A paedo approached me when I was 3

[Mumoftwinsandasingleton]

I remember the hot sunny day, I was playing with my sister in a large field nearby our home. A man appeared out of nowhere and began to check under my skirt. He said I had pretty knickers on. I remember being happy by the compliment. My sister (aged 5) was wearing trousers. The man took my knickers and said he just needed to get something special from his van. My sister immediately said we shouldn't wait and that we should run back home. I felt an obligation to obey but my sister began to run home, I followed and suddenly felt panic. We told our mum everything (she was sleeping and had no idea we had left the house). My mum was really angry with me for wanting to obey a paedophile. She told me to get another lot of knickers on. I was very upset and apologetic. I was only 3 but this day sticks out as a strong memory. The topic came up once again when I was about 9 and my sister 11. My mum was still angry with me all those years later. I cried. We never brought it up since. I really hate this memory

I wasn't aware that CRB checks were made at that time. I do remember a social worker talking to us without our mum present. Mum had briefed us to say we were happy, safe and loved otherwise we would be taken to live with another family. Mum was scared I would mess things up. I almost did as I was so unbelievably chatty. My sister was naturally taciturn. When I was sick (also aged 3), I was kept at home and not allowed to go to my nursery. My mum needed to go out for medicine and had given me a set of instructions including not answering the phone. For whatever reason, the phone rang and I answered. It was school wondering where I was. I told them I was at home and had been sick. They asked me to pass the phone to my mum and I casually mentioned I was at home alone. My mum was so upset when she came home and I mentioned what had happened!

I'm so incredibly sorry that you went through SA. That's an awful thing to have in your memory. You were so young and vulnerable. It's disgusting how messed up men can be. I'm not a man hater but I definitely feel they get away with too much sexual indulgence. Porn being so freely available is worsening fantasies and sexual desire- making men even more horny than they are naturally designed to be

My gran used to leave her dd2 under 4 at home twice a day while she biked my mum to school a couple of miles away and used to tell her to stay in the window and watch out for her. This was the early 1950s. She used to talk about it and would feel awful that she had done that but her alternative was walking them both up and down . One of the dangers in the home were coal fires burning away. when I was young in the early 70s social services were sent out to my mum by my brother's school on the grounds she was a single parent.
She was a wonder woman home maker wallpapering at the same time as baking fresh bread and teacakes, every day milk puddings and cakes and home cooked meals piled with home grown veg. I think they had expected a vice den. On the back of it I was given a full time place at the school nursery from age 3 not so she could work but so I had a break from the fatherless home environment
But from age 5 I would walk to school and back on my own and I was never asked where I was going or doing. Went out and came home when it got dark totally roaming free on bikes and having occasional scrapes with chancing perverts.
I was a totally different parent in the 1990s/00s. But my kids still had their own similar encounters with such creeps. But They had a name for it; paedos and nonces.
I remember the attitude changing in comedy in the 1980s with people like Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson using the label Perv quite freely and all of a sudden we could connect that with all the creeps you had encountered the teachers that leaned over you from behind and had octopus hands - pervert. Dirty old men were then seen for what they were like Benny Hill once seemed into your living room on prime time TV now we could just shout Perv.

CRB checks came in in 2002 and demand heightened because the school caretaker murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. He already had a large number of accusations of sexual assault and rape against him with young women and girls as young as 11.

Changing the subject a bit, when we were young we lived in a ground floor flat, and all the kids from the block played out in front of our flat. Many's the time my mum came out and saw that a child was underdressed for the weather; mostly they had no pants on. She would kindly help them into an old pair of our knickers. I often wonder what the parents thought when their knickerless child came home be-knickered!
Mercifully, I don't remember pervs in that yard though. Probably too much danger of getting caught by a mum keeping her eye on us.
My grandfather told me of a vigilante group he and the neighbouring Dads got together to patrol the local park, after some kids reported "funny business" going on in the shelters. That would have been the 40's and 50s, so clearly interfering with kids is sadly nothing new.

I’m really sorry your mum didn’t support you op

Its not to excuse bad parenting but these things were not spoken about, girls were seen as teasing men if their knickers were on show (I can remember being told not to do cartwheels in the park and only on the garden) and some men couldn’t help themselves (even though it was accepted as wrong)

many of our mums and grandmothers would have had their abuse ignored too this is what they had been thought or learnt through the issues not been takes about just strange warnings that didn’t make sense of over friendly men or men with wondering hands

thankfully attitudes have shifted we need to talk about it we need people not to carry the shame and guilt of their abuse and for us all to be aware how these mainly men operate

as a society teenage girls are still viewed my many as being sexually provocative. A colleague who I once had a lot of respect for was telling me that he would not be allowing his daughter to wear a short skirt and long black socks to school as he doesn’t want her to look like a prostitute wtf 🤬