More likely to be stopped by police is perhaps more of a political conversation, about racism, than it is about an actual level of threat, I think. Whereas, in terms of threats to a woman when she is alone in a public space, men are sort of... it. It's not secretly actually women flashing/attacking/harassing women. It's not that actually men are flashing/attacking/harassing men and it's all a big misunderstanding. It's a wide variety of men from a wide variety of backgrounds, and they do do it. Only a tiny percentage do really awful things, but enough men do it on a bothersome enough level that it's surely rare for a woman not to have experienced it to some degree.
And is mumsnet not full to overflowing with threads about how it's extremely important to keep ones dog under full control at all times to avoid said dog approaching a child who may or may not be frightened of dogs, no matter how childsafe the dog really is?
I'm not saying Men have done anything wrong. I'm saying I think women, in some circumstances, are aware of the potential threat a man could present, and the OP's DD's situation was one of them. Women manage to have nuance in their views of this, in that obviously I come across loads of men in my daily life and rarely feel remotely weird about it, so I don't see why men couldn't do the same, and be aware that if they approach an 11 year old girl at a time of day when there's nobody else around, she might feel a tiny bit spooked for a minute. Not to say they CAN'T do it, or that that would ALWAYS be weird, or that the man has any creepy motive at all, but that it is, conceivably, something they could consider from the point of view of the girl, and wait til they come across an adult.