I don't know, I think there is a lot to be said for trusting certain instincts.
Not in my case with JS, because those weren't instincts, they were prejudices, and I would be very wrong to claim I always knew what he was just based on my very strong childhood dislike of the way he looked and sounded.
But in MrsWinnebago's case with him, she saw a behaviour from him that her instincts didn't like. She still had no idea just what he really was, but her instincts, based on something far more genuine than his appearance, told her that something wasn't right and she trusted them.
When I was growing up, I was probably eight at the time, there was an older boy who lived nearby, he would have been about ten or eleven I think. He was just a normal boy and people seemed to like him but I never did.
There was something off about him as far as I was concerned and I can remember crying and saying I didn't want to go to a party because he would be there. It was a children's party arranged by my Grandmother's place of work, so probably 100 children attending and parents didn't stay, there were helpers so parents could leave. He was the only person there that I knew and I didn't want him to come and talk to me.
I couldn't explain why though, I didn't have the words to say how he made me feel and he hadn't ever done anything to me. So I was told not to be silly, to find someone else to talk to, to just go because I probably wouldn't even see him with so many other children there.
But I did see him, he didn't leave me alone the whole time and he kept saying things that made me feel weird. Would I be his girlfriend, had I ever kissed anybody, did I have hair yet, did I ever touch between my legs, did I know what sex was, did I want to have sex with him.
I was a bit of a naive child, I had no idea what he was talking about, but I knew it was bad. I didn't want to be anybody's girlfriend, I kissed lots of people, he could see my hair, I touched there when I wiped after going to the toilet, I had no idea what sex was but I knew I didn't want to have it with him. Just the fact that he was asking meant it was a bad thing as far as I was concerned and that also meant I knew I didn't want to tell my Mum what he had actually said.
I didn't want to answer him, I kept walking away and he was following me, whispering these things and even pretending to one of the helpers that he was asking me to dance and she made me dance with him. They liked the older ones to help with the younger ones and she thought he was being nice.
And I still didn't know what he was or how to tell my Mum what he'd said to me, I didn't want to tell her all of it because I knew it was bad and I didn't want to say it, even though I didn't understand what it meant. It was just bad. I tried to hide from him for the rest of the party and cried for a good bit of it as well. A woman helping told me off for being silly.
I know some of the other girls at school felt the same way about him, I used to watch him talking to someone in the street or playground, usually younger girls like me, and you would see the point where they got scared and confused by what he was saying. I think I'd probably picked up on this before he said those things to me and knew he was someone to avoid.
After that party he did approach me a couple of other times but I did my best to avoid him and even asked my older brother to warn him off, although again I couldn't explain why.
I was in my twenties and living away when I heard that he had been charged with sex offences against children And that's when it made sense to me. I hadn't thought about him for years, he'd gone up to senior school before me and then we moved before I was due to go to senior school, so I went to a different one to him anyway.
I think the first time I thought about him was when my cousin told me he was in prison and she said "Do you remember X?" I said I did and that I had never liked him because he gave me the creeps and she said "Well he's in prison for sexually abusing children" and everything he'd done and said fell into place. One of his victims was a girl in my class, who he touched at school during the same year he was bothering me.
That time, I was right to trust my instincts, even though I didn't understand them at the time. They weren't based on any prejudice about his appearance or anything, just instincts based on what I had seen him act like with others and eventually what he said to me.
So I do think instincts have their place, as long as they are instincts and not just prejudices.