Readers — When kids are going through their scared-of-the-dark phase, they see the chair and think it’s a monster. And when adults are going through their “Everyone is out to get our children” phase — Â (From The dbhfkksire
Daily Mirror.)
Children were evacuated from a swimming pool amid fears of a pervert in the changing rooms – only to discover the alarm was caused by a false leg.
Staff spotted a foot sticking out from under a cubicle as primary school pupils got changed after a swimming lesson.
…Â But when [teachers] opened the changing room door they saw the suspected pervert was a prosthetic leg innocently left by a disabled man while he went for a swim.Â
[The head of the school said,] “One of the members of staff had seen it, and we quickly moved the children out, and everything was dealt with in accordance with school policy.”
Best comments (from this site, which picked up the story):
“…everything was dealt with in accordance with school policy.” They have a school policy that says if you find a prosthetic leg you should assume it is really a paedophile and evacuate the pool?!
If I saw someone’s leg sticking out from a cubicle my first thought would be to see if they were alright, they might have collapsed.
Typical “Knee-jerk” (sorry) reaction that is happening too often today. In the past, the pool staff would have checked the foot before getting the kids out!
Not the suspicious limb in question. But you get the idea. (Photo from Clints Work)
So the suspected something odd in the CHANGING ROOM, so they evacuated the entire POOL??? Facepalm…
I can’t even follow the thought process “prosthetic leg to pedophile”….??? I miss the age of common sense.
I’m assuming they thought someone was hiding in the cubical. I know prosthetic limbs are more and more life like – but I’m still amazed that one would be mistaken for a person hiding.
Logical reaction:
1-Identify what you see
2-If you think it’s someone laying unmoving on the floor, offer assistance. If they don’t respond, get help.
This response makes no sense whatsoever.
I always love the “better safe than sorry” comments (a couple are on the original story). Safe….from a prosthetic leg? Even if they thought it was an actual person, wouldn’t the odd position of the leg have indicated, well, something different than a pedophile hanging out in a changing room?
Wait, wait – so we have a bunch of potential prey in the water, and a predator on one leg?
That can only be: http://tinyurl.com/orxk3qg
(I’ll leave it up to you to guess what the sign says 😉 )
At least it wasn’t a Baby Ruth in the deep end of the pool.
Why is “according to policy” supposed to excuse everything? The policy is stupid. The people who made the policy are stupid.
Why don’t they just say “we’re stupid!” It means the same thing.
1) Let’s assume for a moment, the leg did belong to a pedophile (who was still attached to his leg). How does that pose any sort of danger? If you’re stuck inside a cubicle, you can’t see anything, let alone something you shouldn’t. Barring any calls for help coming from the cubicle itself, I would never assume anyone was in danger of a pedophile.
2) Leg in cubicle in weird position. Why is no one asking if there’s someone there in need of medical attention and calling an ambulance?
3) How did staff open the cubicle? When I was a kid, my local pool had changing rooms where you locked the door by pulling down the bench inside to keep it from opening…
Opening doors is easy enough in most cases. It is rare I cannot open up a door in a public toilet without resorting to tools(Why oh why must people collapse behind locked doors?!)
Which brings me to my point.
Why in goodness sake are they assuming paedophile and not someone in trouble? It is a sad day indeed when we do not help our fellow person potentially in trouble.
(I can see asking the children to leave the changeroom whilst you investigate. Never know what waits behind the door, and a body may well be traumatizing).
I think the “evacuate the pool” thing had to mean “get all the children out of the pool area of the school,” because it sounds like they were already out of the pool itself and in the changing room when the “problem” was noticed.
Sorry, not “the pool area of the school” but the public pool complex, I think is what is meant.
Holy total over-reaction, Batman!
Who does this pool cater to if their first reaction to a foot seen in a changing cubicle is “must be a pedophile?”
And say it was a pedophile … so? What exactly is it that they think this pedophile is going to do with a full class of children and their teachers? He isn’t going to get far with one with that many people around. He can’t kidnap them all. I assume that they are not all going to stand about while he rapes one or two.
I really hope it went down like the Chief Brody beach freakout in Jaws 2.
If I had been the one to see that, I would have checked myself first, instead of causing unnecessary panic. As Lenore said, it could have been an injured person, or someone in need of assistance. I also would have used some logic and common sense. Like, one foot behind a cubical is pretty odd. There must be more to it. Worth investigating, before jumping to conclusions without all the facts. The last thing that I would have thought was a pedophile, or that the children were in grave danger that they had to be evacuated.
It’s a worse case thinking first, blow it out of proportion, before actually figuring out it was all unnecessary, then make up excuses age. I’m pretty sure the school will be looking at that stupid policy over again. lol Maybe, it’s a good thing. They are at least getting a dose of the consequences of their stupidity. And if there is anything we can definitely rely on, is that many adults don’t like feeling embarrassed, and looking like fools. After all, this is how we got to this age of helicoptering. So the more they get embarrassed by their decisions/policies the more they will start actually thinking before doing. Clean off the dust and cobwebs from that thing they forgot all about…common sense. lol
I assumed that the problem was that, in the name of “equality” and because British primary schools can’t get enough male teachers (something to do with the paedophile over-reactions, this was a changing area with boys and girls in cubicles that have gaps under the doors.
They saw something sticking underneath the poorly designed cubicle and assumed it was a camera designed to flagrantly destroy a child’s innocence by taking pictures of them.
The possibility that there might be another explanation was beyond them.
However, I must admit that I am cheered by the news that they haven’t chosen (to protect the kiddies) to make the entire leisure centre off-limits to everyone apart from the cleared people from the school.
On balance, therefore, this is a draw based on the current British over-reaction to the threat posed by paediatricians.