A month ago our 24 year old daughter and I went to Cleveland for the weekend, just to walk around the downtown area, eat at some restaurants, and get some drinks at the bars. (She went to college in Cleveland and likes the city.) We normally do these things as a family, but my wife and our other two children couldn’t make it, so it was just her and me.
On Saturday evening we walked down to The Flats and ended up eating at Margaritaville. We were sitting at the bar. Two gentlemen sat next to us, and we struck up a light conversation with them. I told them we were from SW Ohio, and we decided to come up to Cleveland for the weekend.
My daughter got up to go use the restroom. A few seconds later the man that was sitting next to me got up. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
After we left the restaurant my daughter told me that the man was waiting outside the restroom as she exited it and started asking her questions. She said the conversation went like this:
Man: “Are you O.K.?”
My daughter: “Um, yea?”
Man: “Are you being held against your will?”
My daughter: “Huh? No.”
Man: “Who is that person you are with?”
My daughter: "He’s my dad.”
Man: “Are you sure you’re O.K.? Would you like me to call the police?”
My daughter: “No. Why should the police be called?”
When she told me about the conservation it made me feel really weird. It never occurred to me that some people might think that I am with a prostitute, or involved in human trafficking.
He got her to tell him you were her dad. I wonder how their exchange would have gone if she had said you were a friend from work or something who would have found her Irish Goodby a little annoying but not alarming.
I can hear a different conversation in my head, with a presumably different sort of young woman:
Man: “Are you OK?”
Woman: “Who are you?”
Man: “Are you being held against your will?”
Woman: “Get away from me!”
Man: “Who is that person you are with?”
Woman: “None of your effing business. Beat it!”
Man: “Are you sure you’re OK? Would you like me to call the police?”
Woman: “Get out of my face, or I’ll be the one calling the police!”
It’s really hard to tell without being there if this was in any way a genuine person who thought he was doing the right thing. But if she was lucid and not tipsy/tired/unwell and presenting as though she might have been roofied or something, and he persisted after she categorically told him you are her dad, my money is on creep.
Sure. I’m just not seeing anything in OP’s story, as told, that gets you to plausible suspicion.
I guess you never know what’s going on with people, he might have had a relative lured into prostitution and be hypervigilant. Statistically, though, I think there are a lot more creeps out there than people like this.
But, if he’s going off the same sort of statistics, then it’s not unreasonable for him to suspect the OP of being a creep. Older man with a younger woman sets off alarm bells these days with all the stories in the news about trafficking.
And I can see someone like that debating in their head whether to say or ask something. Knowing that if their suspicious is unfounded, then they will look the fool, but if there is something to that suspicion, then they may have trouble living with themselves knowing that they could have done something.
Obviously, we have little to go on, but I’m of the opinion that this was more of a busybody than a creep.
OTOH, what the OP’s daughter said could be a lesson. If you are a young woman out with a work colleague or friend, and someone asks, maybe you should tell them it’s actually your dad. If a work colleague or friend doesn’t come back to the table, they may, as @Inigo_Montoya indicates, assume they found something more interesting to do with their time and not investigate too hard. If it’s her dad, heaven and hell are going to fall aside to a father looking for his missing daughter.
A friend of mine was similarly accused. He’s a college teacher, and was having dinner with a former student of his. He was 50ish, she was mid-20s. They weren’t drinking or talking loudly. When a guy came up to them and asked the woman if she was OK/needed help/police/etc., they were both stunned. The fact that the guy asked her in front of my buddy (who’s a really big guy) makes me think he was sincerely motivated, just hyper vigilant, ala Dwight Schute.
This is tricky, though. If you are genuinely concerned, asking like this ensures that you are not making the person feel unsafe. But someone under psychological manipulation or threat is much less likely to speak up in front of the manipulator.
Right. And when he first sat next to me at the bar and we had small talk, I told him my daughter (gesturing to her) and I were in Cleveland for the weekend. I guess he didn’t believe she was my daughter.
We, and even more so the direct customer support folks, get a lot of training on this. And constant harping to really be on the lookout, not just know academically that this crap goes on daily.
One of the key messages is to not be direct in front of the manipulator. It doesn’t work, it can put the victim in danger later no matter how they respond, etc.
With that perspective, should we be less surprised about the guy in the OP? Maybe it’s appropriate, and just something we should get accustomed to without taking offense?
This type of thing is why, if someone asks me to watch their kid while they run to the ATM or whatever, I politely decline. Along with the fact that I’m not a babysitter.
If you wanted to set somebody up for some reason, this would be a way to do it. Ask them to watch your kid, and then loudly accuse them of trying to snatch their kid. It’s your word against theirs.
IMHO it’s better to treat people looking out for one another’s safety as socially acceptable rather than unacceptable, as long as the attempted helpfulness isn’t invasive in its own right. But it should be borne in mind that attempted helpfulness can also be feigned in service of a creepy pickup ploy.
I guess the best way to shut that shit down would be for the “potential victim” to openly tell the “potential trafficker” about it, in the questioner’s hearing: “Hey Dad, you’ll never guess what this gentleman just asked me!”
If everybody laughs goodnaturedly about it, then it needn’t embarrass or intimidate a sincerely concerned person away from similar attempted helpfulness in future situations. But it will definitely tell a devious creep that his little “good guy knight-errant” cosplay trick isn’t going to work here.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like the idea of random people trying to “save” victims of human trafficking. First of all, many of them may not even recognize themselves as victims, as these assholes will convince them they’re in a relationship. The physical risk to the victim is often quite high, so you’re gambling with their personal safety. And what was this guy going to do if your daughter said yes? Take her to the police? She could very well get arrested for prostitution. Police arrest children for prostitution in this country. Just the fact of him asking could get her in trouble. Unless this good Samaritan had a crisis line or an expert agency at the ready, this seems very foolhardy to me, like some random guy thinking he can do a hostage negotiation.
I work for an agency serving survivors of domestic and sexual violence. One time in my neighborhood I literally had a woman run in front of my car to flag me down after her partner attacked her. I let her climb into my car, drove around while she called the police, I stayed with her while they interviewed her. She said the man strangled and hit her. It was very obvious to me that she’d been strangled, you could hear it in her voice, but cops are generally not trained in domestic violence strangulation or lethality risk assessment.
But you know what? I write grants. I know a lot about the subject in an abstract way, but I don’t have any crisis intervention experience. I gave her my business card with the crisis line number and told her there were other places she could go if she didn’t want to stay with him, she took the card and left and that was it. I did feel inadequate. It sucked. I talked about it at length with the director of emergency shelter the following day and she told me I did the exact right thing. I wasn’t about to insert myself into an incredibly complex issue and make the situation worse with my own ignorance. I know just enough to be dangerous, you know?
I would just advise people who think they can intervene in a situation like this that there’s probably a lot they don’t understand about the issue and they could inadvertently make it worse.
I worked for the same company my dad was an executive with, I was a department manager and had occasion to travel with him for business. Being familial, I saw no reason not to split a 2 bed room with him, nor to hang out eating dinner and having a couple drinks with him. It did suck, I would get approached as if I were prostituting myself - my father was a good solid 39 years older than I …
Sheesh, not every may-december couple is potentially prostitution - sometimes men do actually have wives 30 years younger than they, or are traveling with a child.
