you to just to just let it go. Don’t do plan a or plan b or plan c. Just let it go.

8

I agree. Ignore it and don’t have your son get the mail for awhile. You or your H or one of you with your son should do it for awhile

I have crazy neighbors. I rant and rave to H and ignore them.

9

Plan D - Ignore them, totally. DO NOT pursue the options you have mentioned. You can document it and write down your observations somewhere but otherwise disengage.

I really think it will blow over. They were likely drinking and were ticked you called them out on the noise.

In the future, just call the cops about a noise disturbance. There really is no benefit to trying to handle things yourself with people you don’t know from a hole in the wall. The other mistake was continuing to engage them once they brought the issue up. Just walk away from things like that in the future. It takes two to make drama. You always have the option of not engaging.

10

Also, I think it’s not a good idea to threaten to call in a complaint. Call in a complaint if you need to, but letting people know it was you just invites retaliation.

11

Why would you have your son apologize for something he didn’t do? That’s a bad lesson to teach him. Avoid these people and don’t broadcast baseless accusations that have been made against your son. I don’t think I’d send him to get the mail anymore either, at least for awhile.

I can understand you’re being upset, but midnight on a holiday weekend isn’t super late. I also understand asking them to turn the music down, but threatening to call the cops on your neighbors isn’t something I’d expect to go well. How did you expect them to react?

12

I agree with the advice that’s been given and thank people for the advice of “de-escalating” I think that’s what I will do (even though it’s very hard for me to do, it’s hard to resist going all “mamma bear”) but I will document things with the HOA in case there are future issues. The noise level was excessive for any time and clearly violated our county noise ordinances, we aren’t even on the same block and our windows were rattling! I only threaten to call the sheriff after they balked at turning the music down, I wasn’t even asking them to turn it off, just down. I surely didn’t expect them to react by making up a bunch of lies about my son. Refuse to turn their music down, call me names but never would I expect them to make up such outlandish tales about my son.

In talking with the sheriff, I asked if I should have just called to report the noise instead of going over in person and he said they really prefer neighbors to try work things out before calling the authorities as the report would be a matter of public record and the neighbors would find out who called them in and things could get worse later. But if it happens in the future I will just call the sheriff’s office.

The irony is I’m pretty sure they were among those complaining about “construction noise” a half mile away at 6:00 AM this morning:-)

I’m very active in the larger community, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, our church, the local food pantry but not so much in the neighborhood. The neighborhood has turned into very sport focused, local school focused group. I recently tried to support a local sports team when they had a fund raising on-line auction advertised on our community social media group, I bid on an item an won. When I went to collect the item I was questioned about my association to the team, I told them I was just a neighbor that saw their post and wanted to support the local youth group - I was really made to feel like I was an interloper, I won’t make that mistake again! I thought the point of community fund raising was getting people other than just parents involved.

13

I understand not wanting to call the sheriff about a noise complaint but I’d be very leery of confronting anybody about anything who appeared to be drinking to excess. Riding kids scooters at midnight would be a clue here.

14

“I will document things with the HOA in case there are future issues”

Personally, to me that sounds like you are still looking to escalate. I’d take notes on what happened but do you think it is best to bring it to the HOA?

15

My HOA wouldn’t have gotten involved with something like that anyway. They are more about issues related to your actual house more so than the people in it.

I tried to complain to neighbors about noise one time and regretted it for years (they were drunk as well). I know they police always say handle it yourself first -but after that incident I just call. If it is just a one time thing I try really hard to ignore it -even though it makes me furious when people are so selfish.

16

Sometimes you just have to know your neighbors and gauge what their reaction is likely to be. Last year we had a big, loud party with lots of people drinking. Eventually one of the neighbors called because they had friends over and couldn’t even have a conversation because of the noise level. We turned the music way down and the next day I brought our 3 closest neighbors apology gift baskets. The neighbor actually apologized for calling (!) but it was obvious to me we were in the wrong.

17

@Sue22 I am going to pick on you here because you are brave enough to speak up. Did you have loud music? I just don’t get loud music at home. Seems like you would have to shout over it.

18

My advice is to do nothing. If you have a noise complaint call the police. Do not engage your neighbor or HOA.

19

I agree with all that you should de-escalate. i especially think you should NOT bring your S over to even apology for “accidentally” scaring neighbor kid, as that will read as an admission of guilt and might re-escalate the accusation.

20

Bringing this to the HOA is the polar opposite of de-escalating.

What exactly do you expect the HOA to do with this information? The best, least harmful scenario would be if they just gossip about it and document this in the meeting minutes that are accessible to all - spreading it all over the neighborhood without solving a thing (highly likely). The worst scenario would be that they get in the middle of it, bringing you all in to talk about the situation - which still will accomplish nothing, will not just spread it all over the neighborhood but will inflame the crazy neighbors as well.

Bottom line - drunk people said some (probably) untrue things directly to you in the middle of the night. You are insulted. Nobody else was harmed, your son is unaware and isn’t harmed, no other neighbors have been drawn into any conflict.

If you engage by further discussing this with the other family or with anyone else, everything changes. By drawing other people in, you’re upping the stakes, you’re increasing the probability that people will pick sides (and guaranteed you will not like everybody’s choice), and you’re making the neighborhood uncomfortable for your kids.

You appear to really need to be right here. But if you leave this alone, you are still right - mostly because there is no issue as far as most people are concerned. If you bring others into it and stir up the conflict with the other family, other busybody neighbors and possibly the authorities, you can only lose. It will not be as simple as people listening to you and saying “yep, those other people are crazy, how can we help you destroy them and bolster your and your son’s reputation?” Instead, others are just as likely to side with the other family, question things you have said and done, keep their kids away from yours just to be sure, etc. You have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by not dropping it.