I caught this report on WFAA last night and I couldn’t help but wonder about it.

It can happen in a matter of seconds: a child’s innocence lost at the hands of a sexual predator.

More alarmingly, children who become victims usually know the people who sexually or physically abuse them.

But this News 8 special report focuses on a disturbing trend in Collin County. Stranger-on-stranger abuse is growing, especially at places where parents least expect it.

The man in the golf hat and glasses was clearly visible on the surveillance tape. A store employee thought he looked suspicious, shopping in the women’s section of what used to be Galyan’s Sporting Goods, uncomfortably close to three children. So, the store’s security zoomed in with its surveillance camera.

“He bends down and touches her buttocks,” said Frisco Police Detective Nelson Walter. “As she passes him, he thrusts his pelvic area forward.”

The children’s mother, who we’ll call “Jean”, was trying on clothes just a few feet away. When Jean watched, for the first time, the video of her six-year-old daughter being molested, she said it was nothing short of “scary”.

“There he is again,” she said. “He lurked around far more than I realized that he did.”

Collin County assistant district attorney Curtis Howard used the video to convince a jury that 51-year-old Robby Keith Pope was guilty of indecency with a child.

Howard said the tape shows Pope scoping out the store for more young victims, eventually following two girls to a rock climbing wall. He then puts his hand in his pocket and fondles himself as customers walk by without noticing.

“This guy doesn’t stand out,” Howard said. “He looks like every other shopper that’s shopping in this store.”

“To know he had access to my kids is even far more disturbing than I realized,” Jean said.

Robby Pope is serving a 50-year sentence; he declined to speak with News 8. However, Pope is among a growing number of sex offenders doing hard time for molesting children in public places.

They’d been hyping this story for the past several days as a “must see” for parents.  But is there really anything new here that we didn’t know, other than that someone actually caught the molestor in the act on video?  What parent didn’t already know that molestors are everywhere and will take any opportunity to go after a child?

I know that my sister is very vigilant about this with my nieces.  Although I wonder if her time in the L.A. area (and the high concentration of pervs there) didn’t have something to do with it.  Perhaps the people in Frisco somehow think it can’t happen up there in their nice upscale retail joints.  It often seems that people simply don’t want to think about these things.  As if that will somehow keep them from happening or by thinking about them they’re being overly paranoid.

I would say that when it comes to protecting kids from pervs, a bit of paranoia is a good thing.  But then I’ve become quite a bit less sensitive to being called paranoid since I’m a gun owner.  It’s a stone that is frequently cast by the uninformed and the GFWs and it no longer bothers me.  Perhaps more people need to be paranoid…