Identifying a pedophile to his neighbours

[Bipitybopityboop]

If you found out, through work, that a pedophile was going to live on a certain street near you.
Would you anonymously let the neighbourhood know?

Would you want to know?

This could not be traced back to one individual.

OP So you work for a job centre?

@Bipitybopityboop

Just think of a very large organisation with open plan offices. The information was verbally heard by and also digitally available to A LOT of people.

It's a convicted pedophile.

Any data of this sort that you come across at work is confidential. It's covered by GDPR for a start, regardless of what your specific job is. If your employer lets lots of people hear/see this kind of information they are probably in breach of GDPR, but that doesn't make it okay for all the staff to share it.

If you want to stay employed, you don't share information outside your work (or even outside the specific team that needs to know it). The only exception would be a whistleblowing scenario, but that doesn't apply here.

I can't believe someone would even need to ask this.

[quote eandz13]@00100001 an extreme event..... like somebody abusing a child? Yeah, I'd imagine it would push plenty of otherwise gentle people to actual violence. [/quote]
Yes. but I still don't believe that the majority of people would ACTUALLY go up to that person and beat the living shit out of them. They'd be angry yes. They'd be rightfully angry. They'd probably shoput and swear at them etc... but the step from thinking about physical violence it and actually doing it is massive.

One convicted man rented a cottage in our village, he had been outed in the town haunted the parks. Took about a week before everyone in the village knew. He had teddies in the window, a golden retriever he walked in the play park every day. Parents just stopped letting kids go there unless they were present. When a child was murdered in our town, the police asked for video footage of the paddling pool she had been at that day, it was hot weather my kids were there as were friends, they identified 26 convicted men who were hanging around that day.

Assume they are around and like parks, paddling pools, beaches and watch your children.

GDPR versus a childs safety, sorry I would let folk know if I could get away with it. The trouble is they just move on somewhere else you are pushing the problem down the road.

It’s not ok to put anyone at risk.

But risk there is, and you have to make your own assessment of that. What is greater - are there more vigilantes or more convicted paedophiles? Whose behaviour is worse? And whose behaviour would impact your own life more?

It’s a tricky issue, but for me I would want to know, because i believe that sexual offences against children are so much more scarily common than we would like to believe. And can have such a massive impact on theirs and their families lives.

We can teach our young children to keep them safe, but they are not a match for a conniving manipulative adult.

No I wouldn't because the research seems to show that that kind of upheaval increases the risk of re-offending. For me the most important thing is minimising the number of future victims. That is more important than revenge, 'punishment' and so on. It's reducing re-offending. So anything that reduces re-offending is the most important.

@icelollies

I’m so surprised at the responses! Its almost like there is an utter acceptance here that sexual assaults on children happen, and that it is not ‘our responsibility’ to keep our children safe. We’ll just leave it to the police then shall we...? I am so shocked at this attitude.

Yes, absolutely I would want to know but I would also want concrete proof (i.e. convicted, with evidence of the conviction in papers etc so not someone’s speculation).

I don’t get why everyone here is so fearful of vigilantes, I find the attacks on people abhorrent, but they are far far less common than child abusers.

Nobody is saying it's OK.

What the sensible people are saying is that by knowing that Sam Smith at Number 1 is a convicted paedophile and going round and harassing them - DOESN'T PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN
Because Jordan Jones of Number 12 is a paedophile, and you happily send your kid round there because they're the parent of your kid's best friend, you know them really well and have had BBQs together and everything. You're not paying any mind to Alex Anderson of number 8, because they're lovely and they cut your hedges for you, and will feed your cat when you're on holiday, and of course they'll mind your kids for 20 minutes whilst you drop a parcel round to the post office... and of course Cousin can stay round, we love them, they're great, we all have such fun when they visit...

The vast majority of people fail to realise that it is the adult that is in the position of trust and/or authority that poses the greater risk to your child than the random person who lives down the road.

You have to protect your children, supervise them, make sure you do what you can to keep them safe. And by focusing on known offender, you could easily overlook other worrying behaviours from unknown offenders.

Just to track back and actually answer the OP's original question from my point of view: the answer as to whether to take any action at all would actually depend on us knowing much more than you have said. What was the person convicted of? ("Paedophile" tells us nothing about the offence because it is a clinical and not a legal term). Are they under any kind of supervision (eg on licence or probation, or under a section of the Mental Health Act)? Is MAPPA involved? (This is obviously assuming we are talking about the UK). Are the supervising authorities aware that they are moving to this address? Do you know some information that you believe the supervising authorities may not know?

There might conceivably be circumstances where the OP had concerns that the authories may not have all the necesassry informnation etc, and it would be appropriate to intervene and pass on infomation. But to the authorites (police or Social Services etc) not the general public.

The thing is it's not GDPR versus a child's safety. Outing someone like that most probably puts more children at risk.

@00100001 that is precisely right, however much others on this thread would dispute it and accuse us of taking them for fools or being arrogant to point these facts out.

I’d probably want to know but that doesn’t mean I should. I don’t think you should do anything, particularly if you found out through work and it can be traced back to you.

If I was sure they were a convicted paedophile then of course I’d tell the neighbours. I can’t believe anyone wouldn’t?

Why do people on here find people taking the law into their own hands so offensive? If I heard of someone who was without doubt, a convicted paedophile, and someone set their house on fire or even just gave them a beating, I’d be so pleased

Even if you found out at work, by chance, from overhearing something you weren't supposed to her, etc, if you have information actually relevent to the protection of a specific child/children, which you believe the supervising authorituies are unaware of, you can and should breach confidentiality by going to the relevent authority (NOT "the neighbourhood" though).

This does NOT include just knowing that someone is a convicted child sex offender and that they are moving to a street where children live.

@Gothichouse40

There was a man burnt to death some years ago. A vigilante mob set fire to his house. Turns out he was innocent,as the paedophile had moved elsewhere and the man who died was completely innocent. Leave dealing with paedophiles to the police, that's what they are there for. If you have concerns inform them, not the neighbours. If you have this wrong, the consequences could be terrible and it would all come back to you.

Because the police have such a great track record at that, ay.

Set their house on fire? Really? Is that what you think an acceptable way of dealing with this? Committing arson?

@00100001 I think you are right as well, but that’s kind of my point.
it is horribly common. Scarily so. So yes, all those people may be a threat to my children, and may be convicted or not.

But if we know if they have been convicted, then its much easier to make a decision on whether to allow contact with my kids. I cant exclude everyone from our lives (as we have in the last year) , so how best to make a decision on who to trust with my children?

Convicted offenders reoffend, or abscond. I guess my trust in the system isn’t as great as yours. I wish it was.

@HeddaGarbled

Not unless you’re comfortable with them being beaten up by vigilante thugs.

I'd be very comfortable with that. I couldn't give a flying fuck for a paedo's welfare. They deserve all they get.

I know a case where a man with learning disabilities was kidnapped and tortured over several days, nearly to death, because a relative who had had an argument with him decided to tell local people he was a "paedophile" to get back at him. You need to be very aware of the potential behaviours you can unleash with some of the views expressed here.

Professionals in the UK have failed children again and again and again from Savile to grooming gangs.

Safeguarding is being weakened not strengthened and parents are kept in the dark, even though they are the first line of defence.

In all the years my children have existed and been in the education system there have been no, none, 0 courses (e.g. along the lines of Gavin De Becker - recommended to all parents) offered. There is the safeguarding policy at my daughter's schools and thankfully both schools seem to have a clue and have good, transparent safeguarding leads.

Essentially self proclaimed professionals on this thread seem to be saying that we have to lock our children away in boxes and that's all we can do. That we aren't intelligent enough to not focus on the one paedophile we know, as if we have no more than two brain cells to rub together.

It's making a lot more sense to me now how the grooming gangs and Savile happened.

Why do people on here find people taking the law into their own hands so offensive?

Because we are a civilised society and have procedures, solicitors, courts, judges, prisons and various bodies all with the relevant expertise to convict at mete out punishment.

The general public deciding who is guilty and who should be punished and how is not justice. And as pointed out on this thread, vigilante action often results in the wrong person being assaulted, killed or “named and shamed”, with horrific results.

We all need to be very uncomfortable with extrajudicial punishments, whatever the circumstances. The alternative is very very dangerous.

People have such an agenda and it is transparent - we see you. The OP is talking about a convicted offender, not some made up rumour.

No, I wouldn’t. Vigilante justice doesn’t work. If the person is convicted they’ll be closely watched etc. It’s not really anything to worry about. What do you want to happen? They’re moved to somewhere where there we people you don’t know so it doesn’t feel like your problem any more? People have to be in society whether you think they should be or not.