Wandering around Anglesey with my kids and their mates in my ramshackle camper van years ago, we stopped off at some tatty 'attraction' (can't remember what it was now) and a bloke came up to the lads and started talking to them. I took an immediate dislike, for the following reasons -
1. He spoke to them first without greeting me.
2. I listened to how he talked, and he suddenly switched from a normal voice to a quiet, soothing tone. Like a calming, grooming type of tone.
3. He was wearing a Scout leader uniform, for no reason that I could see.
I walked over to him, looked him in the eye and said 'We're off now.' He looked sort of rumbled.
I wonder if he'd been hoping to lead one off to the bogs?
Lucky for your kids they had such a watchful mother!
You've just reminded me of something. A few years ago, I dealt with a "professional" (I'll have to be vague here) who I'll call Mr.___. He was immediately off-putting. First, he was extremely rude and insulting, then turned his back on me for the rest of our time together, so obviously this was not a good start. While looking around his office (since otherwise I would just be staring at his back) I noticed the walls were covered with framed drawings from young clients. They were signed with the children's names and age. Something about these drawings really bothered me, but it wasn't clear
what. They were all things like "Mr.___is the greatest!" and "Mr.___ is a star!" with drawings of said professional looking like a muscleman or Greek god or something (which is definitely not how he looked in real life). It's easy to understand a person wanting to display gifts, especially from children, but something about these just felt wrong somehow.
Since all the drawings were praising Mr___ and he did seem arrogant and stuck-up, I thought maybe this just rubbed me the wrong way. But still...
After one more visit with Mr.___ that was just as hostile, I decided against ever working with him again.
Not long after that, one of our sons wanted to join a certain boys club, so OH went to talk to the club leaders for the region. OH came back saying absoulutely not, because while one of the leaders seemed fine, the other had the "creepiest child molester vibe he'd ever felt" and he didn't want to risk our son being in contact with the man. The club leader's name? The very same Mr. ___.
It suddenly hit me why the drawings in his office bothered me - they'd all been done by boys, all about the same age. Since Mr.___ didn't only work with children and certainly not only boys of this age, this must have struck me as being "off".
It could be said that these suspicions are unfair because I had no evidence of wrongdoing - and I agree, in principle - but I wasn't going to risk my kids being around him to find out otherwise.