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A Queensland mum has been branded a "monster" after sharing an anonymous account of mistaking a father in the parents' room of her local shopping mall as a paedophile.
The mum, writing anonymously, shared her experience with Australia's Kidspot website and began her tale by making it clear she had no regrets.
"I mistook an ordinary dad for a paedophile last week ... and I have many regrets but mistaking that dad for a monster is not one of them," she wrote.
When she looked across at a curtained-off changing space inside the parents' room, she said she was immediately concerned.
"A reed thin, hairy leg was sticking out, and all I could hear behind the curtain was a very sinister whisper "Shhhh shhh". Just two of them. No more."
She said her mind "immediately went to the darkest place possible" and she thought a child was being abused and threatened with silence.
The mum recalled instances where children have been horrifically abused in similar circumstances and said that some of her loved ones had been abused as children.
"To say I'm primed to think a certain way, or biased, is a fair assessment. But, in this day and age, I think we all are, aren't we?"
The mum said she had no regrets about feeling worried. Photo / 123RF
"Anyway. The 'Shhhh shhh' did not sound comforting. It sounded threatening. There was no 'It's OK,' There was no humming," she wrote.
She said she was disturbed by what she heard and batted at the curtain, yelling: "Everything all right in there?"
When her embarrassed 6-year-old daughter asked what she was doing, the mum said she was just checking in.
"The thin, hairy leg slipped away," she wrote.
"And, sick to my stomach, but feeling for my daughter's obvious embarrassment, I walked out."
She said she immediately regretted not taking more action and shortly afterwards a "thin, hairy" man exited the room and gave her a dirty look.
"I know 'not all men'," she wrote.
"I know it was not my most informed decision.
"But, why didn't he open the curtain and point to the baby? He sounded so panicked.
"And, if my baby is that upset at a mall, then I'm going home! So what I did wasn't tops. But my only regret is not opening that curtain. But I will next time. Without hesitation," she concluded.
When the story was shared online, some were quick to call the mum out for making the assumption.
"We have found the monster ... and it's the woman who wrote the article. Proud of her ignorance and bias and fear and hatred, she found herself in a situation that would horrify anyone else ... she vows to double her efforts next time," one person wrote.
One labelled her a "Karen" and shared his own experience of getting sideways looks when taking his children into the men's toilet.
Another called her out for not taking action after assuming that abuse was taking place.
"There is genuinely not a single angle from which her actions weren't abjectly awful," they wrote.
