Please help - to report or not

[Throwaway99999]

Throwaway account as this could be outing.

Just background - well travelled, in London monthly at least with said child and not prone to hysterics or overreacting in general.

There was an ‘incident’ today where a fully grown man (40-50) was very, very visibly letching on my 11 year old (could pass as 13 tops) child. Long story short, we were in a below ground restaurant, he was street level.

He made this very, very clear over a period of time. There was nobody else this could have been directed at, and he seemed to get some level of enjoyment from making this very obvious to me.

We moved seats well out of his eyeline (and at this point he moved on). There is no question that my daughter is, or was, at risk.

But my question is, is this something I should report in case something more sinister was to ever happen (area would have definitely been covered by CCTV so it would be easily probable). No question of what I saw but equally no question that no crime was committed. I have concerns over whether this is or could be a pattern of behaviour and whether I should report it as a just in case or just leave it?

I am really unsure of what to do for the best - 90%+ is for the leave it, nothing came of it, but some small part of me is playing back the ‘what if…’…

Report
Let the police decide to ignore it if they think it’s irrelevant but to me it’s worth having on file in case a similar event occurred or god forbid something worse. Patterns are so important in crime and prosecutions.

Not sure about every police force, but our local one has an email address where you can report things that are not urgent. I would report it this way.

not sure why you are in a quandry over if you should report someone very obviously and openly behaving like that towards your 11 year old daughter.

Yes absolutely report it @Throwaway99999

try to write down as much detail as possible so that when they ask questions you can give them as much as possible to give them the best chance to follow up.

they will either take it seriously or they won’t (I would hope they do though) but either way you know you have done all you can to protect others and know you have shown your daughter that this is unacceptable behaviour and we as women in society should never have to just put up with this terrible invasion on us. She will be taught by you not just to accept that this happens and we just have to deal with it.

im really sorry she had to go through that and that you did as her mother who loves and wants to protect her.

@Throwaway99999

how are you doing? Ok I hope under the circumstances.

You’ve been on my mind

Sorry to hear what happened to you and your daughter. I would report it on a non emergency number (or alternative non emergency system), giving them as much info as possible.

You never know if you could be providing a missing piece to a puzzle, or helping build up a picture of behaviour.

Im trying to imagine what 'very, very visibly letching' actually looks like TBH. Esp if someone was stood doing it for a good long while....Im just seeing Benny Hill in my head!
I mean unless the person was stood there rubbing one out.....

Did your daughter notice? Did it make her uncomfortable? It's sexual harassment isn't it?