“MUMMY, those men are filming us.”
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Wagga mother Sammy Doble thought nothing of the group of men watching her kids play at the Botanic Gardens park last Saturday until her daughter ran up and said those “concerning” words to her.
Miss Doble was supervising her nine-year-old daughter and 11-year-old friend playing at the park when alarm bells were sounded and she felt “sick to the stomach”.
She approached the group of four Asian men, believed to be aged in their 20s, and asked the man filming her child to stop, before demanding he delete the footage and photo of her daughter from his phone.
“(Then) I started noticing they were filming other kids and that made me a little unsettled,” she said.
Miss Doble said two of the men sat on a seat, while a third approached a young girl climbing a rope equipment.
One man took photos of the young girl and another filmed her, Miss Doble recalled.
“It just made me feel ill,” Miss Doble said. “I just thought police need to know about this.”
Miss Doble said while the incident may have been a cultural misunderstanding, she felt so sick about it that she filed reported it to police, along with their car registration.
“Your mother instincts kick in,” she said.
“It just wasn’t right. It really made me feel sick. They were watching not only my kids, but filmed them and others.”
She has used the experience as a warning to others.
“Please, just keep an eye on your children,” she said.
“You can’t be over-protective.”
Miss Doble said police were “looking into it”.
Wagga Inspector Andrew Spliet said police took incidents of this nature “very seriously”.
“If anybody has any fears of anyone doing anything suspicious, please report,” Inspector Spliet said.
“Attain what details you can. We need to protect our kids. There isn’t an overly large occurence (of these incidents) in our community, but if something does come across our desk, we take it very seriously.”