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?

None mintyy none at all

Jumping the reason why Peter Sutcliffe was interviewed nine times by the police had absolutely nothing to do with gut instinct but links to forensic evidence. The fact police let him go goes against the gut instinct argument if anything tbf.

*sparks if you research my posts I'm usually bang on the rights of NR fathers.

No -one queried the rights of a NR (male) parents to be at a school event. I have been at pains to point out I have no valid reason for my "flags" to be raised. But they are, I can't help that.*

TBF my comment related more to how general society acts rather than you individually.

IMHO you've at best jumped the gun. And if you had true conviction in your actions you wouldn't have started this thread.

But hey, it's done. Let's hope their isn't a sinister conclusion.

sparks you are just gender aligning yourself for attention and sympathy.

sparks you are just gender aligning yourself for attention and sympathy.

Attention and sympathy? For what exactly?

I can assure you i require neither.

Good to see you aren't the sort to jump to conclusions....

Is he?

sparks you are just gender aligning yourself for attention and sympathy

I didn't get that in the slightest. But then maybe my gut instinct isn't working as well as it should!

I didn't read sparks post that way...

Oh no, he definitely was, just like that bloke at the bus stop was clearly preying on young girls.

How on earth is sparks 'gender aligning for attention and sympathy'?

Come on op, explain....

Gender alignment is very important ... 'specially when wearing speedos and the like.

budgie smugglers - a whole new thread

Now, if you were emailing t'school about that it would definitely raise a few eyebrows!

If the email puts your mind at rest YANBU but I hope you know that our gut instincts can also sometimes be very wrong.

I think it's impossible to judge the 'reasonableness' of a sense of gut instinct based on the stark words on a screen. Sometimes you just get a 'feeling' about something or someone. If the OP felt that there was something not right about this person and suspects he had no legitimate reason to be at the sports day or hanging around at the bus stop then it's fair enough to take some (in this case, non-intrusive) action.

Must be, even tho Sutcliffe was arrested on having false number plates, then matching the profile of the ripper.

I think you did the right thing. If no-one else has noticed anything to cause them concern, no action will be taken & you've done no harm. But if there IS something wrong, your email might mean people are alerted to it sooner than they otherwise would have been.

Fwiw, I think too many people are too slow to act on suspicions. I often wonder whether, if I had been one of the several people who saw the boys dragging Jamie Bulger along with them, I would have done something. There is a considerable difference between reporting info in a measured and factual way, as the OP has done, and assuming that every man with children is a paedophile.

at the last (secondary) school I worked at, a member of the pubic reported seeing a man in his fifties, wearing an overcoat who always seemed to be hanging about near the gates at kicking out time. She thought he was acting suspiciously because he watched the children and seemed to make comments to some of them. It was the Deputy Head!

And Jamie Bulger wasn't dragged away either

Oh honestly, Godwin's Law strikes again, the Jamie Bulger case is incomparable, a toddler being dragged along for more than two miles by much older kids crying constantly for his mother?!

There was a sense of public shock when it was revealed in court that nobody intervened. That is nothing to do with gut instinct it's to do with hard evidence that sadly went ignored. Do you honestly the OP would garner a similar public response?

Fair comment re: James Bulger actually.

IIRC James Bulger wasn't dragged away from his mother, but there were several witnesses who saw him being walked/dragged around by the older boys. Many of them were suspicious to the point that one of them was going to take James Bulger to the police station, but didn't/couldn't in the end because another passer-by refused to look after her dog while she did that.

Dragged or not, clearly upset and injured. Simply not comparable to a guy talking to a probably fellow parent, at a school sport's day and waiting outside a school for someone.