It’s quite a local story, I think. I haven’t seen any national news coverage of it. But it’s quite a big story for me, as this man taught my kids.
Now, he was never alone with either of them, but I had a fair amount of contact with him over the last few years - my wife works with children in this city, and they would often be at the same events and things. My wife recommended him to my sister in law to give her own son confidence training. Fortunately, he was caught before she could actually do anything about it.
I dunno, I just feel like I’ve had just such a close shave, that I could so easily have let this man get his claws into my kids. He’s not a creep, he was personable and sociable and was very good working with kids - you could see it when he worked with them, they were all comfortable. He taught some really talented young people some tricky skills - fire poi, ball-walking, trapeze and tightrope.
I’ve got some photos on my computer of my son learning Poi from him. The photos of my son are awesome - he’s so happy and smiley and really enjoying what he’s doing. But that man is in all of them. Even though I’m absolutely certain he never did anything untowards with either of my two, I’ve still had to delete them. I cannot look.
I don’t know how old your son is, but you could use this as a teaching moment. The lesson is that no matter how nice, kind, and admirable someone is they are still capable of doing bad things, and if a bad thing is done to you tell your parents. Of course, the next step is for the parents to believe the kid and take action but I somehow doubt that would be an issue in your case. Yes, it was a close shave but the truth is we all interact with Bad People in our lives, we brush buy them at the gas station or the grocery store and never know that we had a close encounter with them. You don’t want to go through life in fear of everyone, because most people are quite decent, but it’s a caution not to trust people too far.
Of course this predator was good with kids - a lot of pedophiles and abusers are good with kids, take jobs to be near kids, and so forth. That’s how they get close to their victims and that’s how they get away with this crap for years on end. From the article, it seems he was targeting victims that were already somewhat isolated and needy, which isn’t an uncommon strategy, either. The most likely victim of a non-relative molester is a child that isn’t getting enough attention or is outright neglected. Kids have such a need to be validated they’ll sometimes settle for bad attention over no attention at all.
The thing is, with you being an involved and interested parent it made your kids less attractive, because it made it more likely your kids would tell on him and be believed if they said anything. I know parents feel terrified and helpless but really, just paying attention to what your kids are doing provides some protection from these sorts. I know it doesn’t feel adequate, and you can’t protect them from everyone and everything, but your oversight does help.
I’m sorry this sours the memory of your son learning to do something neat and some times that were enjoyable at the time. That’s another way these sorts of criminals cause pain.
I have been thinking about this. My son is probably too young to understand this - he’s only 4. My daughter, however, is 8. She hasn’t seen him for nearly a year, though - it’s taken a while for all this to come to court and for him to get convicted, so I wonder if the time to use this specifically has passed. We have had talks about what is appropriate behaviour, though.