When bad things turn into something good

Wow! I can't believe how long it has been since I have wrote on my blog. I have good intentions to write things down but, just not enough of time in the day. I had to share this.

Around a year ago my son and his friend went to a hands on children's museum. It was the first time that I let him go do something without me. I was a little nervous being his first time without me. I trusted the other mom 100% and still trust her 100%.

In this museum they have a castle that is rather large and it's three stories high. Each floor is easy 600+ square feet. It has all kinds of windows, towers, cubby holes and all kind of activities through out the floors. You can pretty much see the kids from the ground floor in around 75% of the castle with all the windows and doors. You can see them running by. They have benches at the bottom of the castle you can watch them. It's hard keeping up with them and they have some neat spiral stair cases that the kids seem to navigate faster than lightning. Much faster than I can.

To make a long story short the 25% you can't see-my son and his friend came upon a predator who exposed himself to the boys and asked the boys to touch him. The boys screamed and ran into each other head on while running off and started to cry. (the museum was very busy and had lots of guest)The two men used this opportunity to escape and go and hide on a different floor. The kids told the parents what happened. They contacted the managers and the police where called 20 minutes after the incident. They were suppose to contact the police immediately and shut the place down and not let anyone in and out of the building for questioning. It never happened. The place had security cameras that where out of date and not of any use. We where able go see the event. The video was grainy and you couldn't see the faces of the men clearly. The video was pretty much useless to the detectives. If proper procedures had been done they would have been caught. You can see one of the men hanging around in the background of the video listening to them talk to the manager. Then the manager called the police and the men took off(Which you see in the video. My son told me that' the other man was watching them and he didn't say anything"). The other boy only seen the man who exposed himself. My son said it was two men. He wouldn't talk to them but when he got home he told me everything in much detail -with the other parents present. Both parents remembered seeing the men.

We just happened to study this very subject the previous week. I didn't think my then 3 year old even listened. He was more interested in other things or so I thought.

The detective said, "I let my daughter run around here and play all the time assuming they had security and said he would never do it again." The establishment dropped the bomb. I think they thought we were going to sue them, which we had not even planned to do. We just wanted the men caught. The museum retrained all the employee's. Had the police officers come in and make some recommendation on updating the video cameras. We never heard anything from the place and the detectives had no choices but to close the case. We assumed they didn't plan on updating the security. Around a month after this incident happened the director retired. I don't know if that had anything to do with the lack of information.

Last week ,the other mom went on a field trip to the museum with her sons preschool. It was his first time back since the incident. She was surprised to see security guards walking around and hidden cameras and not just in the castle! After talking to the security guard she found out that they updated around a year ago after an incident with some 3 year old boys had something happen to them. The mom explained that one of the boys was her son and told the guard the details. That opened a door for the guard to explain in detail all the updates.

I am glad that my son and his friend are so young. When this happened they were 3. I am grateful to my Lord that they didn't get touched or touch the man. I am sure that our boys are not the only ones who seen stuff that day. The place was extremely busy and for them to be so bold is scary. A lot of adults were walking around that day in the castle. Who knows if that was even the first time the men visited that place. I am relieved that they listened to our concerns. Something good did come out of this event. Hopefully no other families will have to go through what we did at this place with their kids. They have updated security in the whole building. I hate the fact that those men didn't get caught. I was amazed that such a place did not have better security.

If your children have this happen to them. Do not contact the manager first. The detective told our friend to,"call the police first. We would of been there in minutes and contacted the manager and had the place closed down!" They said no matter what the buisness is contact the police first!