This story (short version- a man rescued a drowning kid at the beach, pulls him to shore, but the hysterical mother accuses him of pedophilia and calls the cops [also- this is a reddit forum post- not a news article… so who knows if it’s true]) made me wonder- is “stranger danger” hysteria so great now that a person (especially an adult male) might have to consider the risk of prosecution when deciding whether to aid a child in some sort of distress?
I think it’s definitely something that men are more aware of than women, and they’re probably right to be aware. Not necessarily nervous, but aware.
My husband and I were talking about it recently, because of a friend-of-a-friend incident (toddler wandered out of his own garden, down the road, into a neighbour’s garden where the neighbour found him). If a kid was obviously lost and in distress, but not in actual danger - like the one in the garden - my instinct would be to go straight to the kid, while my husband’s would be to find the nearest other person, preferably female, to go to the kid with him. If the kid was in actual danger, like on the road, both of us would grab the kid straightaway - but my husband would instantly look for a witness, while I wouldn’t consider that a priority.
For me, it helps that much of the time I have a personal toddler in tow, so no one’s likely to think I’m Crazy Babysnatcher Lady. My husband thought it might help if he had our kid with him, in that Concerned Dad is a less threatening presence than Lone Male, but that a truly off-the-scale paranoid person might think he was using ours to lure away the lost kid.
I really hope this worry wouldn’t stop anyone helping a kid in need - but I don’t think you’d have to be paranoid to try and help the kid in a way that protects you too.
As a father of 3, I love kids. What eclectic wench says is true, in that sometimes my enthusiasm for entertaining other people’s children is unfortunately tempered by the sudden fear that somebody is going to think I’m a pedophile. Part of that is that I look and act young, and most people are genuinely surprised to learn that I have 3 kids of my own. I feel like I have to pre-emptively explain myself to people. It’s a bit depressing.
On the other hand, the story linked to in the OP is way out there in batshit insaneville. What’d the mom think, that some random guy was just going to start raping her son on the beach in front of everyone? And the kid was 8 or 9, per the story, so it’s not like he couldn’t just say, “Yeah, this guy saved me from drowning.” My guess is that the story is somewhat exaggerated for the benefit of the reddit audience. If people live in fear of such ridiculous scenarios, to the point where it might affect their decision to save the life of a child, then there’s something wrong with them.
I was at a playground (neighborhood kids’ birthday party) and I noticed a girl standing under a pine tree crying. I definitely didn’t want to be the 50 year old man under a tree with a crying little girl. I asked the nearest adult female on check on her.
It would appear to me based entirely upon news stories that any accusation of pedophilia makes the accused guilty. I try not to even look at children in the supermarket just as a precaution.
The notion that an accusation makes one irredeemably guilty is spattered throughout history. Witches, Jews and communist have all been subjected to inquisitions and the like. I think we may have approached the point where the accused pedophile is guilty and irredeemable except until burned at the metaphorical stake.
I’ll be a voice of dissent and say that men helping children is natural and not at all dangerous. Of course you hear stories about a friend of a friend who did something innocent and got in trouble for it. But you don’t hear the much more common, and therefore uninteresting, stories of a man who helped a toddler and reunited the kid with her parents and was thanked and that’s all. Events that are normal and everyday don’t get talked about much. The unusual (“He helped that kid and got yelled at!”) gets repeated and embellished.
Another anecdote: there used to be this woman who would park around the corner from us and go into a house for anything up to ten minutes (maybe more, I don’t know), leaving a baby in the car, with the window open. It freaked me out a bit - I mean, maybe she could see the baby from the house, but still - and when I was passing and saw the kid in the car, I’d hover on the nearest corner, as discreetly as possible, till I saw her come out. Again, I had my own baby in a sling, so I didn’t look like I was hovering for babysnatching purposes.
My husband saw it once or twice and kept walking. It freaked him out too, but so did the prospect of a questioning session down the local cop shop.
See, though, I think this is a slightly different question. Yes, it’s natural, and yes, the one we hear about is the rare parent who screams ‘BURN THE WITCH!!’ The question is whether that’s one in fifty or one in a million - in other words, whether they’re common enough that you need to take them into account at all.
I’m a mid-30s dude with kids. The only time I really feel uncomfortable around other people’s young kids is if they touch me or sit on my lap or something. I make every effort to rectify that situation without touching the kid further and in a way that makes clear to other people around that the kid started it (unless the touching is just absolutely innoccuous, in which case I do nothing).
I’ve never been worried about just approaching or talking to kids. I wouldn’t hesitate for one second to drag a drowning kid from the water, or catch a toddler about to run into the street, or approach a kid who wandered away from home etc. etc.
Two weeks ago I was driving down a busy 5 lane arterial road on the way home from work. A beautiful blonde haired blue eyed little girl maybe 18mos old toddled out in front of my car. I locked up the brakes and barely missed killing her (ABS is great) but I hesitated to get out of the car. I did, but I did t touch her at all, I waved my hands like I was shooing a group of chickens and she got back up on the sidewalk. Except for the traffic jam tryin to get around my car, no one was around, no other kids, no parent. I didn’t want anything to do with this kid but I couldn’t drive off and leave her to wander back into the road and get killed or get swiped by an actual pedophile that I was so afraid of looking like. If I put her in my car and drove her even straight to the police station they’d lock me up and throw away the key. So I stood there on the side of the road stumped onwhat to do, trying to remember how to actually dial an outgoing call on my iPhone to call the police. After at least a minute her mother appeared and said “oh, tee hee, looks like one got away! Tee hee!” and I suggested she might consider going out of her way to ensure her children don’t wander into the street and get killed during rush hour.
I’m just one data point, but that’s how I responded in that situation. I am 30, I have 3 daughters of my own, one of them younger than this girl and one a few months older. I love kids, but that would likely only heighten suspicions if someone accused me of being a pedophile.
I think the fact that this thread even exists is proof that it really is possible to be too afraid of the worst humanity has to offer.
I honestly don’t believe that either story in the link actually occurred (particularly that someone was called a pedophile for holding a door open for a mother and daughter) and think those accounts are mythologizing in the service of a point of view (which cannot be substantiated by true stories – instead I imagine that racounteurs consider themselves to be telling “truthy” stories, which is what bullshitters always think they are doing).
A couple years ago, while I was vacationing at the Outer Banks, I pulled a little girl of about four out of the water when she got pulled too far out on a boogie board, fell off, and started drowning. Her fat ass mother was too busy reading a paperback to notice and her clueless dad was too busy with his kite to care. They both treated me like Chester the Molester when I brought their coughing, spluttering , shaking daughter back to them. I was furious and really, really wanted to kick the shit out of both of them. My sister in law, in an effort to calm me down, pointed out that they were probably horribly embarrassed that a stranger had to save their kid and that colored their reaction. Some people just don’t deserve to have kids.
This. I’ve never read a story from a reputable news source, or seen one on television, where a person has hand on hard said they were pressing charges against someone for abduction or sexual molestation when there is no evidence, or indeed that the person in question was in a situation helping the child. It leads me to think this doesn’t actually happen, and that it’s all part of the media’s need to keep us hyped on an issue that doesn’t really exist.
Me - guy in my 30s. I would absolutely help a child that was obviously in distress, and have done, regardless if I was with someone or not. Recently I had a situation where I came out of my gym, which is part of a cinema complex, and a woman was taking a large party of kids down the escalators to the exit. One of the girls (about 7 I’d say) couldn’t get on as she was scared of the escalator, and got left at the top in tears because she’d been left behind. I just asked if she was okay, she said no and pointed to the others, and I said I’d help her get down. I lifted her on the escalator, stood with her to make sure she didn’t fall, and at the bottom lifted her off. The woman supervising the group was extremely grateful, I said no problem and walked off. What’s the problem?
If I found a lost child again it’s pretty simple - you stay with them making clear you’re not going anywhere and see if you can see their parents/guardian, if you can’t you call the police again not going anywhere. I know that I’m not a threat to a child, but I can’t say the same for anyone else who offers to assist, so I for one would rather run the tiny risk of me being accused of doing something improper (which is easy to refute) than let something potentially happen to a child.
To give a counter-point, a couple of years back I watched a news piece on the BBC about the investigation that had occurred after the death of a little girl, aged about 6. She had been at school in a fairly rural area, and left the school grounds during break time. Somehow she was missed from the count back to class, and the school didn’t realise she was gone, so she was left to walk to her house by herself a couple of miles away. When she got to her house she went into the back garden, where no-one noticed her, fell into the pond in the garden and drowned. This was pieced together from accounts of people who came forward in the investigation, and plenty of people driving along the road that she walked down remembered seeing her clearly on her own and way too young to be by herself. The most tragic part: several people said they wanted to stop to see what she was doing by herself, but because the area was isolated and they were men they thought they might be accused of trying to abduct her. So the fear of being accused of trying to hurt that girl essentially killed her. Remembering this story would ALWAYS propel me to assist a child, and to hell with the hysteria created around this subject by journalists purely for the purposes of selling their papers.
Good god. Something else to add to the what not to do around children if your a man list. Don`t perform CPR on other strangers dead kids , cuz thats like pedo yo.
No problem.
Did they say anything that made it clear that this is what they were thinking? It seems like these stories often have the phrase “treated me like” or “acted as if”. Often, I’ll see the expression “looked at me like”. I think men worry a lot about being seen as a child molester (with some reason), and perhaps project that anxiety. As a woman, I might interpret that exact same behavior as bitchy or rude, but I wouldn’t see suspicion.
I was watching a movie and saw a 2 yr old walking down the aisle saying, “mami, mami” So I grabbed the kids hand, crouched down so I was face to face with him and asked if he was lost. He looked at me puzzled so I said, “Quieres ayuda?” He nodded so I said, “Vamanos.” and walked him out to the lobby. I walked around with him for a while until he pulled his hand away, ran to a woman and clung to her leg. The woman and the man who was with her smiled and nodded at me. I waved and walked back to my movie. I wasn’t worried about what anyone thought, I was worried about the kid. I think 99.99% of the people in the world are normal and we can’t spend our time worrying that we will encounter the 0.01%.
P.S.
I learned three phrases from watching Dora the Explorer with my kids. I got to use two of them that evening.
I have the same type of feelings about this. I do feel uncomfortable about “what others will think” to the point that it makes it difficult for me to touch someone else’s child even in ways that would be objectively acceptable. The drastic and devastating effects of even being a suspect of a child sex crime makes me decide that no, I’m not going to hug or hold little Suzie and will sit at least 2 feet away.
The words “give me my kid!” were used. The words “thank you” were not. Kite boy glared at me like he thought he had heat vision.
To which you retorted “wish I’d let you drown”.