<climbs on soapbox>
That ain’t right!!!
Rule #1 - help the child. Make anyone’s life miserable that tries to interfere or give you grief for doing so.
We have turned into a cold, callous society when someone is afraid to help a child. My $0.02 worth.
<climbs off soapbox>
Amen, Clothy.
Of course the driver/engineers testimony would have cleared me. After spending $5000 on legal fees, and as much on bail. And being suspended from my job. As i first would have been arrested, then had to track down said engineer/driver.
Yes, San Jose CA.
And, it’s not make believe. It happened. Now, yes, I am speculating on what might have happened had I stayed. But nothing good would have come of it.
I did save the kid, and so did Emtar KronJonDerSohn. But the point is, we could have got into trouble by doing so. In my case, I saved the kid then left. Would the kid have been any more saved had I stayed around?
ISTM that some people are having trouble with the concept of tread-drift. This thread started as a discussion of whether fear of false accusation leading to lack of action in an emergency. Mr. Accident’s experience does not fit the parameters of the OP, but it does demonstrate the issue that prompted the OP and gives us more of a Big Picture perspective. If that causes the thread to drift, then that’s a good thing, as the larger issue of whether men are subjected to unwarranted suspicion is what caused the specific issue of whether some men feel that even heroic actions might result in false accusations.
Johnny, some men may also feel that rubbing their bodies with magnets will hasten the return of Jebus Christos. Doesn’t make it true.
Dr. Deth is a good example. He has spun a harm involving losing his job and paying (precisely) five grand in legal fees if he had not taken to his heels, despite the fact that he has no good reason for those beliefs.
Ah. i didn’t know you were omniscient. Given that men nave been falsely accused of crimes against children, and given that men have been arrested, and given (in this thread, even) that men have been shunned/avoided by people who have heard the accusations, Dr.Deth has no reason to fear being falsely accused.
I suppose if a Black person were to feel he might be falsely accused of a crime, then he is being unreasonable? Or if an American of Hispanic descent were to be stopped and asked to prove his citizenship, then it’s all in his head?
The wisest words here.
Help the kid, don’t worry about some tiny chance you might be accused of something.
I think it’s quite reasonable for him to fear being accused, but I don’t think his story can be used as evidence that men are in danger of so being accused.
I think we can both agree that women face a real danger of sexual assault, and it behooves them to take basic precautions against being a victim. However, stories about what probably would have happened for sure if those precautions weren’t taken are not, in themselves, evidence that sexual assault is a problem.
I suspect that being accused of being a pedophile after assisting a child in trouble could happen, but I am not going to change anything based on that chance. If a kid needs help, I’ll help. If the parent gives me the stinkeye :shrugs:
Regards,
Shodan
Hell’s really freezing over, I agree with Shodan.
Help the kid effectively if the kid needs help. Deal with the stinkeye afterwards–even if you deal with it, as DrDeth did, by bailing out of the scene once the kid is back in responsible hands.
Rand Rover, you’re failing to appreciate nuance–specifically, in this case, the nuance that an accusation of sexual crime is often as socially damaging as a conviction.
My thoughts exactly!
Although I am perfectly willing to concede that in a fantasy land of Rand Rover’s construction, where the same child wanders into the same street with alarming regularity and accusations along the lines of “THAT MAN JUST GRABBED MY BABY AND RAN!” are shrugged off with a laugh, the benefit of doing things his way could possibly outweigh the risk of breaking my “don’t touch strange children” rule sometimes.
I still haven’t received any explanation of what else I could have possibly done in the actual real life situation I encountered to in any way produce a more favorable outcome.
Please. I’m not missing that “nuance” at all–that’s the whole damn issue we are talking about.
I’m perfectly willing to defend myself against unfounded allegations of impropriety with a child if that’s what it takes to keep the child from harm. And, I think the fears of having those allegations get very far are very unfounded, as this thread has demonstrated–we have lots of supposition and assumption and hearsay and views on what others must have been thinking based on their looks or tone of voice. We don’t have a single example of anyone being accused of impropriety merely from helping a child.
It’s not about one situation. I showed you how your way has potential for a worse outcome for the kid as compared to a way for dealing with the kid that isn’t overly concerned with imagined fears of jail time and “$5,000” of legal fees.
How could my sticking around have helped the kid more? Once the kid was out of the way of the train and the Mother had the kid in hand, would it have helped the kid in any way for me to have stayed there?
It might have helped the kid in the long rong if you had told the mother that her kid was just playing on the friggin’ train tracks while she was not paying attention.
I’m amazed someone had to point this out. Furthermore should the federal officer have asked what you were doing with her son, you could have made the point that had it not been for you he’d likely be a smear on the train tracks now, and the mother needs to have made clear to her that she’s failing as a carer. I’m similarly surprised with how many people seem to be going from “incident that could potentially look questionable” to “jail time and lost career” without passing through any point in between.
Random kid-snatching is such a rare occurrence that, even if a mother/father were jumping up and down making such accusations, it would take the authorities no time at all to ascertain that your manhandling of said kid was to save the kid from danger and was not an attempted abduction. Sheesh. Cops aren’t that dumb. And I would also posit that 99.9% of parents/caregivers aren’t so thick either.
1.I’m in my late twenties and have a naked child running around and in view of the neighbors all the time, so do they in fact. Its called being the parent of a toddler. These neighbors knew you lived there and that she was your sister, yet they still called police. So it was the neighbors who were trying to cause trouble for you, why? Cuz neighbors like that can call and report anything, that they hear domestic violence, that they smell marijuana, any one of these calls could lead to you being arrested on spurious charges.
2.So the cops were going to arrest you despite the fact it was your sister and not a kidnapped child and you were caring for her? Despite no evidence, despite no indication of a crime they were going to arrest you for just being in the same house as a naked child. Well I think you’re going into la la land, and should put the blame where it belongs on those making false police reports.
Blame whomever you want. The point is that while you think a situation is hunky-dory, someone else, someone in the shadows or on the periphery, may think otherwise, and make a decision to say something to someone else, which could lead to a visit from the authorities.
My kid got a shiner from a neighbor kid while playing tennis on the Wii. We called the school to let them know, as well as the teacher. Another parent reported it to CPS, and we got a visit at home, as did the neighbor, to verify the story, and to check on us. I have no idea if we have a “record” now, but it was traumatic for us, especially my wife.
While this experience sucked for us, I understand why it happened - I guess for every false alarm, there is real abuse that needs to be addressed. And, this is why adult males in our society my have a degree of paranoia when it comes to handling kids. It would not stop me from acting to help a child of course, but yes, I would pause long enuf to consider consequences.
My god, won’t somebody think of the children?!
Wow, there’s a lot of lawyering going on here. Good thing discussion threads aren’t courtrooms, or they’d be pretty boring. Let’s reverse the situation to get a better perspective on it:
You are in a public place and you look up from your Blackberry when you hear your child cry, and there is a man touching your child. What do you think? What do you do? What if the man were just near your child? What if it were a woman?
No excuses about how you’d never take your eyes off your kid for even a second, the scenario is as I put it (well, it could be an iPhone), that’s all you know. Did the kid just get pulled off train tracks, out of the street, off the deep fryer, scolded by a stranger? How can you know, you’re attention has been elsewhere.