‘I’ll hurt you’: Mom hides recording device in nonverbal son’s clothing to catch alleged abuse, but cops end up arresting her

A concerned mother who allegedly hid a recording device inside her nonverbal seven-year-old son’s clothing has reportedly been charged. Skye Cooper, who lives in Victoria, Australia, believed that her son was being abused by staff at the school he was attending and launched her own investigation to catch the perpetrator.

Cooper decided to sew the recording device into her son’s clothes after he came home from school with what she thought were bruises on his arms. Her son, who has epilepsy, global developmental delay and severe language delay, had started attending Churchill Primary School in February of 2025, and soon began acting differently, according to the mother.

“He would not get out of the car; he started screaming, he started begging for me,” Cooper told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). “He just got more and more emotionally distressed … [and] would not be left in a room with anyone other than me. He was traumatized.”

While Cooper said that she met with school staff multiple times to discuss the problem, she claimed that she did not feel as if her concerns were really being addressed by the school. She also claimed that a disability advocate advised her to sew a recording device into her son’s clothes.

Skye Cooper claimed to hear something no parent wants to hear

When she listened to one of the recordings back, she heard something that seemingly confirmed her suspicions: a voice that allegedly told her son, “You hurt me, I’ll hurt you.”

After that, Cooper decided to pull her son out of school to protect him from the alleged abuse. However, that was far from the end of it for the mother, as her secret recording would later be reported to the police, leading Cooper to be charged with Regulation of Installation, Use and Maintenance of a Listening Device as per ABC.

Cooper told the news outlet that she was shocked: “I was trying to protect my child,” she said. “I just couldn’t make sense of it, that … the tables have been turned on me.”

The mother is now receiving legal advice over what her next steps should be. The police have offered her the choice to admit to the charges and make a donation of $300 AUD (roughly $213) to a suitable charity in exchange for not receiving a criminal record.

Cooper has since also started a petition to remove the school aide, who she says took responsibility and apologized to her for the threatening statement made to her son (although the aide maintained that she did not recall the exchange).

Meanwhile, the disability advocate who suggested Cooper use a recording device claimed that for some parents, using a secret device to record is the only recourse they have.