Posted by Dinah on August 1, 2009, at 5:54:34
In reply to I called the police, posted by Deneb on July 31, 2009, at 16:43:54
I'm glad you called the police. Guys who do that aren't necessarily going to be violent, but they can cause damage anyway.
When I was younger, my mother and I had a regular practice of going to our local library. There was a guy who hung out there and would angle himself away from the grownups and rub himself. Of course I didn't quite know what he was doing. I thought he was creepy and avoided being near him or looking in his direction. I'd get up and move to a different seat - sometimes more than once a night. It would never have occurred to me to turn him in. I wouldn't have known what to turn him in for.
Once I got to middle school I was past the kids books and teen books, and had free run of the relatively small library. Not infrequently this guy would be there, down the aisle from me, or in the next stack. I never felt physically threatened but again it made me enormously uncomfortable - although I still couldn't put my finger on why. My mother had given me The Talk, but it hadn't extended to this behavior. I'd move on whenever I saw him, and tried not to look at him.
One day I decided I was being foolish, and that I wasn't going to run anymore. I wasn't that far from the librarian, he was in the aisle over, it would be fine to browse at leisure. Bad idea. He enjoyed that so thoroughly that finally even I got a glimmer of understanding, but by then it was over. I was too ashamed to say anything. I felt like I was to blame for not moving on as usual. I didn't know then quite what had happened, although looking back it's clear. But I had finally figured out it had something to do with sex.
I started making excuses to skip our trips to the library, and only returned to use the reference materials in full view of the librarian. My mother never knew why. The guy was still showing up.
It was wrong of me not to report him. The world wasn't as vigilant then as it is now, but surely if I reported him he wouldn't have been allowed back in. I'm sure I wasn't the first young girl, and I'm sure I wasn't the last.
I'm glad you reported him. People can do harm even if they don't do violence.
poster:Dinah
thread:909482
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20090714/msgs/909612.html