I was just disgusted by this mum's behaviour today

[emkana]

Dd1 went to a party today, in a leisure centre - they just had a bit of equipment out and the children basically had a run around. A guy who worked there was supervising them and playing with them a bit, and suggesting things to do.

One of the mums had seen this guy at the leisure centre before and had noticed that all the children and teenagers at the time had come up to this guy and had talked to him and knew his name etc.

This mum now said about this guy that in her opinion he looked what you would imagine a paedophile would look like.
While the party was going on this mum kept telling her children to keep away from this man, and not to go near him.
On what evidence??????? It was awful, it really was. Her one ds even went up to the man and said "I must stay away from you."
This mum got all worried and uptight just because this man was taking the children by the hands so that they could fall backwards onto the inflatable. And because he picked them up to lift them onto the inflatable. WTF?

Honestly I was stunned and didn't know what to say.

Oh, and I had a boss once who said that most (male)music teachers are paedophiles and wouldn't let us show children in swim suits in any marketing material in case perverts jerked off on our Annual Report.

So it's not just women!

a friend of my mum used to wear swimming shorts if he put his kids in the bath with him when they were babies.

he just felt uncomfortable that someone may accuse him of something.

it really is sad that we have to live with sch suspicion in our minds all the time

conversly my husband and i both ran a community youth club and i had to remind him to never be left alone with any of the children.

it never ever even ever occurred to him - which is nice

Fatty - my DH is like that! I said today (while in bath with DS) I wish we had a massive bath, then we could all get in... and he sort of made a face. I knew what it meant and said "well, you could wear your swimming trunks...". Dont know why though - its that odd perception that your doing something very wrong. Im guilty of feeling odd when I came into my MIls living room, and she had DSs nappy off and he was just kicking about. I think its so prevalent in the media etc. about all these "bad" people, you can hardly look at anyone without double thinking. Its awful, but its the way things are going IMO.

Police issued photos of 'Britain's most wanted paedophiles' last week. Most of them looked like perfectly ordinary, clean cut young men. So if you look normal you must be a considerable danger to children. Would post grin emoticon apart from the fact that this just isn't funny.
What a stupid woman.

I am overly protective because of the stories i heard and the children i spoke to. I have "met" a number of peadophiles and not a single one looked like a dirty old man in a rain mac.

i think that because i know that there is no 'type' it makes it all the more worrying but in the same way i cannot protect my children from ever coming into contact with another adult.

Yes, Fortyplus, I was just going to say that how often do we see a photo of a peadophile in the paper, and he just doesn't have that 'look' that you kind of expect. Some of them are in their early twenties and look like your average guy next door.
A couple of years ago, we got a new Priest in our Parish, and a couple of Mums in the park after school said "oh he looks like one." It's just ignorance.

I have also met a fair few sex offenders of various kinds - there is no common "look" at all.