Every neighborhood has its eccentrics

About a year or so ago, we had a tad of a problem in our very nice, neat, quiet neighborhood--very tidy, law abiding suburb. Our next door neighbor (whom I adore) called the police on his next door neighbor. Even prior to this incident, I had believed that this neighbor (one door removed from us) was a little odd. But, every neighborhood has its unusual folks.

The reason our neighbor called the police was that his next door neighbor was cutting up large quantities of pornographic magazines into small bits about 1 X 2 inches and storing them under cover in his back yard. At times, the Midwest has significant wind. When the wind would kick up, the cover would blow aside and these little nasty bits would blow all over the neighborhood. Our neighbor maintains a very tidy yard. It's the pride of the neighborhood! He got tired of cleaning up all those "nasty bits".

The police were none to interested until he explained that all the youngsters from the middle school were congregating, picking up and studying the little pieces of paper containing bits of naked women engaging in a variety of behaviors. The police came right out! They made the guy clean up the mess and gave him quite a serious talk. The police referred to the behavior as "chumming". I'd never heard that phrase used to refer to the behaviors engaged in by sexual predators to lure children. I'd always heard it used in terms of "chumming" for fish. Throwing bait in the water so that fish will congregate and be easier to catch.

When I was told about this incident, it concerned me. I was concerned for a rather sophisticated psychological reason. I was worried about the children becoming fixated on what mental health professionals sometimes refer to a "partial objects". Sometimes, we see people who become fixated on feet, toes, or other individual body parts rather than becoming attracted to whole integrated people. A more practical concern (and probably the concern for the police) is that little children are profoundly curious about this sort of stimuli and will do exactly what the fish do--congregate making them very vulnerable for catching and subsequent seduction.

At any rate, he cleaned the yard up and appeared to have been laying low for the last few months. A couple of days ago, the neighbor who turned him in told Eric and me that the man is still doing it but he's cutting up "nicer" pictures. Now he appears to being leaving little parts of pictures of women wearing panties and bras. Anyone who has ever worked in a sexual predator unit knows that if the residents can't get pornography, they'll use pictures of women and children from the Sears catalog, J.C. Penny catalog or the advertisments from a daily newspaper. And middle school kids will congregate even for partial pictures of partial nudity. So, the problem continues.

My poor neighbor and Eric both believe he is not a bad man. They believe he's a man who lacks social skills. I believe he's not a bad man and I absolutely agree that he lacks social skills. He's also profoundly isolated. He never has a visitor (except the police) and does not appear to ever go out for social events. Social isolation and lonliness are very powerful dynamic factors. That means when people are isolated and very lonely they are probably more likely to act on any paraphilia they might have.

It's clear to me that he's engaging in high risk behavior. I'm not sure what can be done. As far as I know he has never been arrested or convicted of anything. I hope and pray that he has not offended against any of the children. We have a huge beautiful middle school that backs up to all our property and the children are out on the soceer field even on weekends.