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.

[KrisAkabusi]

@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.

Then you've overheard something, and you categorically do not have all the facts. Don't do anything.

[OodieWoodie]

@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.

When you say convicted pedophile, do you know the specific offence?

To me there is a difference between looking up pictures online of a 15 year old girl without ever expressing an interest in actually meeting said girl and physically participating in abuse of a much younger child. But yet they are all pedophiles.

But no, I would not say anything. It will inevitably come back to bite you on the behind if you reveal anything

[Ravenclawsome]

Cattenberg
My colleague’s young daughter was groped by a man on her way home from school. My colleague reported this to the police. At some point, she asked an officer if there were any other paedophiles living in our town and if so, where were they? The reply was “if you knew how many there were, you wouldn’t step outside your front door”.

It’s a difficult one. If I were a neighbour, I’d want to know, but if vigilantes drive paedophiles out of their homes, it becomes difficult for the authorities to monitor them.
What a lot of rubbish. Why would a police officer say that to an adult? Why would an adult not step out of their front door for fear of paedophiles?

The exact phrasing was used (by a police officer I think) in a documentary about Shannon Matthews recently. 🤔

[AnnaMagnani]

For those of you saying you would want to know if a paedophile lived near you:

You almost certainly do live near a paedophile

You definitely live near a paedophile who hasn't been caught

Sex offences are common in our society. Think about your own experience and that of the women you know - it's likely that you know someone who has been abused, flashed, has a 'dodgy relative', been raped, and it's overwhelmingly likely that the man in question was never convicted.

We live among these people every day so child safeguarding should be how you live all the time.

[BellaTheDog]

That’s a difficult one. When I was in my early twenties, I had a temporary secretarial job in a centre close to my home. My job for the week was typing up notes for 2 cases relating to child sexual abuse. Both of the perpetrators in the cases were the fathers. One of the children attended my DD’s nursery and the other lived locally.

In both cases, the fathers were still resident in the home and the centre was working with the families. I found this really shocking. I don’t know if this was normal for the 1980s, but I had this overwhelming urge to tell people. But I didn’t.

You have to trust the authorities. You can’t take the law into your own hands as it could end very badly for all concerned.

[Tylila]

I was notified about the one who lives next door to me. That’s how we came to be aware of him staring in the window at our daughter. He has been convicted of offences relating to kidnap and sex offences with children.

Six months later, three reports to the police and he’s still there.

[StillAMother]

If I found out through my job and it was confidential information then no. However I did find out my neighbour was a pedo through the local paper. He had been excessively friendly with me and wanted to take my boys off for an activity - or to put it another way he’d been grooming me. So he could get unsupervised access to them

I warned a new neighbour who had young boys a few years later and nobody ran the pedo out of town or put his windows out. But my new neighbour who’d thought he was a friendly old man now knew not to trust him with her sons. I wouldn’t have done it anonymously

[Gumbomambo]

@Ravenclawsome this was exactly what came to mind for me too, they said there was some 35000 (!!!) known sex offenders living within a few mile radius at the time Shannon was kidnapped. I had to rewind it.
We need better strategies than this to protect our children because there are plenty that aren’t known yet and are operating online, in our class rooms, in our supermarkets, gyms, pretty much everywhere. If one in 8 adults have been abused as a child then there a lot of these predators around. Make your own decisions based on your facts and consequences that could happen to you and others. Even if this person is Fred west and the mob come and cut his bits off, if it is traced back to you there will be serious consequences in law for you.

[Divebar2021]

The fact that people would want to know doesn’t entitle them to know. I’m curious to know what my neighbour earns or what goes on in MI5 but that doesn’t mean someone can reveal that to me. I don’t let my DD go wandering on her own into my neighbours houses generally. I would hope that anyone in a professional capacity who deliberately leaked that would be disciplined for gross misconduct for confidentiality breaches and creating so much additional work for other safeguarding professionals.

[ChiefBabySniffer]

Please don't tell them op.

I live on a row of houses where the front doors are set back off the street with the kitchens jutting out on the front. We walk out the door on the left of the kitchen but our wheely bins are stored right around the other side of the kitchen next to the neighbours drive way. It's not clearly evident ( unless you live here) which house Is which. So when those giant walkers that call them selves paedo hunters accused the man next door to me and streamed it live, all he'll let loose.

They were recording him and behind him was my house and his house. My car was in full view. It went onto Facebook. Within 20 minutes about 12 and people were outside. The police were called. They left but an hour later about 50 people turned up and a crowd tried to get in my front door. They were screaming, threatening to petrol bomb my house for protecting a nonce. My car was vandalised, my wheely bins thrown around and emptied. For weeks I had people shitting in my drive way. It was awful. And absolutely NOTHING to do with me.

[Cattenberg]

I’m not making it up! This happened in the early 2000s.

I wasn’t there when my colleague spoke to the police officer, but I think his point was that sometimes it’s better not to know about every danger, or you would become an over-anxious parent who never let your children have any freedom.

[bloodyhell19]

@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.

You're naïve if you think that even though it's been heard in open plan office, it couldn't be traced back to you if you live streets away from where the offender is relocating to.

"Verbally heard" does not give you details of the offence.

"Digitally available" is traceable.

Only you can decide if disclosing that information is a) worth your job and b) worth the risk of incorrectly identifying someone and c) worth the risk of correctly identifying someone who then winds up seriously injured or worse and therefore made a victim.

Leave it alone.

[pinkyredrose]

Why would people need to know? Will it change the way they parent their children? If the parents take just as much care of their children as they normally do then I'm sure they'll be fine.

[C8H10N4O2]

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

So information you have acquired inappropriately at work. Good luck defending that at an employment tribunal.

[AlternativePerspective]

I would want to know if a pedo was living near me. Newsflash, a paedo is living near you. You may not know who, or where, but I guarantee there is one, or maybe more than one. This need to know of convicted paedophiles just creates a false sense of security, because people are so focussed on the convicted paedophiles that the non convicted ones are able to continue without suspicion, because the people are too focussed on the one who has been caught.

[TravelDreamLife]

Unless you know for sure they're convicted, keep your mouth shut. Seriously.

Someone posted this about a friend of ours online. Address, name everything. Not a pedophile. Just a lie by a psycho ex-family member after revenge. Police made them take it down but plenty of people saw it.

Btw there are more unconvicted pedophiles than convicted out there. Probably your upstanding citizen neighbour. I just assume everyone is a threat & take care supervising with my kids.

[Chamonixshoopshoop]

If he’s convicted it could be open source information, as it may have been in the paper anyway. Lots of court convictions are published.
Find out if it’s in the news, then you can just share the info
Without it being linked to your job in any way.

[TheRattleBag]

An interesting article about the paediatrician/paedophile mix-up here:

www.pressgazette.co.uk/a-tale-told-too-much-the-paediatrician-vigilantes/

[jessycake]

No I wouldn't because gossip boards etc could mean someone is misidentified , it makes it more difficult for everyone

[AlternativePerspective]

As for the PP who said that nobody doesn’t want a paedophile being beaten up, you’re wrong. Do you really think these vigilante thugs who set out to beat up the local paedo do so because they have the welfare of society at heart? Because they care about what happens to our children? Get real. The kinds of people who set out to beat up the local paedo are the same types who are out brawling on a Saturday night only to come home and beat the crap out of their wives.

They do it for notoriety and nothing more.

But if you want to encourage those types on to your street then crack on.

[LigPatin]

Sorry if it's been addressed but unless you have personally seen concrete data (such as the police database - in which case I'd imagine you'd be tied by GDPR esque ruling) it would be unwise to disclosure the information, as you'd effectively be gossiping. And it's a very serious thing to gossip about.

[Shelddd]

@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.

Id leave it alone. I work with data, I do some work with data analytics and some other stuff and sometimes it involves sensitive data. I have had full access to social care system's database for example. When you look at data for a living you get used to just ignoring the content. If you accidently mention something at work relating to sensitive data you can not only lose your job but can also be committing a crime and be prosecuted. It's not a joke, it's taken very seriously. They keep logs and audit who has viewed this kind of data.

Not obviously you didnt look it up in the system so you won't be tagged but you should still take it just as seriously and you can still get in just as much trouble if you share this information.

[Cattenberg]

ChiefBabySniffer, that is awful. I hope those people were prosecuted.

[Shelddd]

If a neighbor took it into their own hands and hurt or killed this person. The police would investigate and likely find out you told them and that you got the information from work and disclosed it illegally, that's not a situation you want to be in.

[Echobelly]

It depends what you mean by 'found out he was a paedophile' - if you have found out someone has child sexual offences against him but you don't know what you are, for all you know if could be that he was prosecuted for have sex with a 15 year old when he was 19 and that was 20 years ago, which would be a very different matter to if say, assaulting multiple under 12s. The former doesn't suggest any ongoing danger, the latter might do. But as others have said, you'd better be very sure you have the right person.