A disabled man in Bristol decided to take action against the local youngsters who were vandalising his garden, so he photographed them doing it.

Spotted by a neighbour doing this, the neighbour spread the story that he'd been photographing the vandals and was therefore a paedophile.

A mob mentality occurred.

It ended with the man, who was entirely innocent of any crime, being beaten and then set on fire after being doused with white spirit.

This is mentality of vigilantism. This is the mentality of the mob. And this is, in part, the result of the hysteria generated by substantial elements of the mainstream news media.

The murderers will go to jail.

I hope some of the other local people feel properly ashamed of themselves.

And I damned well wish the media as a whole would realise that it needs to behave responsibly, because there's a shedload of people out there who actually believe everything they read that's negative and thus, in this case, are readily whipped up over issues like child abuse.

[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/a-modern-british-murder-vigilante-neighbours-face-jail-after-convictions-over-murder-of-disabled-man-bijan-ebrahimi-wrongly-accused-of-paedophilia-8909228.htmlStory[/url

Utterly shocking.
The poor man is dead because a group of violent forbrains decided so.

On a similar vein of paranoia I had this brought to my attention yesterday ... [urlhttp://goodmenproject.com/families/dad-profiling-wwh/[/url

No one was murdered but as the father of two girls I know what they mean, indeed I cancelled one trip to Edinburgh once because it involved an overnight stay with one daughter and my wife couldn't come with us at the last minute - shouldn't be this way but the paranoia is everywhere and we all know where it starts from...

On the other hand though ... which is worse, turning a blind eye to what could be a very suspicious situation of a man with a crying (possibly hysterical?) 3 year old girl or risking embarrassment by keeping an eye on them?

I once had to collect a car from London and thought I'd treat my daughter (7 at the time) to a hotel stay in London and a visit to the Natural History Museum.
No problems.
Mind you, I guess that her referring to me as "Dad" helped.

Although as the tag line to that article says - there are millions more uncles, grandfathers, friends of the family etc, than abductors, probably trillions across the world - so why the paranoia that every time a child cries and a man tries to comfort them with no sign of a mother around, that total strangers should automatically feel uncomfortable and occasionally have the need to approach and question them "just in case".

Its rather similar to the time that our two were pre-school and would spend a couple of days at a local playschool, my dad went to pick them up one day and not knowing the process he walked in through the rear door of the church hall they were in where he was pounced upon and severely chastised by the woman who ran the group and initially wasn't believed and threatened with the police being calle ,it was only on the word of a four year old that the woman finally believed his story - again you'd have to ask if her reaction had been the same if it had been a female grandparent who turned up.

I'll play my trump card first - Myra Hindley.

I'll raise you Rose West.

You raise a difficult question, though.

There's a young lass I occasionally see on the way to work in the morning: gets on the bus two stops on from me.

Probably about 13 – I guess. A man (her father, I assume) always sees her on, waits to see her sit down and waves at her, even though she often seems to be almost blanking him.

She's dressed in a really dowdy way; she sits on her own the overwhelming amount of the time – IIRC, I've seen her interact with other girls about once or twice – and often seems to have a very hollow expression (if that makes sense).

Something about her really troubles me. But what does one do? Does one go to the school and raise the issue? Hopefully, the school would recognise if anything were seriously wrong. But there's something that always [ifeels[/i wrong.

So do you ignore it – or do you interfere, at the risk of causing real problems for people in entirely innocent situations?

And there are other potential explanations: truancy (hence the need to see her on the bus – although she never gets off early) is just one.

But where does your conscience lead you in such a situation?

The most obvious explanation , and a very highly likely one, is that the man IS her father and she is a typical 13/14 year old girl who hates her parents and detests the idea that her father should see her off at the bus stop.

The scenario that you describe happens millions of times every day just in the UK - children being accompanied by adults to and from something or other, but (in general) our suspicions are only raised when we see a child being accompanied by a male adult, doubly so when its two male adults, moreso again when the child is female and I can't pinpoint when this paranoia started or where in percentage terms the validation of the paranoia is - ie is there a 1% chance that the girl is being abducted, or as is more likely is the chance something like 0.00001% and if so are our suspicions still justified ?

Absolutely. Completely agree.

The issue of paedophiles abducting kids is hardly likely to be new but the media hype it up tremendously to the point where parents are terrified to let kids out of their sight.

How many times did the older generation tell stories of kids who ran away with the circus/ ran away from home or were taken by the gypsies? As paedophillia wasn't really discussed at the time nobody suspected that the missing kids could have been abducted or murdered by a neighbour. A small minority of people have always been sexually attracted to children and this will probably always be the case, however the chance of it happening to your child are probably a fraction of a percent.

First of all. Even if this guy had a previous conviction for offences against kids it still doesn't give people any right whatsoever to murder him. But IMO way too many people in Britain would be celebrating his death if the newspapers were reporting of genuine suspicions of him being a paedophile.

Now on to the article. There are too many warning bells in the article for me and too many things that are being hinted at but not cleared up. Firstly, how old were the kids? That's a pretty important factor in this. If there's a group of 15 year old kids and there's damage to the flowers that is one thing, if there's a couple 7 year old's and no evidence whatsoever of damage to the flowers then it's completely different.

Now, if kids of any age are messing up my garden then I'm not grabbing my camera, I'm outside and telling them where to go go. I wouldn't want there to be damage to my property, I wouldn't be getting a camera out to document the damage.

The police made a statement that there were no indecent images on the camera or the guys computer. That's good, but he wasn't accused of taking indecent pictures. If he was taking pictures of kids damaging his flowers then that would be what was on the camera. The police could have cleared him completely by verifying that the pictures the guy took were of the kids causing damage, they could have documented the damage that the kids did. Instead all the police are prepared to say is that there were no indecent pictures.

The rumour that the guy was burned out of his previous council rental. The council say they are investigating. The guy was murdered 3 months ago. The trial is happening now. It should take the responsible people in the council less than 10 minutes to find out whether there is any truth to him being burned out of a previous home. A "we're investigating" comment is suspicious if he was as innocent as he is being written. If he had no history of previous homes being burned down then that is a completely different situation to other residents knowing that he was a suspected offender and had been burned out of his last home. If there was no allegation and no fire then the rumour could quickly be proven to be false. But instead it is just left hanging.

IMO I think one witch hunt to get rid of a paedophile is now going to be replaced by another witch hunt to put blame on the police and council for not protecting him. There MAY be people who let him down, but I fear that there are going to be calls for heads to roll even if the police and council did nothing wrong.

To be fair, even if he was a paedophile he didn't deserve to die like that and if the Police and council are found not to have acted to protect him when help was requested then heads should roll.