Dear Parents,
Yesterday, one of our worst nightmares almost happened to us. We headed off to Muizenberg beach,
and after only about ten minutes on the beach, someone tried to take my daughter. I am writing to you
so you can understand what happened, and how our best efforts at training and teaching her went to
waste. The beach was full, but we found a fairly ‘socially distant’ area to sit down. I put down my bag,
put out the blanket while my daughter went to play in the water, I had my baby with me, changing her
into her costume. A few minutes later, a man approached my daughter, in swimming trunks and started
speaking to her, he then picked her up and helped her jump over the waves. They were talking. My
alarm bells went off, I left all our stuff and ran into the water. He kept moving away from me, still very
friendly. Eventually he started walking off with her, at this point I went to take my daughter away from
him. All this time he was still smiling and walked back with us to my bag. I got the kids in towels, and he
put his hand on my bag, asking where my husband is, how old my kids are etc, and eventually asked if
my phone was in my bag. I picked everyone up and walked back to the car, only to then be followed by
this man, and three of his friends. No aggression, just laughing, friendly. I stuffed everything into our
car, and got the heck out of there as fast as I could. I asked my daughter what happened, she said, he
was friendly, he wasn’t a bad guy. ‘I didn’t want to go with him, but he was a good guy’. We have
literally practiced kicking, screaming, biting and a phrase to scream in such situations, but when it
happened, he was so friendly, she didn’t register she was in danger. Even now, I’m not sure she
understands how dangerous the situation was. We are going to be rethinking our routines, attitudes to
people and what we train her to do.
Yesterday, one of our worst nightmares almost happened to us. We headed off to Muizenberg beach,
and after only about ten minutes on the beach, someone tried to take my daughter. I am writing to you
so you can understand what happened, and how our best efforts at training and teaching her went to
waste. The beach was full, but we found a fairly ‘socially distant’ area to sit down. I put down my bag,
put out the blanket while my daughter went to play in the water, I had my baby with me, changing her
into her costume. A few minutes later, a man approached my daughter, in swimming trunks and started
speaking to her, he then picked her up and helped her jump over the waves. They were talking. My
alarm bells went off, I left all our stuff and ran into the water. He kept moving away from me, still very
friendly. Eventually he started walking off with her, at this point I went to take my daughter away from
him. All this time he was still smiling and walked back with us to my bag. I got the kids in towels, and he
put his hand on my bag, asking where my husband is, how old my kids are etc, and eventually asked if
my phone was in my bag. I picked everyone up and walked back to the car, only to then be followed by
this man, and three of his friends. No aggression, just laughing, friendly. I stuffed everything into our
car, and got the heck out of there as fast as I could. I asked my daughter what happened, she said, he
was friendly, he wasn’t a bad guy. ‘I didn’t want to go with him, but he was a good guy’. We have
literally practiced kicking, screaming, biting and a phrase to scream in such situations, but when it
happened, he was so friendly, she didn’t register she was in danger. Even now, I’m not sure she
understands how dangerous the situation was. We are going to be rethinking our routines, attitudes to
people and what we train her to do.
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