In CA it is a crime for which you will be put on the Sexual Predator database for life.
Same thing for sex in public. Or Public Nudity.
Here is a site that accept a very high number, usually considered the extreme number of kids being molested.
http://www.childmolestationprevention.org/pages/tell_others_the_facts.html
Notice that only 10 percent of the child sexual abusers report that they molest a child who is a stranger.
Let’s put the facts together:
Child molesters exist in every part of our society.
They molest children close to them, mainly children in their family or children in their social circle.
Most child molesters, 90 percent, report that they know their child victims very well.
We want you to look carefully at that last fact on the list. While there are several facts that you will use as part of The Child Molestation Prevention Plan, this is the most important.
To save the greatest number of children in the shortest possible time, we must turn the current focus of our efforts upside down. Right now, 90 percent of our efforts go toward protecting our children from strangers, when what we need to do is to focus 90 percent of our efforts toward protecting children from the abusers who are not strangers - the molesters in their families and the molesters who are the friends of their families.*
Other show “Stranger danger” as low as 1%. The usual number is 3% for little kids. a More conservative site:
http://www.yellodyno.com/html/child_molester_stats.html
•*Adults were the offender in 60% of the sexual assaults of youth under age 12. Rarely were the offenders of young victims strangers. Strangers were the offender in just 3% of sexual assaults against victims under age 6 and 5% of the sexual assault of victimizations of youth ages 6 through 11.
-Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement,
7/00, NCJ 182990, U.S. Department of Justice
*
But in case people didnt believe me about cops not having the manpower to check dangerous registered sex offenders:
"There are 400,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and an estimated 80 to 100,000 of them are missing. They’re supposed to be registered, but we don’t know where they are and we don’t know where they’re living."
It also happens in your very own home, in the vast majority.
So again, OP, did you call the Police on whatever relative you had watch your kids?
Because the chance that poor dude will molest your kids in a public park as opposed to someone you know and trust in your home is thousands to one.
:dubious: from the first page, and reiterated through:
Fair enough, but as you started that post by saying, "Hate to break it to you, but you actually DO get to call the cops on people who make you feel ooky. That’s literally and totally and 100% something you get to do. "
So when you said "I agree with joyful that asking the dude where his kid is might be a better step than calling the cops. " later, it really sounded like an option. Something that you might do. Something that might be better. Not something that you would actually recommend that they do.
If I misinterpreted your post, I apologize, I can only do the best with the medium afforded me.
I haven’t read every single response, but I think what the OP did had some justification, specifically because a) the man didn’t seem to have a child there after fairly lengthy observation, b) his “do you like ice cream” question sounds weirdly like what kidnappers do. The real fault I think was with the police, who sent 3 cruisers, rather than just sending one officer to quietly observe.
And I stand by that. The claim was that “You don’t get to call the cops on people who make you feel ooky. In fact if you pull this too many times they might arrest you.” (emphasis added). That’s more of the ridiculous hyperbole that makes having a discussion like this so difficult, and I think it’s worth shutting down that sort of nonsense hard.
I’m unclear which option you’re referring to with your pronouns. Both “calling the cops” and “talking with the guy” are options. I wasn’t there, so I hedge my bets on saying which option was better, but if I had to bet, I’d go with “talking with the guy.” But again, I give a fair amount of deference to the person on the scene.
Again, though, calling the cops IS an option, and the cops are never in a million years going to arrest someone who is sincerely nervous about someone at a playground, even if the call turns out not to be warranted or even wise.
I appreciate that, and I appreciate the moderate way you’re discussing this issue. It’s easy for people speaking reasonably to get drowned out when they’re standing next to people who are shouting nonsense, and I don’t want to lump your posts in with the nonsense posts :).
It is a horrible summation. No one ever said anything of the kind. What we said was:
If you are an adult in a park that:
- Is not playing with your kid to the point that people (plural) don’t even realize you have a kid there.
AND - Approach kids uninvited to initiate conversations
Then that is suspicious behavior
How is that in any way close to your characterization that I am talking about every man in every situation with any child under all circumstances?
Wasn’t shouty, it was for emphasis so posters like you WOULDN’T MISS IT. Do you honestly not see that I am talking about a specific behavior and not a general guy-talking-to-child considering I even gave an example of “an adult male even speaking to their child” as normal?
So, not sexual assault? Thanks.
I take the general point, but there’s also the hurdle in surveillance of dangerous past sex offenders that the registries includes people who had consensual sex with 16yr olds when they were 19, adult couples caught having sex in public and so forth. The paranoia gets in the way of rational enforcement on a lot of levels. It’s not just silly overreactions of calling the police as in the OP story.
ETA: which point I guess you made somewhere else, the flaws in such registries boosting the numbers and naturally the frequency of people slipping away from them, some of whom are actually dangerous.
No, it isn’t. Almost any man I run into is physically capable of raping me. i.e. all men are POTENTIAL rapists - that doesn’t mean all men ARE rapists or all men should be treated like rapists.
I’m pretty sure almost any woman you run into is physically capable of raping you too.
Its also what you are trained to do interacting with children. Ask a question that is likely to get a positive response that you can follow up with (what flavor) to establish a rapport. Small talk with Children 101. Which is why child molesters would use a question like that, but I use it with Girl Scouts and at church when dealing with kids. i.e., the question isn’t creepy, what is creepy would be the reason you ask the question. Unfortunately, you can’t tell why someone asks the question. To believe they are using the question because they molest or abduct children is expecting the worst. Believing they are using the question because they like talking to kids and want to be nice is expecting the best.
Here is what I don’t get. Someone at the park makes you uncomfortable - remove yourself and your kid from the park. We’ve done it a zillion times - someone brings an ill behaved dog, someone’s child is a little more handsy than we want, there are too many people (or sometimes too few people), the teenagers have invaded and are hanging out on top of the jungle gym talking teenager - we leave.
To expand on this point–being to quick to call the cops is a bad thing, but so is being to hesitant. You shouldn’t call the cops because a black man is walking down the street in your neighborhood. But if a guy you’ve never seen is walking down your back alley with a ski mask on and a crowbar in his hand, you don’t have to wait till you see him go over a fence. It’s not your job to make 100% sure that something has already crossed the threshold for criminality before you call 911.
And frankly, child abuse is a situation where, in general, people tend to be too reluctant. I’m going to sit down this afternoon and fill out a CPS report on a situation that should have been reported a long time ago, but was gray enough that everyone could tell themselves it wasn’t really “evidence”. People identify with the other adult, they don’t want to get someone in trouble, they don’t want to cause a scene. Telling a child you didn’t call the cops because you “wanted to be sure” is pretty cold comfort.
I’m afraid you’re talking to a wall with some of the posters here. To use your analogy if you said you called the police on a black man wearing dark clothes peering over people’s back fences, many posters in this thread would say that you are saying “No black men should ever walk in any neighborhood after dark.” and that you should have asked him if he were looking for his cat to allay your fears.
To be fair, if the person telling me that story mentioned the guy was black, as if that was a relevant detail into whether or not his behavior was suspect, I’d seriously wonder if they were racist: thinking that black people doing something is more suspect than white people doing the same thing is pretty textbook. And that would make me wonder if they played up the other details to sound more suspect as a sort of rationalization.
Yes, just like thinking a man doing something is more suspicious than a woman doing the same thing is pretty textbook sexism. I doubt anyone would bat an eye at a woman behaving the same way as the OP. In fact, I would double doubt that anyone even keeps an eye out for women without children at the park.
In this very thread, I told a story about leaving a park because a woman was there acting in a suspicious way.
So you did. To be honest, if ANYONE was wondering around showing their upper-thigh tattoo to children, even I would be nervous about that.
If somebody came up to my kid with a toy drum, I’d assume they were trying to prevent her from ever growing taller than a three year old.