Man in the park calling a baby sexy - aibu to consider reporting?

I was advised by the NSPCC to report on the basis of very little information. I knew the child’s first name and the estate she lived on (several hundred houses). The police called me and asked various questions to help them identify her. No idea if they managed to track her down or not, but they told me reporting was the right thing to do. In my case it was suspected physical abuse, but I hadn’t actually witnessed abuse, just enough to make me suspicious.

Thank god I have never heard babies or children described like this in my earshot. I don’t honestly know what I would do but I would have liked to have given him an earful (but wouldn’t have).

I have heard several French people call their small children 'sexy', it seems to be equivalent to cute for them. I wonder if this man was also from another culture

WTF? I've never heard of anything like that in my life! How appalling. What a vile person.

Errrr it is NOT the same thing at all. Don’t be ridiculous.

I was at an appointment once and this man and presumably his friend and her babu were there. He kept calling the baby a sexy girl. I thought it was VERY strange

Spot on - while I wouldn't use the term myself, when I was growing up it was common in this kind of environment.

How could she possibly "report" it when she doesn't know the identity of the child, the parents or the man she's concerned about?? Children's Services wouldn't even be able to log it because their systems require them to have basic details like a name and an address.

Yes I find it cringeworthy and agree it does seem to be used by certain people in the same way you might use the word beautiful.
I had an old school friend constantly posting on social media about her sexy boy's (baby and toddler).
I don't think this person would see anything wrong in what they were saying.

One of my uncles used to do this 40 years ago he didn’t mean it. He wasn’t abusive. Just a bit dim.

Peopke who are abusing kids aren’t going to stand in a park and announce it are they?

I understand what you're saying but while it's true that the majority of adults who have a sexual interest in children will go to efforts to conceal it, this isn't always the case. Having worked with both perpetrators and victims for many years i've come across cases where perpetrators have openly made sexualised jokes or comments about children, or even bragged about abusing children. Most of us will have seen that awful footage of Jimmy Saville groping a young girl live on air. Regardless, I do agree that what OP heard at the playground (whilst being inappropriate and vile) is not evidence of sexual abuse.

Phone the NSPCC helpline - they will advise on whether it’s something that can / should be reported.

In working class/council estate communities it was a very common way to refer to a baby when I was young: they don’t mean the baby is literally sexy, it’s just a descriptor that means cute. My gran and women of her generation would call kids ‘bugger legs’ or ‘bugger lugs’ as a term of endearment. Again they don’t literally mean buggering in the original sense. It just means cute.
Peopke who are abusing kids aren’t going to stand in a park and announce it are they?

That is so gross and weird

It can be quite a cultural thing too, I hear it a lot in my day to day work and it makes me shiver.
i just try and say something else to encourage use of better language like ‘oh she’s beautiful’

I know someone who uses the word in the same way someone else would use beautiful. Like a PP says, some people think it’s the highest compliment you can pay. She even uses it to speak about her dogs.

She is thick as shit though, so in her case it’s a total lack of understanding that words can have subtle - or not so subtle - differences in use.

My ex husband’s mum used to say ‘oh look at her flirting’ every time she smiled as a baby. Used to make me want to vomit in my mouth. She was fairly normal too. And very strait laced. But just SUCH a weird thing to say.

My ex husband’s mum used to say ‘oh look at her flirting’ every time she smiled as a baby. Used to make me want to vomit in my mouth. She was fairly normal too. And very strait laced. But just SUCH a weird thing to say.

My ex husband’s mum used to say ‘oh look at her flirting’ every time she smiled as a baby. Used to make me want to vomit in my mouth. She was fairly normal too. And very strait laced. But just SUCH a weird thing to say.

I am mid 50’s and can remember adults when I was a kid using really awful language. Any girl even remotely showing her knickers by accident…. dirty girl, Jezebel, the list was endless.

Report what? Idiocy? To who, with what information?

I took DS to a christening at 5 weeks and a woman asked “who’s this sexy beast?” I thought then and still do that it was such a weird thing to say about a tiny baby.

I’d like to think I’d have said something at the time, to the person saying it and the parent TBH. If I didn’t feel threatened by it.
It’s really a very odd and inappropriate thing to say to a baby, and the poor child on the receiving end completely oblivious but potentially with many years of this ahead.
The man needed telling and I hope at some point someone does exactly that.
SS will do nothing at all, since no details of who the child is and where they live.

My own father who I now have very little contact with (due to other things, but this didn't help) once called my baby a Tart when she was about 6 months old. She had her legs in the air or something and I was very sharp in my response to him. No idea how anyones mind works like that. I don’t see how anyone can link a baby with any sexual word. It’s so upsetting.