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Parental paranoia insults father
A British father-of-three says he’s stunned that he was branded a “pervert” for snapping pictures of his sons playing at a public park. Gary Crutchley was photographing 7-year-old son Cory and 5-year-old Miles on an inflatable slide when the woman running the ride asked him to stop. Flabbergasted, he showed her the pictures proving he was only photographing his children. But then another parent in line demanded that he stop, calling him a “pervert” and alleging that he might “be taking pictures of just any child to put on the Internet.”
Mr Crutchley, 39, who had taken pictures only of his own children, was so enraged that he found two policemen who confirmed he had done nothing wrong.
Yesterday he said: ‘What is the world coming to when anybody seen with a camera is assumed to be doing things that they should not?
‘This parental paranoia is getting completely out of hand. I was so shocked. One of the police officers told me that it was just the way society is these days. He agreed with me that it was madness.’
Madness indeed.
back to top27 Comments to “Parental paranoia insults father”
This is rather incredulous. To the pure, all things are pure, eh? We need to be careful, but not paranoid.
I once was walking past a park where a child too small to be there alone was playing. There was a strange looking man sitting under a tree watching him. So I stopped my walk and told my kids they could play in the playground. After a few minutes the oddly dressed man approached me and said, “Hey, you don’t happen to know who this kid’s mother is do you? I finished my lunch about a half hour ago, but felt I couldn’t leave this kid here by himself, but I didn’t want to talk to the kid either in case someone thought I was some kind of weirdo.” I assured him I’d take over watching the kid. As a woman and mother it was easier for me to talk to the child and find out he lived down and across the street with a mother who was not careful enough.
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There is a media-driven popular mindset growing (at least I see it growing) that has deceived many into thinking that the critic is the hero. Sometimes, they are. However, today’s typical mainstream “journalist jihadists” (with a mob mentality) swarm toward outrage and scandal and if there is no scandal there, they often create it. They need it.
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Continued from #2 above…
Thus, the urge to be the hero seduces a lot of regular people to scandalize others. We glorify our own heroic motives as we scandalize others, often applying moral scrutiny to them that we would never want others to apply to us. It’s not new. Jesus also noticed that the potential speck in someone else’s eye is easier to condemn than the mote in their own.
I’m just generalizing ,but the intense interest our media often have in the personal lives of public figures, is an interest rarely taken in the personal lives of the critic who is on the personal attack of others. At least to some degree, we are being agressively trained to be suspicious. Perhaps this has saved some lives, though.
Still, as we increase our personal isolation from fellow members of our community, our suspicions will also grow.
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Adios,
I had a similar experience once without kids. A child of three was alone on a park playground, the only person of his race (white as I recall, but don’t really remember) in the vicinity. A man and older children of his race were playing on the softball diamond half a park away, but half an hour of watching everyone showed me none of them ever looked at one another. Eventually the two older kids came to the playground, and I asked if that was their brother, and they said yes. But I thought the only possible “justifiable” excuse for the little boy being left alone and unwatched for so long would be if his father was newly widowed and too deeply in grief to realize one of his children wasn’t anywhere close to him, and was playing in the sand in front of swings, and that a stranger (me) kept having to moderate the situation so that those on the swings didn’t accidentally kick him. And any of the multitude of people present could have walked away with the little boy. I kept debating going over to the softball diamond and asking the man, “Is that your little boy?” but I’m a bit timid around strange men, so I simply watched the boy myself.
On the “paranoia” front, I know a little boy who as a toddler regularly had his elbow come out of its socket (something like that, that might not be accurate). The first time they took him to the emergency room, the doctors told the parents it was an extremely common childhood “injury,” and he popped it back in place. Eventually the parents learned how to pop it back in place themselves, but they were in a strange town when it happened the second time, and the doctor there looked sternly at the mother in front of her two-year-old and said very sternly, “What did you do to hurt this child?” She said she wanted to scream at the man for daring to insinuate child abuse in front of her child, but especially for what they’d already been told was common in a child that age–but she didn’t dare show him her feelings, since he was “trying” her, and she needed to show her calm, rational side so he wouldn’t call the police or something.
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He’s lucky these fearfully insane whack jobs didn’t have him arrested or shot. They were right to question him but once they saw the pictures and he explained who he was, they should have been relieved instead of going off their deep end.
He should sue them for hate speech (for the pervert tag) just to teach them a lesson. They probably shouldn’t of had children of their own to begin with
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Good comments in #2 and #3, Joel Mark.
I also see the pedophilia scare as some kind of “equal but opposite reaction” to the increasing sexualization of children. We put our eight year olds in hot shorts that say “Tasty” across the butt, but do public penance by tearing our hair and gnashing our teeth about sexual predators. I suspect the percentage of men who are sexually attracted to prepubescent children is much tinier than the public seems to believe.
That’s not to rule out caution, but I think the bulk of that caution would be better directed to teaching modesty and discretion to post-pubescent girls.
And common sense to parents.
And I am not a violent man, but I would really like to pummel the &#^@* out of the low-life marketing scum who decided that clothes with sexually suggestive messages in child and toddler sizes was a good idea.
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CherylD, Our son was prone to that kind of injury. It is called “nursemaid elbow”. The first time it happened my husband seemed very hesitate to take him to the doctor. I think he was afraid he would be accused of child abuse. Luckily it popped back on it’s own. The second time we took him to his regular doctor, who assured us it was common, told us how to avoid it and how to fix it if it happened anyway.
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Growing up in the 80’s I remember a number of times we were told to just “go outside and play” in the neighborhood. I saw an article pointing out that the radius of children’s independent movement was huge in in the 1950s, and today is pretty much “always within mommy’s eyesight.”
Case in point: my neighbor, in his 50’s, tells me of fond childhood memories biking, with buddies but no parental supervision, 6 miles to the local fishing hole.
I think it’s good for children to play independently, even if that means getting knocked over by a swing. At the park, as long as I’m close enough to hear my 5 year old should she scream and get a visual every 5 minutes or so, I’m comfortable. If there were one just down the street from us, I’m sure my mother would have let me head down there to play, and I’d allow it for kids of a certain age.
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I agree that kids need some independent play, but I have my spot at my son’s favorite park where I can see every piece of equipment. A little paranoia is good now days, but it seems would have taken anyone with a lick of common sense about 30 seconds to see these were his kids
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Next time you wonder if we’ve actually slid down the slope as a society, consider that 50 years ago, children could play for hours on end in a public park a couple of blocks from home caring only about when they were expected to be home—usually for dinner. How I grew up.
As for these parents and the photographer it’s sad, but considering the numbers of and reasons for letting perverts out of penitentiaries, vigilance is necessary. I think we had 1200 sex offenders released by our Supremes within the last 3 years and sexually related crime has risen as a result.
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This is sad.
RonD, can you share your source with us?
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As for “sex offenders,” that number is vastly magnified with the ease at which that word is used–some are men caught at public urination. (Meaning outside anywhere, not necessarily at a crowded park.)
JJF, a toddler playing “independently” with no sign he belongs to anyone is not a good thing at all these days. The man who presumably was his father had his back to the playground, focusing only on the older kids, for 30 or 45 minutes while the little one played in the sand at the swingsets. In your own backyard, that’s fine. In a public park a few feet from a parking lot, that is not fine. I truly did think he was an abandoned child; I had to look for a long time before I found anyone he might have belonged to, and a great deal of watching showed no evidence beyond skin color that the family I picked out was indeed his. Before I found the family that was possibly his people, I debated calling the police, and if I had done so, the child might have ended up in foster care at least for a day or two. Anyone could have kidnapped him, he could have wandered onto the parking lot and been hit by a car, he could have suffered a playground injury and no one would have known who to call. (Other women, speaking with foreign accents, were assuming he was my child.) The child could not tell me his name or who he belonged to, and he had no business being in a playground by himself, with no one so much as glancing his way occasionally.
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PS As I recall, the child did indicate he had no mother, when I asked, which is what led me to wonder if the man had been recently widowed or something, and didn’t have enough emotional energy to take care of the child. But when I asked the child about his father, he didn’t give an answer. So yes, I could easily have called the police; the child had been abandoned on at least some level, and I could not determine any relatives anywhere in the rather large park.
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JJF raises some interesting thoughts at (6), re. this being an over-reation to the sexualization of kids.
Which made me think that this also might be due in part to the whole “To Catch a Predator” mindset, as well …
http://online.worldmag.com/2007/08/15/to-catch-a-predator/
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I had the same experience as RonD. My best friend and I rode our bikes to the local park a few miles away, stopped at the homemade ice cream place (where Tony Soprano met his end), but we were always home for supper. The streets were busy, and we followed the rules of the road. And woe unto us if we messed up and didn’t get home on time. Anything could have happened to us, but I don’t remember anyone ever approaching us — either “bad” men or other parents checking on us, asking if we were alone. It was normal to be alone.
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Yes, when I grew up I walked to school, alone and with friends. In elementary school that meant walking about 5 – 10 blocks depending on whether we took the technically illegal short-cut or not. In Jr. High, that meant walking about 4 miles.
I *WAS* bothered once walking to Jr. High, but I was with a friend, and we told the guy to shove off or her father (the local sheriff!) would get him! My mom drove us for awhile after that, though.
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I honestly don’t think we were any “safer” back in the old days, nor do I think kids are being kidnapped pell-mell in our times either. In fact, I believe that statistically, your child is more likely to be struck by lightening then to be kidnapped by a stranger. Well over 95% of kidnappings and child molestations are by *people the child already knows.* In fact, over half are by family members.
Still, back in the old days there was news at 5:00 PM and the local paper. Now-a-days, we have 24 hour news on the t.v. and instant access on the Internet.
The fact that stranger kidnappings are still reported as news in such an environment, suggests that they still are rare enough to be considered news.
Plus, the constant reporting sensitizes us to the fear that it could happen to us and our children.
I don’t know where the line is. I let my kids play out front and roam our neighborhood loop independently, so long as I know where they are and they report in occasionally. The kids know most of the other adults reasonably well, and they know the other kids.
But, a friend of mine is appalled. When her kids come over, they may only play alone in my gated backyard.
My mother-in-law feels similarly.
The line between protecting and smothering is sometimes hard to draw in our society now-a-days. I feel smothering children is bad for them, and so I am a bit easier going than my friend or mother-in-law, although there are a number of people who think I worry too much and am too over-cautious. (I find that if I seem to have people on both sides bugging me, than I am probably comfortably and appropriately in the middle!) While I believe that my kids should be as safe as is reasonable, I also think that security at all costs is not good for us.
But, should something ever happen to my kids, not only would I blame myself, but the media would make sure I was vilified as mother who did not watch her kids carefully enough.
You can’t win for losing.
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TRS, I have a similar philosophy, but we live out of town, and are surrounded by relatives, so our case is probably safer than most.
My SIL is appalled that we let (yea, even require) our kids chop wood and mow the grass. They also climb tall trees and roam the neighborhood out of sight (but not out of earshot).
My husband also teaches them to shoot guns, following safety rules.
And we don’t do team sports or clubs.
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TRS, I strongly agree that security at all costs isn’t good for us. One modern example of that I despise (my own personal soapbox) is “kids in the backseat” until what, 12? As a child it was such a special treat to go somewhere with just one parent, and to be able to sit up front in the passenger’s seat and talk one-on-one, almost adult-to-adult. Perhaps most kids wouldn’t have cared less (I had a uniquely strong desire to be an adult and not a child), but I still think we’ve lost more than we’ve gained on that one and so many other issues…and in taking such choices away from parents and handing them to the state!
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I think the concern about men around children follows from the ideas that men:
a)aren’t really needed in a family;
b)are basically foolish adn irresponsible–women and kids figure things out better than dads (see any sitcom);
c)are pigs (see any sitcom);
d)are dangerous if they aren’t feminized.
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We had a little four year old girl kidnapped around here. She lived in a small town about 20 minutes from here. Her mother let her go to a friend’s house. The friends were used to going back and forth. She was to be gone for less than hour. She never made it and she has never been found. Yes, the parents were vilified by many. I felt bad for them and still do. Her dad worked for the same company as my husband and her grandmother performed in some of the same country shows as he did. When it hits that close to home, you do become more vigilant and should. There is a big difference between vigilance and smothering.
I don’t believe we are as safe as we once were. The spread of pornography and lessening of morals has definately brought about some horrible consequences.
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I remember as a kid being shoved out the door in the morning on Saturday and told to be home for dinner. We ranged as far as we wished on foot and later, as we became bike mobile we were told to stay in town (a town of 20k give or take).
I think the child snatcher threat is vastly overblown – but I would not claim that it isn’t higher than when I was a kid.
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A few things make it less safe, whether or not there are more kidnappings today–most kids ARE watched over, so the kid who isn’t may be in more trouble. Also, other adults aren’t watching out for kids the way they used to. So kids are possibly more likely to be in danger, and almost certainly more able to do things they shouldn’t be doing (because they have no accountability from neighbors and extended family watching over them).
Case in point: I used to have neighbors whose two-year-old would literally play in the street. She’d sometimes be the only family member outside, and she’d be out of sight from her house (behind a hill). I saw her lying down in the street once, and went running outside to get her up before a car ran over her (and actually to see if maybe a car had already run over her). But adults–including drivers–aren’t expecting children to be running free in neighborhoods anymore, so when kids do, they may be in more danger.
I think 10-year-olds should be able to bike to school with a sibling or a friend or two. I don’t think pre-verbal children should be wandering alone on streets or in parks in cities of a million people, or in any vicinity where they aren’t known by most everybody. (One of the nice things about small towns and small churches is that kids have a little more freedom because adults know who they are.)
One thing I dislike in our modern “stranger danger” society is how much kids see all adults as potential villains. I’ve realized recently how often when I say hi to a stranger on the street, and then look at his kid, the kid won’t even make eye contact with me. I’m “stranger” and thus “danger.” This is a bad state of affairs on many levels. One, it doesn’t make the kid safer, and may make him more vulnerable. (A confident child who can make eye contact and be aware of his surroundings is safer than a child who looks at the ground.) Two, it’s bad for social skills and all that involves (preparation for future jobs, manners, etc.). And three, anything that makes a child wary of adults in general also potentially makes him more peer dependent, which leads to all sorts of problems (anti-authority, drug use, wild parties, sexual promiscuity, etc.). I cringe when I see a naturally friendly child reprimanded by his parent for saying hello to someone when his parent is right there–a child needs to learn discernment, not general rudeness.
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Yes, Cheryl, I was thinking the same thing about how paranoid children are taught to be. Just the other day, I was out on a walk near my neighborhood. I saw a woman standing at the top of her short driveway and a little girl, presumably her daughter, sauntering down the driveway, away from the mother toward the sidewalk. As I began to approach the portion of the sidewalk in front of the driveway, the little girl happened to notice me, and she immediately turned around and ran to her mother’s side. If I hadn’t had the same kind of experience a number of other times, I would’ve been shocked.
My children range in age from 12 to 19, but when they were little, I refused to instill in them that sense of fear and terror of strangers because I’m convinced that it’s an unhealthy way for kids to think before they’re old enough to know how to reasonably assess potential danger. Granted, my kids were well supervised so for that reason, I didn’t see any necessity for instructing them about “stranger danger,” but apparently many children, even under supervision, feel the need to be physically attached to a trusted adult while in the vicinity of any stranger–male or female.
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A friend of mine whose children are older than mine gave me wonderful advice about child rearing. She said that children should be kept very close before their judgement about dangerous situations (hot stove, etc) is developed.
As they become more self-governing (exercising good judgement, following house rules), they should be given more freedom.
Even when they are consciencious, her children don’t go off alone–they have a sibling with them whether they are playing outside or serving an elderly neighbor.
She is intentional about having them meet strangers, usually in the context of serving in some way (they help with campaigning, ministering to single moms and elderly folks).
These are the most friendly, impressive, observant kids I’ve ever met. And they are strong in their faith as well.
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Ree & Cheryl – Some kids are just very shy, & will run to the parent or avoid eye contact out of that shyness.
I’m not saying that you don’t have a point about some kids being afraid of strangers because of being warned of “stranger danger”, but am merely pointing out that some will react the same way out of shyness.
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Funny timing; my ten-years-old-in-ten-days little brother Will just got back from scootering to the mailbox, which is about five blocks southeast of us.
Mostly me and my brother are allowed to roam the neighborhood, as long as we let someone know where we’re going first. My sister is a different story; she’s got cerebral palsey, so she couldn’t make a quick getaway if someone tried to kidnap her. She’s allowed to go down the street over with Will and wherever with me. I suppose we are allowed more freedom than most.
Ugh, Cheryl D. I think the carseat law is until you’re 4′9. Most people I know don’t actually follow it. Honestly, it’s ridiculous. I have a friend who’s 4′9 and nineteen. She’ll be going to college soon, and she’s not technically allowed to sit in the front seat.
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