A couple of weeks ago my DD was playing football at the park with her dad. The ball went out of the park and onto the path so she ran to retrieve it. Whilst on the path, she saw a man walking towards her. She made eye contact with him and stepped aside so he would have a clear path to walk past her. After she did this, he also stepped to the side, putting himself back on her path. At this point, her father had caught up and came into view of this man. He then stepped back onto his original path and carried on walking. My DD was quite shaken by this and described it as this man following her. We had a chat about it and her father said he has seen this man around the area we live before and thinks he may be developmental disabilities. We believed the incident may have been a misunderstanding and left it at that, although my daughter was uncharacteristically anxious about it.
Fast forward to yesterday and I was in the same park with my DC's and a couple of friends DC's after school. I was on one side of the (fenced in) park with the younger children and my older DCs were on the opposite side of the park, playing. I saw a boy approach my daughter's and talk to them. My DD looked concerned so I called her over to me. The boy continued walking around the outside of the park fence. My DD told me that the boy is from her school and he was scared because a man was following him. Not wanting the boy to walk alone if he was being followed, I called to him to come and speak to me. As he approached me, my daughter pointed out a man who had come.from the same direction as the boy and told me it was the same man from the incident with her a couple of weeks ago. I told the boy to come into the park with me and tell me what had happened and wait for the man to go. The boy said he'd been walking from his friends house and had noticed the man walking behind him. He felt uncomfortable so crossed the road. The man crossed the road too. So the boy crossed back again. The man followed suit. The boy sped up, so did the man. The poor kid was obviously quite shaken. Whilst he was telling me all this, the man had walked past the park and up a side road out of sight. I still didn't want the boy to walk home alone so gave him my phone to call his mum. His mum arranged to come.and pick him up from a shop up the road ( no idea why she couldn't drive to the park to get him!) I couldn't walk him to the shop to meet his mum as I was waiting for my friend to pick her children up from me at the park. It is a straight road from the park to the shop though so I made sure to watch him up the road and wait for him to get in his mum's car.
My daughter has been really worried about this and barely slept last night. After thinking about it, I sent an email to the schools safeguarding team this morning and made an online report the police, too. AIBU to report this to the police? I'm aware no crime has been committed but it just doesn't sit right with me to ignore it.