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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Mumsnet Jury needed for this one. **IMPORTANT**

310 replies

exasperatedmummy · 16/10/2008 09:32

OK, i shall post this as i see it - please don't jump on me.

Around the corner from me is the local infant school. Opposite this are some private, purpose built flats, fairly modern. In one of the flats, which is pretty scruffy, no curtains, there sits a man, pretty much all day, he has his computor set up on the kitchen side, and he sits so that he can see the school. The past two mornings i have walked past there on the way back from dropping DD at play school - he has a book out, but he isn't reading it - he is staring quite intently at the school.

This is freaking me out, and sadly it is because if you asked me to draw a peadophile, then it wouldn't look much different to this man I don't want to judge the poor sod, there are lots of scenarios that it could be

  • He could just like sitting in the window watching the world go by
  • He might be lonely
  • Maybe his grandchildren go to the school
  • He might genuinely love children and be nostalgic about his own children/own childhood
  • He might just be staring into space

I have noticed him a few times, it is quite conspicuous the way he sits in the window, so you tend to look, if he notices you he glares at you.

I'm uneasy about this, but im not sure what to do - if anything. My gut instinct is to leave well alone actually - what do you lot think?

OP posts:
ScummyMummy · 16/10/2008 21:13

Agree with bundle. My dad was arrested for standing on his own fucking balcony a little while after my mum died. He was sad and bereaved and not harming anyone. He couldn't sleep. Some horrible neighbour didn't recognise him and thought he looked weird and he was taken down to the cop shop by 7 police officers because they did not believe my little sister (still a teenager at the time) when she heard the commotion and came to explain that he was law abiding and her dad and he lived there. I still resent the neighbours who did that. Don't know who they were, what they were thinking, why they were worried and who for but they made an already difficult situation worse.

littlepig · 16/10/2008 21:16

I do have dodgy curtains - I made them myself but I'm rubbish at sewing and only kept them up cos

  1. I put a lot of effort into them
  2. I made them cos I couldn't find any that were the colour/size I wanted
  3. you can't see that the bottom is not straight with my sofa in front of them
ahundredtimes · 16/10/2008 21:16

Well, I said that because ds1 takes the dog to the park on Saturday mornings. And he kept coming back saying how the same guy was there, and always comes up and asks him about the dog, and asks ds1 what his name is, and what sport he enjoys at school, and he has his dog too and ds1 thinks he's annoying because he asks the same questions every week.

So after two or so weeks or this report, I did an internal hmm, and went to the park with him.

Where we met a charming and bemused [and totally benign] accountant with his dog.

ahundredtimes · 16/10/2008 21:17

Oh and LOOK, no I it isn't because he's an accountant and wears pale pink jumpers that I think he's benign. I just think he's benign. He just was and is.

ahundredtimes · 16/10/2008 21:18

Or maybe he isn't?

Oh god.

[implodes]

Original poster
exasperatedmummy · 16/10/2008 21:21

That is very sad scummy mummy - i am sorry to hear about that. Must have been terrible for your Dad.

OP posts:
bundle · 16/10/2008 21:23

I just cried reading scummymummy's post, what an absolutely unforgiveable, bigoted thing to do.

oh and exasperatedmummy, my dad was 64 when he died, and had some symptoms of Alzheimers in his 50s

not that being old should be an automatic weirdo tag

bundle · 16/10/2008 21:27

I hope morningpaper takes the trouble to read scummymummy's post

ScummyMummy · 16/10/2008 21:31

Thanks bundle and EM. It was a bad time for us as a family and things are lots lots better now.

But that experience alone would make me think very hard about doing anything in your situation, EM. You really have absolutely no evidence, none at all, that this man is suspect in any way. He has done nothing wrong.

Original poster
exasperatedmummy · 16/10/2008 21:32

That is awful bundle, I am SO sorry if i have upset you On a serious note, i have no intention of reporting this guy, as my feeling really is that yes, he IS a bit odd - ive seen him before, smiled and he glared at me. But we are all entitled to our oddness. I do feel quite upset that i have made you sad about your dad though, as i know only too well how awful alzheimers is. They call it the long goodbye and they are not wrong - please accpet my sincerest apologies.

OP posts:
bundle · 16/10/2008 21:38

it's ok exasperatedmummy, I didn't feel too bad for myself, I was just imagining what it might be like for someone who looked out of the ordinary, that didn't happen to us.

But scummymummy's story should be a real eye-opener to anyone reading this - I've met her in RL and you cannot imagine a nicer human being. For her and her family to go through that when they had already been bereaved is despicable.

onager · 16/10/2008 21:41

exasperatedmummy, your post was just asking for help to think it through which was fine.

Anyway, you're in my good books because you said further back "this is not an old man, probably in his 50s". I had a birthday today and it's cheered me up to hear that I'm not considered really old

onager · 16/10/2008 21:42

Scummymummy, Really sorry your family had to go through that.

Blu · 16/10/2008 21:42

Exactly, Scummy. It doesn't stop with a friendly chummy laugh with the police - if yu are alon and vulnerable you are then alone and vulnerable and thinking that the people in what you considered your neighbour hood have actually been reporting you for the possibility of unspeakably horrible crimes. How many MN-ers would laugh off, in a chummy way, a visit by SS after a report by an over-imaginative neighbour? Most would be furious and v upset.

Onager: good post: "Actually I was ok with the OP. She posted asking for discussion to sort out her feelings about it and said from the start she probably wouldn't do anything. That's what this place is for isn't it? talking things over.

What bothered me were the people saying "report him - it can't do any harm" which is either very naive or very mean." - and especially report him to the Head of the school. Why? Do head teachers now have investigative powers within the criminal justice system? Should a head put a note in the newsletter about him to warn parents and children? (one who did quite rightly ended up in court with a conviction for libel or slander) If you think a crime is in progress or likely, call the police!

Good for you, EM - LOL at your post in response!

Boco · 16/10/2008 21:44

I just skim read 100x post about the benign accountant and thought that you'd done an internal on him! Bleeding vigilante.

And there IS an element of prejudice - there so is, with all of us. He had a pink jumper and was an accountant = benign. If he'd had a comb over and been made redundant recently and had a bit of depression = odd = instinct he's odd = call the police. We all make these judgments, but doesn't make it a good judgement, in either situation, to trust or to panic - is very tricky. There are some very vulnerable men who look odd and a visit from the police to check up on whether or not they are interested in molesting a small child is not a minor thing, it isn't.

Blu · 16/10/2008 21:47

TBH, when I first read the OP I thought 'oh, probably UnquietDad with temporary writers block - and maybe glaring at parents taking DCs to a church school'. If indeed it is a church school.

But that was before I heard about his personal hygeine problems, of course. (window-man's hygeine - not UQDs)

Original poster
exasperatedmummy · 16/10/2008 21:48

I think i might go to bed now - i'll have a busy day tomorrow chosing new curtains for this guy to assuage my guilt - i'll post them anonnymously

OP posts:
ahundredtimes · 16/10/2008 22:05

The police once arrested me for sitting outside at 2.00 in the morning. Well, they didn't arrest me, they took me in for questioning. I was sober too. They thought I was weird I suppose - actually it transpired they thought I was a prostitute. Do you think they thought your Dad was going to jump Scummy? It could have been a concerned caller who knew his situation.

No, honest to god Boco, he could have not been an accountant in a pink jumper, and I wouldn't have thought he was dodgy. I thought I made that clear, but I suppose it's easier to not believe me to prove your point. Not much I can do about that, I shouldn't have mentioned the fact he was an accountant.

I don't meet many people I think are talking to my son for suspect reasons. In fact none that I can think of.

morningpaper · 16/10/2008 22:06

I hope morningpaper takes the trouble to read scummymummy's post

Yes Scummy's story is very sad and I'm amazed it happened in this country

But that doesn't change my position - I think that if the OP is genuinely worried (which she isn't) then expressing her concerns to someone official is not a BAD thing to do

lisalisa · 16/10/2008 22:06

And we have a man at our gym who always lounges in the jacuzzi when the pool is being used for childrne's swimming lessons. I just know he is a paedophile - he wears a strange plastic white swim hat ( but never swims), he always but always stares at teh childrne and makes no efort to look away when various mums have tried to outstare him and he has rolled on his back in teh jacuzzi more than once when little girls walk very close by to see under their towels. Yuuukkk. but the gyym can't do anything because technikcally he's not doing anyhting wroong.

morningpaper · 16/10/2008 22:07
ahundredtimes · 16/10/2008 22:15

Boco - sorry, I didn't explain the whole story so not fair. What reassured me about the bemused accountant was that he said 'Oh hello, we often meet in the park don't we ds1? I know your dog because X who owns the labradoodle told me his name, because she liked it so much. Do you know X? Yes, I do too etc etc'

therefore the fact that he went on in tedious detail to tell me about his job, whilst I stared at his jumper neither here nor there. Genuinely.

lol at MP's eyebrow.

ScummyMummy · 16/10/2008 22:17

I really don't think so, no, 100x. The police didn't ask if he was ok. They asked him why he was there and didn't believe his answer- which was in fairness probably unsatisfactory as he was very shocked and is a stubborn bananahead who felt very resentful about being questioned in his own block of flats. They then didn't believe my sister either, arrested him and kept him down at the police station for a good few hours before deciding that they did believe him and my sister after all and letting him go. I really don't know what the neighbours thought he was doing wrong tbh- maybe that he was a homeless person who was loitering or something like that?

ahundredtimes · 16/10/2008 22:20

God know, but it sounds like a really horrid experience for him SM.

It now occurs to me that it couldn't just have been that he made himself known to me - the accountant, I mean - could it. It must also have been instinct, I think, rather than prejudice.

Jux · 16/10/2008 22:37

Does he look like he's stabbing a cat on his lap?

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