to tell this nosey mother to shove off?

[theBOD]

long sorry but need an opinion.
i was meant to be playing football with mates and my lectures finished about an hour early. now seeing as i lived about an hours drive from where we were playing it made no sense for me to go home so i decided i'd just drive to the park where we play and do some work(play solitare) on my laptop for the hour and listen to the radio.
so i parked on the road beside the pitches, which also happens to be opposite a playground. after about half an hour some woman came over to me and knocked on my window asking me "what do you think you're doing" and telling me to move as it was "not right" and i was making the parents "nervous".
apparently i should not be parked and on a laptop near children as a man on his own as this obviously in her mind made me some sort of sex predator.
so i told her that what i was doing was none of her business and told her to get away from my car. she then threatened to call the police (she didn't) and get her husband out (which she did).
anyway was i unreasonable to use some very choice words to her and her husband when they came over to me the second time claiming they didn't want trouble and just thought it was best if i left?

I stopped to rest in a playpark when I was very fat pregnant. It was full of people, mainly elderly men, out walking or socalising. A younger man was leaning against his car watching the children. Now there were plenty of men watching the children and I just presumed he was a Dad. Next thing I knew the police arrived, spoke to him and put him in the police car. I was stunned, it happened so quick. One of the elderly gentleman had said that he and his friends called the police because he had been parking in the same spot for weeks, no children, no walking, no talking to anyone. They were suspicious and it turned out he had been photographing the children and was known to the police. These men didn't just take for grated that this man was a pervert. They watched and made a reasonable assumption over a few weeks. Not within 5 minutes. And not because somebody was sitting in their own car looking, not at any children, but his own computer.

YANBU people shouldn't jump to conclusions.

Yes there are perverts out there I know but not everyone is one.

I was in a park with my 2 children 2 or 3 years ago when DS1 wanted the loo, he was about 8/9 and ran off ahead of me, when I got to the loo an old bloke was outside with lots of keyring things of childrens tv stuff on them tellytubbies etc, I thought he looked odd and took DS in to the ladies, a bit later this chap turned up at the swings and was talking to some kids, my sister called the police and the bloke was removed, turns out he is a pedo and known to the police, but they said all they could do was take him home and he would most likly come back
If they know he is a sicko why is he not locked up somewhere?

GooseyLoosey on Tue 10-Jun-08 13:21:28
"Cory, I think the Home Office offered changing methods of recording only as a possible partial explanation of the increase."

Goosey,

When they say "this may account for part of the rise" that means they have made no statistical analysis of the data and how it may have been affected by new recording; in other words, they have no idea if this accounts for all of the rise or none of the rise or somewhere in between. For you or me to try to guess what percentage this is is perfectly pointless. They don't know if there has been a genuine increase, we don't know if there has been a genuine increase, unless a proper analysis is done noone can know.

I would certainly not deny the danger- but how would someone sitting in a car constitute an abduction danger? Presumably there are gates and fences to the school and dinner ladies etc etc? However much theBod may want to abduct all these youngsters - can he actually get at them? He certainly couldn't in my dc's school.

What I object to is the implied reasoning: 'abductions are a great danger' leading to 'potential abductors are a great danger' (even if they have no chance of abducting anyone), therefore 'seeing a strange man is dangerous'. (not saying you are guilty of this, loosey, but it would seem implied by the connection abductor/dangerous sitting man). Faulty logic is another of my bugbears.

Even the "abductions are great danger" is a misnomer: I haven't looked up the link on this occasion (can't find the specific post) but if it is the same one that was posted on a recent thread, the actual number of successful "stranger" abductions in that particualr year was 68 - and even then, it didin't provide details of who long these abductions were for, what the purpose was etc. Tragic and distressful I know for the relatives involved - but hardly a "great danger"

And even though it was up on the previous year, without proper analysis, you can't deduce from one year that that is a trend.

Did you take great pleasure in making it apparent to them later that you were there witn your children???

This reminds me of my lovely Dad, who adored children. He was very much known by the local kiddies and they all thought he was great. He couldnt help himself, he would have to chat to babies in buggies etc etc. Drove me mad actually. One day, walking home from the train station in his rather noticable bright orange overalls, my dad was having a lark with a young girl he knew from his street. Id say she was about 11 and this was opposite the play park. He said they were having a "race" and that he put his hand on her to try and gain a lead (something like that), then the girl ran off home and he thought nothing more of it. Before he got home, or maybe after he had been home and was sent out to the shops in orange overalls still, a police car pulled onto the path in front of him and challenged him about it (the police man, not the car obviously). My poor old Dad was mortified!!! He took the police to the girls house, where the mum, verified that she knew him and the young girl, very puzzled, told the police they were messing around". Apparently, a woman had witnessed what had happened and called the police. My Dad was quite upset that someone would think that, however was actually quite heartened by the fact that the police acted quickly and that the person was concerned enough to act. It is a sad world in which we live though isn't it. I mean, we can't even take pictures of our children in the sodding play ground without being suspect - stuff that, if i want to take photo's of my DD i bloody well will.

oh sorry, i read this as you were going to be playing footie with your kids. Ah well then you should be castigated to hell then , also, i hope it wasnt a work lap top you were playing solitair on

what is the law about taking photos of your kids in public? I only ask cos me and some other mums and kids (toddlers and babies...and my bona fide baby aswell I hasten to add) were at a public padling pool today and when one of my friends got her camera out to take a picture of her son a weird man (the paddling pool king or boss) ran out and said she couldn't! Are you allowed to take photos at the beach as well or not? Very scared by all this

OK to ask what you were doing, because lets face it Moira Hindley aided and abetted Ian Brady iyswim. You could have perhaps explained to put her mind at rest. The way you handled it wasn't great. However, to ask you to leave was out of order, but not helped by the fact you didn't say what you were doing. You acted cagey so it added fuel to the fire. If you had just said you were waiting to play football and doing some work to utilise the time, she would undoubtably have said ok, sorry to ask but there are some funny people about.
YABVU.

I couldn't take any photos of my dcs at their school swimming gala that my dh couldn't attend .

Cory - agree with you that there is no way you can get from those figures to saying that "abductions are a great danger". What I was trying to highlight is that statements along the lines that "abductions are no more common now than they were 35 years ago" are equally flawed. Anyway, as I think we actually probably largely agree, I will shut up now.

We do have a lovely old man down our street who gives sweets to children and talks to them.
A few weeks ago, i could hear my DD1 talking to someone on the other side of the fence so went out to check and she was walking with him and his two dogs all quite innocent.
But due to circumstances in my past i am quite warry of old men and little girls and although he is nice, i don't trust him that much.

YANBU, as if we carry on like this no male will be allowed in a park or a public place unless accompanied by his mum/sister/wife or dcs. It's like the Taliban and women in reverse.

We are innocent until proven guilty, and you have a perfect legal right to sit in your car on the public highway.

I think my dh would have declined to tell her what he was doing as well, although he probably wouldn't have sworn at her, or enquired sweetly if she was a traffic warden.

Totally agree with scaryteacher...why tf should you have to justify the fact that you're in your car, early for footie, playing solitiare

I just find it extraordinary that a man sitting in his car minding his own business is challenged yet that child die of starvation in her own home recently and her siblings were neglected equally badly and none of the neighbours intervened - presumably because they "didn't want to get involved". It's easy to be swept along with pedophile panic -and get a warm self-righteous glow. It's harder to actually do something about real child suffering.

have read about half of this and then skimmed, and wanted to say that i agree with stuffedaubergine. tbh it sounds to me like the OP could have calmed the situation but didn't because he wanted to prove a point. (a point that had he calmed rather than inflamed the situation would have sunk in, no doubt).

it's not a question of accusing every man, but the OP would have known what motivated her approaching him and could have been pleasant and diffused things.

i'm surprised that you're all so angry about this, tbh. seems to me that people should be aware of how they are perceived, esp with relation to sex crimes etc. for example, i've discussed with dh that if he was walking down an empty street and there was a lone woman there he'd make the effort to walk slower and leave a good distance, so as not to frighten her. because it is frightening when men lope up and overtake you on a lonely street, imo. this situation isn't analogous, but nevertheless the woman's actions were motivated by fear and the OP sounds like he was a bit of a nob to her, when he needn't have been.

The woman from the park sounds like a mentalist who needs to step away from the sensationalist stories in her weekly magazines. Dozy mare.

A park is a public place. A member of the public was using it, albeit to play solitaire, which is a waste of time when there are so many free versions of Mah jong available on the internet these days.

Good lord, people will be wanting men to have passes to be seen with their own kids soon, just in case they're nasty horrible kiddie-snatchers.

Pathetic, utterly bloody pathetic.

The only answer you needed was' what I am doing is none of your business', roll up car window and ignore her. It's never a good idea to pander to paranoid ignorant fuckwits (same as it's never a good idea to indulge whiners and people whose feelings are always being hurt) as it only makes them demand more and more.

i'm really astonished that this aggressive stance is the prevailing attitude here. not one of you (apart from SA) thinks he should just have acted with some understanding of her motives?

I think men should be allowed to go about their everyday business without being asked to account for themselves, even if there happen to be children nearby, yes

I wouldn't advocate getting violent or abusive about it, but I don't see why he has to be happy about it, either

i don't think he should have to be happy about it, just show some understanding about her motivations (which he was not in the slightest bit unclear on, hence the enormous offence that he took) and could have been less nobbish about it.

" By theBOD on Tue 10-Jun-08 10:57:50
"I don't think it would have spiralled the way it did if you had risen above it and just explained though."

no of course it wouldn't you are right, and i definitely knew this."

so he wanted to teach her a valuable lesson, not to rattle lone men in cars... great. i'm sure she went away thinking that he was up to no good, so he completely failed in that respect.

tbh I think th e woman sounded quite threatning. she went and got her dh(I assume he was allowed to be near a park) so I think it it is natural that theBod got defensive.

Aitch- no I can't expect him to have behaved with some understanding of the woman's motives. Because I myself cannot understand her motives, without thinking she was paranoid.

I don't know
if people are getting hassled unfairly and unnecessarily, do they have a duty to take it calmly and provide an explanation for what they are doing?
I don't think they do, really

me neither