Imagine owning land in the country, and you don’t really use all of it. If you were looking at the security camera footage and noticed a teenager sitting on the ground on part of your property, would you leave him alone as long as he wasn’t doing any damage, or would you call the police?

In this story, one couple is in this exact situation, but they disagree on how to handle it.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for not reporting a trespasser, against my wife’s wishes?

So me (45M) and my wife (49F) live in the country side in the UK.

We have a field and some wooded areas on our property. The wooded section is right next to a public footpath but is separated by a small fence with (I’ll admit old and dried up) anti-climb paint.

Now the issue is we have cameras and I’ve noticed a teenager (maybe 17-19M) with a dog regularly hops the fence, walks through the wooded part and likes to sit In a small grassy clearing.

The kid and dog aren’t really bothering anything.

I honestly don’t have much of an issue with it. The dog is well behaved, returns when he calls them and likes to just lay by the kid and receive fuss.

The kid himself just sits on his phone or sometimes brings a book or two and reads. If the kids does smoke or drink he’s respectful enough not to do it on my property.

I don’t watch him on the cameras but I check them every now and them and see him.

The kid must be dealing with something and need a place to be alone.

Once he came alone and just sat there screaming and crying for about an hour (Checked back an hour later and he was still there, still crying).

He’s respectful and this place seems like a quiet space he can go to so I don’t see any harm in letting him.

My wife disagrees.

Here’s his wife’s point of view…

She thinks we should be calling the police and reporting the trespassing.

When I point out the kid isn’t doing any harm, picks up after the dog and it’s not like we use this area, she says it doesn’t matter, trespassing is trespassing.

She won’t report it if I don’t want to but she still thinks I’m an idiot and a jerk for not. And she wants me to but I won’t.

I get where my wife is coming from, but the kids not hurting the land or anyone. So AITA?

I agree with the husband. The kid isn’t doing anything to harm the land and clearly needs a place where he can be alone with his feelings. It would be too bad to take that away from him.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person agrees with leaving the boy alone.

Here’s a suggestion for what he could tell his wife.

Someone who grew up in the UK countryside shares their experience.

Another person urges him to leave the boy alone.

He’s really not doing anything wrong.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.