To email the school re a man at the bus stop???

[JumpingThroughHoops]

Well I have emailed, so no AIBU about it really

Yesterday (Friday) 20 mins after primary school ended I saw a man at the bus stop outside the school. The bus stop usually has a large amount of teenaged girls waiting from the secondary opposite.

He was by himself indicating a bus had just been; there were no other adults or children around.

BUT. Earlier that morning the same man was at the primary sports day. He wasn't with a lady (for that read wife or partner), no reason why he should have been really, he might have been a single dad. BUT. He was chatting with another father, or rather he was listening as the other father waxed lyrical, pointing out his children and all their little friends, getting them to wave over.

Two months previous, I was on a train and he sat opposite me, with a French lady with two small girls (maybe 3 and 5). I assumed they were together, he knew their names. He carried their suitcase. I assumed the stilted conversation was because the lady didn't have English as a first language. I also assumed they were together because he was teasing one of the girls until she screamed in frustration. He was also asking lots of questions, but not in an obvious way, such as "when do you go home?" What are you doing tomorrow?" "is your Dad missing you?" - which of course I was oblivious to on the train because it was general chit chat.

See him at sports day and think it's that annoying wind up merchant again "oh, I didn't know there were little French girls at this school". There aren't any little French girls at the school and they were too young to be in the KS3 sports day anyway.

See him at the bus stop and think "hang on a min" gut instinct kicks in, something just isn't right here.

So I've emailed school with a full description, a set of circumstances and no accusations, because he wasn't actually doing anything suspiciously.

*disclaimer, I don't see a paedophile behind every tree, but I am a believer in gut instinct. I don't know why the red flags shot up when I saw him again. Probably because he was a bit of charmer, again not in an obvious way, he was just very good at ferreting out information from people.

Probably an entirely coincidental set of innocent circumstances and he is a listener rather than a talker.

Would you have emailed the school?

Janni,
Tbh I am struggling to see how you could have assumed my post was in direct response to yours but, for the sake of accuracy, it wasn't.

My view was that the assumption that one can spot a peedo via 'mothers instinct' is bollocks. I said that view was dimwitted and damaging and that view remains.

Mothers instinct is just shorthand for 'i am not sure about this so I will stick a label on it that makes sense to me'.

I can kind of understand it though - how comforting the thought that we would spot something amiss. It makes us feel safe, immune to the idea that our children may be vulnerable like everyone elses - we, with our super tuned mum sense, would spot the threat.

I recall really clearly when the female nursery worker who had been abusing children was identified. The posters lining up to say how dodgy she look was startlingly long. Presumeably the parents who had trusted her to just do her job were lacking mothers instinct?

It is so tempting isn't it?.... 'I would spot a peedo- my children are safe'.

Sadly it just makes children more vulnerable rather than less. Our desire to ignore warning signs is increased because we have laden 'mother who stupidly missed the creepy weird peedo' on top of everything else.
Look at any thread where a hapless distraught mother battles with admitting the situation and you see how happily we want to believe we can, we should, spot a danger.

We just chose an arrogant, rather stupid and baseless belief in 'instinct' rather than admit the incredibly scary truth that our children are vulnerable and we just have to believe that our close attention and love is the best we have.

But she was not simply acting on instinct was she? She saw the man on 3 separate occasions befriending people with children or hanging out close to children. You are right to say that he may have had completely innocent explanations for all of these but the OP did not simply see him and say "mmm, he looks like a paedo" for no reason whatsoever.

Pagwatch- another excellent post, you explain exactly what is wrong with this dangerous attitude towards abuse

It wasn't just instinct though!, the op made the right decision based on the number of times she has seen him alone with other peoples children and the fact he could have been at a sports day which he may have had no right to be at.

And what if no one ever said anything to anyone because they didn't have facts..... and then you hear that something happened??

I can't live with what if and would, and I do, report anything that seems out of place.

FWIW my husband also agrees with the OP.

I don't think the OP's attitude constitutes a "dangerous attitude" towards abuse at all. In no way was she simply saying that this man "looked dodgy" just by looking at him. He caught her attention because of his behaviour which is surely the important point.

The problem with "gut instinct" is that it is no more likely to be right than wrong, take for instance people's "gut instinct" on what sex child pregnant women are likely to give birth to. There's a 50/50 chance, but if someone then gets it right they assume it was their "instinct" rather than pure chance.

"He caught her attention because of his behaviour which is surely the important point."

yes but the behaviour has been... being on a train, being at a bus stop and being at a sports day.

[sigh]

But it is dangerous. Because it constitutes no more than 'this man was socially out of place'.
Most pedophiles succeed because they absoloutely fit in.
We watch the misfits and the oddities. They are usually not the problem.

Like I said, when we have a preconcieved idea of 'danger', we are blind to what it really looks like.

Well it is fairly safe to presuppose that someone who abuses children seeks out opportunities to be amongst children and befriend them.

I can't live with what if and would, and I do, report anything that seems out of place.

That's fine, it's just who and how you report it to.

But it is also true pagwatch that in many cases when stories of abuse come out, as they did in a school near where I work, many of the people who worked there had had concerns, felt uncomfortable with the person involved but did not say anything for fear of being wrong.

Cherries, it was me who mentioned the Chris Morris programme and I stand by that. Not because of the wariness the OP felt but because of the way she acted upon it (which was the question she asked after all) because it was a potentially harmful over-reaction and imo I suspect based on paedosteria more than anything else.

You say she didn't go on gut instinct, so what did she go on exactly? A guy talking to a parent he appears to know, attending a sports day talking to a parent he appears to know and waiting at a bus stop.

I, for one, have considered 'what if she was right?' and I think she should have dug around more, perhaps talking to him or the dad he was talking to at the sports day, rather than fire off a potentially dangerous email.

s'cuse strange grammar in last post.

tbh I'm still not sure how I should have written that.

I have to leave the thread.

Whatever it may look like, however argumentative, my primary concern is that children are left vulnerable because of the astonishing level of ignorance around the real nature of abuse.

I don't mean to offend anyone. I just wish more sense was applied. Our children would be safer.

Goodnight all.

many of the people who worked there had had concerns

Yes, they worked there, so presumably their concerns were based on behaviour at close proximity over a long period of time, not three fleeting sightings which can be easily and rationally explained.

Gibbous- agree. There are various ways to deal with an 'unsettling' situation. Firing off a potentially devastating email is not one of them.

What exactly is an argumentalist?

but the point I was making is that they did not voice their concerns to anybody because they were afraid of being wrong and as a result of nobody saying anything several children were abused. I agree though, if I was the OP talking to the man at the Sport's day would have been illuminating.

Always follow your gut.

If you took a surreptitious photo of this man, and showed him to the local police, I am very very sure that they would know him. IYKWIM.

We lived in a city when the children were small, which had a little concrete paddling pool that the council filled up in summer. They would empty and clean it every evening, and refill the next day so it was always clean water. All the mums used to take their kids on a hot day, and the kids would paddle in the water. Often it was easier just to take their t shirt and nappy off and watch them paddle. Hard to imagine in this weather, but it was a lovely summer. It was so lovely, such a treat.

All the streets used to fill up with working vans (BT, elec. etc) of men, watching them. Aaaah, sweet! I thought to myself. All these chaps, thinking about their own childhoods/kids, watching the children having fun. I talked to one, and he was a bit embarrassed, uneasy.
Until I saw the frankly wierd, with their zoom lenses, taking pictures of the children. And they looked wierdos, beards, unkempt etc. That made me a bit uneasy.

Then the police came, and the council stopped filling it.

I was looking at paedophiles, and I didn't even know it. Apart from the wierdo w the camera after which the police acted, they were ordinary working men.

So same man around more than three entirely different sets of kids??? Trust your gut.

Beards...

So same man around more than three entirely different sets of kids???

He was waiting for a bus on the third occasion. Is it now dodgy if you miss your bus and wait for the next one, just because the bus stop is near a school?

those subtle paedos with their high-spec photography equipment and beards standing there taking photos of naked kids.