A disabled man in Bristol decided to take action against the local youngsters who were vandalising his garden, so he photographed them doing it.

Spotted by a neighbour doing this, the neighbour spread the story that he'd been photographing the vandals and was therefore a paedophile.

A mob mentality occurred.

It ended with the man, who was entirely innocent of any crime, being beaten and then set on fire after being doused with white spirit.

This is mentality of vigilantism. This is the mentality of the mob. And this is, in part, the result of the hysteria generated by substantial elements of the mainstream news media.

The murderers will go to jail.

I hope some of the other local people feel properly ashamed of themselves.

And I damned well wish the media as a whole would realise that it needs to behave responsibly, because there's a shedload of people out there who actually believe everything they read that's negative and thus, in this case, are readily whipped up over issues like child abuse.

[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/a-modern-british-murder-vigilante-neighbours-face-jail-after-convictions-over-murder-of-disabled-man-bijan-ebrahimi-wrongly-accused-of-paedophilia-8909228.htmlStory[/url

Utterly shocking.
The poor man is dead because a group of violent forbrains decided so.

On a similar vein of paranoia I had this brought to my attention yesterday ... [urlhttp://goodmenproject.com/families/dad-profiling-wwh/[/url

No one was murdered but as the father of two girls I know what they mean, indeed I cancelled one trip to Edinburgh once because it involved an overnight stay with one daughter and my wife couldn't come with us at the last minute - shouldn't be this way but the paranoia is everywhere and we all know where it starts from...

On the other hand though ... which is worse, turning a blind eye to what could be a very suspicious situation of a man with a crying (possibly hysterical?) 3 year old girl or risking embarrassment by keeping an eye on them?

I once had to collect a car from London and thought I'd treat my daughter (7 at the time) to a hotel stay in London and a visit to the Natural History Museum.
No problems.
Mind you, I guess that her referring to me as "Dad" helped.

Although as the tag line to that article says - there are millions more uncles, grandfathers, friends of the family etc, than abductors, probably trillions across the world - so why the paranoia that every time a child cries and a man tries to comfort them with no sign of a mother around, that total strangers should automatically feel uncomfortable and occasionally have the need to approach and question them "just in case".

Its rather similar to the time that our two were pre-school and would spend a couple of days at a local playschool, my dad went to pick them up one day and not knowing the process he walked in through the rear door of the church hall they were in where he was pounced upon and severely chastised by the woman who ran the group and initially wasn't believed and threatened with the police being calle ,it was only on the word of a four year old that the woman finally believed his story - again you'd have to ask if her reaction had been the same if it had been a female grandparent who turned up.

I'll play my trump card first - Myra Hindley.

I'll raise you Rose West.

You raise a difficult question, though.

There's a young lass I occasionally see on the way to work in the morning: gets on the bus two stops on from me.

Probably about 13 – I guess. A man (her father, I assume) always sees her on, waits to see her sit down and waves at her, even though she often seems to be almost blanking him.

She's dressed in a really dowdy way; she sits on her own the overwhelming amount of the time – IIRC, I've seen her interact with other girls about once or twice – and often seems to have a very hollow expression (if that makes sense).

Something about her really troubles me. But what does one do? Does one go to the school and raise the issue? Hopefully, the school would recognise if anything were seriously wrong. But there's something that always [ifeels[/i wrong.

So do you ignore it – or do you interfere, at the risk of causing real problems for people in entirely innocent situations?

And there are other potential explanations: truancy (hence the need to see her on the bus – although she never gets off early) is just one.

But where does your conscience lead you in such a situation?

The most obvious explanation , and a very highly likely one, is that the man IS her father and she is a typical 13/14 year old girl who hates her parents and detests the idea that her father should see her off at the bus stop.

The scenario that you describe happens millions of times every day just in the UK - children being accompanied by adults to and from something or other, but (in general) our suspicions are only raised when we see a child being accompanied by a male adult, doubly so when its two male adults, moreso again when the child is female and I can't pinpoint when this paranoia started or where in percentage terms the validation of the paranoia is - ie is there a 1% chance that the girl is being abducted, or as is more likely is the chance something like 0.00001% and if so are our suspicions still justified ?

Absolutely. Completely agree.

The issue of paedophiles abducting kids is hardly likely to be new but the media hype it up tremendously to the point where parents are terrified to let kids out of their sight.

How many times did the older generation tell stories of kids who ran away with the circus/ ran away from home or were taken by the gypsies? As paedophillia wasn't really discussed at the time nobody suspected that the missing kids could have been abducted or murdered by a neighbour. A small minority of people have always been sexually attracted to children and this will probably always be the case, however the chance of it happening to your child are probably a fraction of a percent.

First of all. Even if this guy had a previous conviction for offences against kids it still doesn't give people any right whatsoever to murder him. But IMO way too many people in Britain would be celebrating his death if the newspapers were reporting of genuine suspicions of him being a paedophile.

Now on to the article. There are too many warning bells in the article for me and too many things that are being hinted at but not cleared up. Firstly, how old were the kids? That's a pretty important factor in this. If there's a group of 15 year old kids and there's damage to the flowers that is one thing, if there's a couple 7 year old's and no evidence whatsoever of damage to the flowers then it's completely different.

Now, if kids of any age are messing up my garden then I'm not grabbing my camera, I'm outside and telling them where to go go. I wouldn't want there to be damage to my property, I wouldn't be getting a camera out to document the damage.

The police made a statement that there were no indecent images on the camera or the guys computer. That's good, but he wasn't accused of taking indecent pictures. If he was taking pictures of kids damaging his flowers then that would be what was on the camera. The police could have cleared him completely by verifying that the pictures the guy took were of the kids causing damage, they could have documented the damage that the kids did. Instead all the police are prepared to say is that there were no indecent pictures.

The rumour that the guy was burned out of his previous council rental. The council say they are investigating. The guy was murdered 3 months ago. The trial is happening now. It should take the responsible people in the council less than 10 minutes to find out whether there is any truth to him being burned out of a previous home. A "we're investigating" comment is suspicious if he was as innocent as he is being written. If he had no history of previous homes being burned down then that is a completely different situation to other residents knowing that he was a suspected offender and had been burned out of his last home. If there was no allegation and no fire then the rumour could quickly be proven to be false. But instead it is just left hanging.

IMO I think one witch hunt to get rid of a paedophile is now going to be replaced by another witch hunt to put blame on the police and council for not protecting him. There MAY be people who let him down, but I fear that there are going to be calls for heads to roll even if the police and council did nothing wrong.

To be fair, even if he was a paedophile he didn't deserve to die like that and if the Police and council are found not to have acted to protect him when help was requested then heads should roll.

Sure, that'll happen, and next week i'm entering the Mr Universe Competition

It sums up our obsession with wanting to label someone a paedo when people throw the accusation that he "took pictures of children vandalising his flowers".

Were these kids naked or something? If they weren't then I can't imagine pictures of a bunch of kids fully clothed are going to be hot property amongst the kiddie porn community.

I remember we had a bit of hysteria like this a few years ago on this forum when there was an incident at Salford where a guy had his camcorder and was filming the under 11s match before the Super League game kicked off, people on the forum were saying this was disgusting and how scary that sort of person could be around in the family game. I remember having this argument then and being told by someone that I wouldn't understand as I'm not a parent. If I remember rightly this guy just got a 'caution' for it because he hadn't requested permission from the club.

There are vids all over youtube of kids playing sports like "6 year old Dutch kid with skills like Maradona", does this count as indecent porn....?

In fact if you go round my grandads he's got some old cine film of my mum and uncles on Bournemouth beach in the 1960s running around in various states of undress. Should I be reporting him?

I suspect that what all this paedo labelling is about is a primal desire to commit a horrendous crime against another person like burning them to death. You're generally not allowed to burn people to death but if someone is labelled as a paedo it provides social justification. I doubt they killed him really because of wanting to protect local children but because they felt free from the shackles of morality and had a chance to label him outside the law and so got to carry out their own sadistic fantasy.

Well it completely depends on the context of taking the pictures. If they were 15 year olds damaging his stuff and he was spotted taking pics of them clearly doing that then it is ludicrous to jump to the conclusion that he was doing it for his gratification. But if there was just a couple of 8 year old's talking and playing 10 feet away from his flowers and he was hiding behind curtain taking pics of them then it's a completely different situation.



You don't need to be in a child porn community to get your kicks from kids.



Again, context is important. If it was a parent filming his kid on his kids big day playing in a SL stadium that's one thing. But if the guy had no ties whatsoever to any players and was just filming for "the rugby" then I would be suspicious.



Clearly not. But if some guy was taking a video of an unrelated 6 year old whose skills were more Carlton Palmer than Maradona then one would ask why he was choosing to taking videos of him.



No, because he's your ****ing grandad. But if your grandad was asking your best friend over for special filming sessions then yeah, you probably should. Your grandad would want film of you because you're his grandson, but what reason would he have for taking film of your friend?

Why would it be different?

He had decided not to be confrontational, but was making sure he had evidence.

And if it's "different" to be photographing younger children – because then everyone assumes he's a perve – why do they assume photographing older children is somehow "different"? Why not assume he perves over 15-year-olds?

It is utterly ludicrous the way in which photographing a child has suddenly become evidence of perversion. It's paranoia and downright stupidity. And the mainstream news media has played a role in this, whipping up fear and with it, that hysteria.

Indeed, why do you feel the need to question what nobody else (anywhere) seems to be questioning: that his garden was being vandalised, and turn it into a 'maybe it wasn't and he was just using it as an excuse'?

Are you actually trying to illustrate how the current hysteria works?

Thats pretty much it - the feeling among parents that there is a pervert on every street who "wants" their children is widespread and manifests itself in the many anecdotes and press reports of amateur photographers being questioned in town and city centres when taking what used to be called "candid" photos of passer-by's or even just of buildings when people happen to be in the way - some of whom then find themselves explaining to police officers why they are taking those photos and then being asked to delete the photos under some sort of vague terrorist act (which doesn't exist) - the irony being of course that apparently deleting a photo on a digital camera does nothing of the sort but simply hides it from view.

We look back now at photographic collections of street scenes and "candid" photos of crowds of children playing (for instance) and call these photos important historical documents and social commentary, you can only imagine that in thirty years time anyone who wants to look at public photography from the 2000's will have to have police background checks before being allowed into the locked archives.

That's how it appears. A spokesperson for the vigilante murderers. Strange.

There's a good photo in the Sir Titus Salt in Bradford of a load of raggedy urchins getting ready for a charabanc trip probably in the '40s or '50s. Most people would look at it with a nostalgic smile. I'd find it sad that someone would view it thinking "Which nonce took that?"

I took this candid some years ago at Millennium Magic, Cardiff:

[url=http://s27.photobucket.com/user/Mintball/media/Wire-Dragon_zps215c7983.jpg.html[/url

I took this as well:

[url=http://s27.photobucket.com/user/Mintball/media/Jack_zps23c03b07.jpg.html[/url

In neither case did the subject see me – indeed, I was careful to avoid it.

I don't usually photograph children – simply because that's not a subject area I'm particularly interested in. But this shot struck me straight away as rather charming and the child is not easily recognisable.

Perhaps someone will be able to explain why one would apparently be okay and the other could ever be accused of anything else?

The title of this thread was made quite deliberately. Humans never seem to learn from history, do they?

From the hysteria and mob mentality of witch burnings, to that of Nazism, to McCarthyism and to things like this.

Read the examples. One was of 15 year old's damaging his stuff. The other was him hiding behind his curtains filming 8 year old kids and using the excuse that they were "apparently" damaging his stuff.

One is a valid reason, the other isn't.



If 15 year old idiots are damaging your stuff and you accuse them of it then they'll lie and said they never did it. An 8 year old is going to run away as soon as you open the door.



On your bus ride tomorrow morning you see a guy on the bus with a camera taking pics of women who are on the street. Is this guy a ****ing weirdo who worries you? Now, if instead of taking pictures of kids instead of women, isn't this weirdo someone who you are going to report to the police so they can talk with him?





As I said earlier, the flowers were either vandalised or they weren't. You decided that the "apparent" vandalism was actual vandalism.

The police didn't say what photos he took, merely that they weren't indecent. The pictures that he took were important. If his pictures showed kids damaging his flowers then both the vandalised flowers and his pictures exonerate him. If he has a couple of pictures of young kids and the flowers are untouched that's completely different.



No. I think that one shouldn't react to one hysteria by creating another.

Excellently put.

Can't agree with that.
Either could seem valid to a really timid or shy bloke, it's not unknown for grown men to be irrationally afraid of kids (such as 8 yr olds) in a group, or even afraid of them running off and telling their parents, there could be all sorts of reasons for being secretive about taking the pictures.

It's all beside the point anyway, which is that vigilantism is extremely dangerous and unjust mob rule.

As a quick guess, I'd say there are probably 50 people in Huddersfield who have convictions for sex offences against kids. (I have no idea of the numbers -it's purely a guess.)

I'd guess there are about 200 parents who have your lunatic fears of kiddie fiddlers down every street.

It does the country no good to whip up the fear of child abusers. But equally it does no good to perform similar exaggerations over the state of paranoia that the country is facing.



I don't do it as often as I'd like to do it, but I do take pictures of buildings. This year I've taken pictures of buildings in New York, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford and London.

I have only ever been questioned once when taking a picture. And that had nothing whatsoever to do with people in my pictures, it was simply a case of a nondescript supermarket building that I was taking pictures of to possibly model for Google Earth. The supermarket manager asked me what I was doing, didn't particularly understand why I was taking pics when I gave my explanation so asked me not to do it. I shrugged my shoulders and just figured I wouldn't model the 5hitty building then. The supermarket has since gone bust. I hope the div is still out of work.



Have you ever met someone who has been given genuine hassle over taking pics? I doubt you have. Maybe basic questions from a security guard, that is all. But I bet you have read articles about this terrible new wave of photographer hassling in a magazine or online article, and now here you are spreading it.



No, we're all going to be in jail because we're all convicted of child sex offences because we've looked at a child.

I'd make a better guess that there are far more than 200 parents in Huddersfield and I'll further guess that a large number of them have "abduction" at or near the top of their lists of things that they fear may happen to their children, there is a large scale paranoia of "stranger danger" whereas the truth is that "in-family danger" is a far more appropriate fear to have.





This is quite a good article if you aren't fully aware of the sort of problems that photographers have been facing, indeed there is a thread on here from a couple of months ago about taking photos at rugby club childrens games if you know how to search properly (I don't) [urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/photoblog/2009/12/in_the_eyes_of_the_law.html[/url

My street photography is fortunately limited to reference snaps for paintings and so I don't really need to take ages setting up a photo like a dedicated photographer might, indeed in recent years I've found my phone camera to be just as good at reaching into my pocket, raising it to eye level and snapping, 5 seconds max - they usually turn out ok for my needs and if they don't then there is always Google Earth



A few years ago though when one of my daughters was working in a shop in Leeds city centre she mentioned to her manager that I was in town taking photos and her manager told her to tell me that you needed a licence from the council to do that.

This is plainly incorrect, you don't need a licence to photograph property from a public place, in fact your supermarket manager only had the right to ask to you move from their boundary, you could have photographed his crappy shop from across the street on a public pavement for instance - but despite this it is often a public perception that no-one has the right to photograph in city centres, even the police were misguided into thinking this (although they say they are not now), and some will get very uptight about anyone photographing their children in a public place even if they are accidentally included in general shots.