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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To have followed this teen girl?

235 replies

FrightorFlight · 31/03/2022 13:29

On the school run yesterday I had to run into the supermarket to grab some bits. As I drove around the car park towards the exit I saw a teenage girl in school uniform talking to an adult male. She looked a little uncomfortable and upset. Halfway down the next row of cars I decided to swing back past and see if she had gone. She was walking ahead of the man who then veered off towards the supermarket doors and her in the opposite direction.
She was on the phone and visibly upset. The way the car park works you end up driving past the path the girl exited on. As she crossed the road she finished on her phone so I pulled over and wound my window down (pressed my window down?) and asked if she was ok. Just explained I had seen her talking to the guy, did she know him? She said it was her boss and I commented that she seemed a bit upset. Turns out she had lost her bank card.
Once we got home I was telling Dh and said 'is it weird that I did that?'
Dh says 'yeah, a bit'
Dd1 who is 16 then tells me her and her two friends were approached close to where we were by three adult males on Saturday afternoon. So on one hand it could have been something sinister and on the other hand I'm following a girl round a car park!

OP posts:
Laiste · 31/03/2022 15:07

Right thing.

When my eldest was about 15 she walked through the village one evening with a big bag and a pillow to go to a sleep over at her mate's.

Half way there the lady who used to run the dance classes in the village went past in her car. She parked up and ran after DD and asked if she was ok.

Carrying the bag and pillow - thought she'd run away from home. DD laughed and thanked her and told her she was going to a sleep over.

Bless her for that - i've never forgotten it.

HailAdrian · 31/03/2022 15:08

You definitely did the right thing, i would like to think that if someone thought my daughter was in a vulnerable position, they would take a moment to check.

morningtoncrescent62 · 31/03/2022 15:15

When my eldest was 15 (she's now nearly 30, where does the time go?) a man stopped her our busy local high street asking for directions which she gave. He prolonged the conversation, saying he didn't understand, and eventually asked if she'd go with him some of the way to point out the way he should go. She said no but he kept asking, and it's difficult for a shy teenager to say a firm no to an adult man. Eventually she ended it by walking away, terrified that he would follow her, and she would soon have been out of the populated area. A little further down the street she was approached by a woman who'd seen what was happening, and asked if my DD was OK. Just having that breathing-and-calm-down space prompted DD, who by then wasn't thinking sensibly, to realise that she could get help, and she went into the local cafe where she was well known, told them what had happened, and waited there until I could come and pick her up.

I'll never know who that woman was but I'll always be grateful to her. You did the right thing.

Poppypip1 · 31/03/2022 15:18

I would be grateful if someone done this for one of my children!

RussianSpy101 · 31/03/2022 15:21

YANBU. I would be grateful if someone had done this for my or my daughter in this situation. I’ve done similar before.

FairWindClearSailing · 31/03/2022 15:24

Not weird at all. Nice to say know there's good people out there watching out for others.

RoundGlass · 31/03/2022 15:24

Good for you. I would have done the same.

roseopose · 31/03/2022 15:25

You did the right thing. There is a lot of sexual and criminal exploitation of young people going on out there, that the general public are largely unaware of.

BobbinThreadbare123 · 31/03/2022 15:26

I've no kids but I've been that teenage girl, harassed by men I don't know (and some I did) and nobody did or said a thing. I will always do things like this. I've been threatened by men for it but I won't stop doing it. Someone needs to do the looking out for girls and women.

Poetnojo · 31/03/2022 15:27

You did the right thing for sure.
I have stepped in a fair few times when I thought someone needed help, I'll probably end up getting myself in trouble one of these days doing it, but i cant turn a blind eye.
Dh has too, but more of a letting the guy know that he has clocked him way than offering help to the woman.

We have an 18yo daughter and I'd like to think someone would stop to help her if she ever looks distressed or in trouble.

Notanotherwindow · 31/03/2022 15:29

You were fine, I'd hope that someone would do this for my daughter.

Even the nicest men don't get it. They don't have the lived experience of being hassled so can't understand.

When I first started seeing my therapist, I had second thoughts. I pulled up to his house (he works from a home office) and it was dark as it was winter and 5pm and I saw him silhouetted in the upstairs window, obviously watching for Mr and I thought to myself 'are you fucking crazy? You don't know him from Adam! No one knows where you are.)

Then I thought fuck it, he isn't that big, I've driven an hour to get here, I'm doing this. If he's a freak I can take him.

He wasn't a psycho and all was fine but when I told him a year later that when we first met, I had been scared of going into this strange man's house, in the dark, when no one knew where I was, he was surprised. Said he had never considered that and had never really thought about it that way when he decided to work at home rather than rent office space.

He's one of the sweetest people I've ever met and it just never occurred to him that his female clients might have felt vulnerable walking into his house for the first time.

It just genuinely does not occur to most men.

They have never had to develop the same sense of danger that we have. Ignorance is bliss I guess.

mycatisannoying · 31/03/2022 15:30

Well, I think you were lovely to do this Star

Twolostsoulsswimminginafishbow · 31/03/2022 15:31

Thank you. I’d rather be wrong than sorry.

Cheeseandlobster · 31/03/2022 15:34

Absolutely this approach should be normalised. People are often too afraid to check on others for fear of being seen as interfering.

A few months ago I was in a large shop and there was a little girl running around looking more and more frantic. After a while she bolted from the shop. I followed her and she was being consoled by another lady who merrily told me she was her mum and because she had been so naughty the mum and her younger brother had run away and hidden outside to teach her a lesson. I was glad I had followed her but was also very wtf at the terrible parenting Hmm

MrsWinters · 31/03/2022 15:35

You did the right thing.

Tarkan · 31/03/2022 15:38

You did the right thing. DH doesn't quite get it but even at this weekend just past I sat and watched two unattended drinks from two young women in the same pub who kept going up to dance. No-one went near the drinks but I would have told them if anyone had.

The one I think back to regularly was going into the loos in a pub and accidentally walking into a stall when a young woman was throwing up. I sat in the stall beside her and spoke to her. Her friends had all left but her boyfriend and his friends were there so I went back out to my husband and explained why I had been so long. It just so happened he had overheard the boyfriend and his mates talking about how drunk she was and all the awful things they were going to do to her back at one of their houses.

We spoke to security at the pub who dismissed me saying she was with her boyfriend and she was fine. We all left at the same time when the pub closed.

They went a different way to us but I said to DH I couldn't leave her so I caught up with her and started speaking to her again. Her sister was due to pick her up from a street nearby but the boyfriend's mates were all trying to convince her to go with them. She ended up coming with us and we waited with her until her sister showed up to take her home. I hope she's finished with the guy now, DH said he didn't even tell me all of what he had overheard them saying.

Rosesandblossoms · 31/03/2022 15:38

Well done OP. Hope you’re around when my girls get a bit older.

StopStartStop · 31/03/2022 15:39

The other day I saw two boys, aged about 14, with a third boy up against a wall, punching him. I stopped the car on the opposite side of the street, and fixed them with my stony former-teacher/mum/grandma/concerned citizen gaze. They stopped what they were doing and waved to reassure me all was well. Recently I've driven round the same block twice to check on a teenager alone (her lift arrived) and stopped to watch a van until the driver sped off because he was talking to a young teenager and she looked nervous.

Yes, I'm a nosey old woman. But we have to be. We need 'the mother feeling for all the youth' because they're ours, the future of our communities and we are all responsible for keeping them safe.

So, well done OP and everyone else looking after young people. That's what decent adults do.

BoredZelda · 31/03/2022 15:41

Why on earth would you think it weird that you checked on a girl to see she was ok?

RiverRats · 31/03/2022 15:42

You did the right thing. A lady did this for me once, I was in my first year of Uni and was being followed. If it wasn’t for that lady stopping and walking me back to my house I hate to think what would have happened. I do it all the time now too, if I notice anything a bit off I always make sure they’re okay. I don’t care if it makes me look weird.

Clockstooforward · 31/03/2022 15:42

Yes you definitely did the right thing …I certainly have checked in on anyone I am concerned about in public.

MossyBottom · 31/03/2022 15:43

When I was 15 I was followed by a boy who was two years older. He had seen a man expose himself to me and I had run away. The boy then caught up with me and walked home with me.
I didn't think much of it at the time but he really did the right thing.

AHungryCaterpillar · 31/03/2022 15:48

@Lacedwithgrace

You did the right thing. Your husband would never be in that situation so really can't comment on whether it's weird or not. (It's not). I'm sure that woman is very glad you checked on her
Tbf she asked him if it was weird so she must have thought it was otherwise she wouldn’t have asked
feelingfree17 · 31/03/2022 15:49

Definitely did the right thing. Men could never get just how vulnerable us women feel, so we have to keep looking out for each other. I have done similar. Can you imagine how you would have felt had it escalated in to something serious and you heard about it later on social media/news
Keep doing it

DebenhamsHadSomeLovelyStuff · 31/03/2022 15:49

@BoredZelda

Why on earth would you think it weird that you checked on a girl to see she was ok?
Because her husband told her he thought it was so she's questioning her judgement
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