Peculiar subject you've brought up. Society has had it's fill of pedophiles, molestations and cases where children turn up missing, only to be found later, murdered and raped. The stories are horrible. IMO, sexual offenders should be locked up for a minimum of 20 years, and globally tracked for the reminder of their lives. Repeat offenders should be chemically castrated.
But on the flip-side of this issue, are occasional occurrences of innocent parties being stigmatized by accidental encounters or false accusations. I was watching one of the talk shows a couple years ago, which featured a man who had been incarcerated for a couple years for child molestation, only to have his accuser reach adulthood and recant their story. Evidently, she had been pissed that he had not allowed his daughter to attend a concert or something with her, so fabricated a story of sexual misconduct on his behalf. With relatively little effort, she was even able to collect samples of his DNA and plant them in an effort to support her story. In the end, she regretted her actions and came forward.
Now I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, defending the actions of anyone guilty of such an atrocity, but can't help but think about how easy it would be for any child to falsely accuse an adult of inappropriate behavior, and at the very least, have that person stigmatized as a pedophile for the remainder of his or her life.
In your case, a perfectly innocent encounter could have been misinterpreted and escalated into charges. With cases of child abuse and murder on the rise, I suppose its only human nature to over-react and view each case with an air of suspicion, but what happens when a completely innocent person is accused?
It seems that if you are accused of a child-related crime, a person is, at least to some degree, guilty until proven innocent, and even then retains the unwanted label of “being accused at one time.”
