REPORTERS ON THIRD STREET

I was taking a nap on Saturday afternoon when Hepcat came upstairs. "The Daily News is downstairs, they want to interview you," Hepcat said.

I dragged myself downstairs. "Are you the blogger?" Daily News reporter Celeste Katz asked. there was a photographer there as well.  She said she saw my story on OTBKB and wanted to hear more about the alleged Third Street child molester.

"All of the flyers have been torn down," she said. "And I talked to a lot of people on the block who said they hadn’t heard a thing or seen the flyer."

The reporter did stop by the building where the man lives and rang his intercom. "Speak to my lawyer." he said.

The reporters asked me how I felt. I said that I was concerned, not about this man in particular but about the reality that this sort of thing happens even in the small town of Brooklyn.

And what really concerns me, I said, was how to talk to my children about it. I found a site on the Internet that offered some good advice.

The reporter asked all the usual questions. My age, how long I’ve been blogging. She gave me her card and asked me to give her a call if I found anything else out. Then she asked the photographer to take a picture of me. We decided that I should pose with my computer open to my blog.

A woman walked by who lives in one of the nearby co-ops. She told the reporters that this man works for their building and that he is a very nice man.

Clearly, the situation is tragic for everyone involved. I feel for the girl, I feel for mother. I feel for the man who either has terrible judgement or is emotionally screwed up.

If it is true, I will feel betrayed that one of our neighbors on this very neighborly block would do something to endanger the safety of a child.

If it isn’t true, I feel sick that this man is being subjected to groundless charges.

The scariest thing about all of this is that it is always someone nice, always someone who has won the trust of those around them, that commits this kind of crime.

That is the scariest part of it all.

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