A man in his midforties uses the boys fitting rooms in a JC Penny’s Store for hours on end, day after day, week after week and no one questions this behavior. Clearly, the store clerks and store managers are aware that a man has been visiting the boy’s dressing room repeatedly.

Initially, one might not think this is such strange behavior until you realize there are separate dressing rooms for boys and men at most Department stores. Unless a small child needs help, there is no excuse for a grown man to enter the boy’s dressing room. As far as I can see there is no need for a man to be in a boy’s dressing room for even a few minutes much less for several hours at a time.

How can a man hang out in the boy’s dressing room on almost a daily basis with no one growing concerned? Day after day, store employees watch him go in and stay there hour after hour with out questioning what he is doing in there. Alarm bells are not going off screaming pervert or pedophile or peeping tom. No one that is until a mother is shopping with her young son late last week.

It was only after the woman’s thirteen-year-old son had been in the dressing room unattended for roughly fifteen minutes that someone working at the store made her aware he was not alone in the dressing room. The store clerk also made the mother aware the man had been in the dressing room over two hours! Perhaps it was because this mother knew the man’s dressing rooms are in another area that set off the alarm bells for her.

Yet she is clearly the first person to become alarmed at the fact a young child is in a dressing room and unaware that a man is hiding in a dressing room next to him. Why would a man need to hide out in a boy’s dressing room? The boy’s mother concerned by this called the police the next day when she could not help but wonder if somehow the man had been watching her son change his clothes.

During the investigation, employees told police if someone stood on the bench, it is possible to see the mirror in the other room. The employees also told police the man often visits the store, insists on using the boys dressing area, and rarely buys anything. When this man insisted in using the boy’s dressing room, store employees should have contacted police.

Simply because someone makes a demand for something does not mean he or she will get what he or she ask. That is defining a terrorist. To expect or force someone to give you what you want. When something does not look or feel right, it is the responsibility of every one to act on that feeling and find out what is going on. What happened here is unacceptable.

This is one reason my children now do not go to the bathroom alone. My daughter is 13 and my son 9. If there is not a grown male with us, my son has to go in with my daughter and I. Some people will say nine is too old for him to go in to the women’s bathroom. Yet, in an airport or large mall or stadium, I will not allow him to go in the bathroom alone. I will let him go into a smaller bathroom in a restaurant where I can watch the bathroom door. Call me paranoid, you bet. I am paranoid, I am overprotective, and I am not ashamed to admit that, not in today’s world.

In a follow-up story to the original this week, when the man returned to the JC Penney store, store employees called the police who questioned the man and released him. Police are continuing their investigation now. Let me know your thoughts on this story by going to the forum and posting your thoughts. Did store employees drop the barrel on this one?

Until next time, may the angels surround you and keep you safe~