She was lured by a stranger in a playground in Los Angeles. Then, her family called the cops on the stranger and taught him a lesson
They used playground equipment for something other than fun.
Pardes Seleh (@pardesseleh), an Iranian migrant, lived in Los Angeles with her parents when she was four. A man led her away from the playground, and then her family taught him a lesson.
“I guess we were going to have a picnic at the park. A lot of LA Persians would do this, and it was Roxbury Park in LA,” Seleh told TikTok. Her aunts, uncles, and other relatives were going to be there for the small gathering. The park had two playgrounds, and as her parents unloaded the car, Seleh rushed over to the nearby playground.
Then, an old man came over and allegedly asked her, “Wanna play?” Seleh said he looked old but wasn’t so sure of his age. Regardless, she agreed to play with him. “My English wasn’t so good at the time because I hadn’t started going to, like, English-speaking school,” Seleh explained. Because the man invited her, she agreed, thinking the stranger was friendly.
“Basically, I just wanted to play with people, always. I was always looking for friends. I had, like, zero sense of stranger danger,” she recalled. Unlike another woman who was alarmed when a stranger got close to her even after she mentioned she was a minor, Seleh just wanted to play. Seleh said she didn’t remember the finer details but alleged the man took her from the first playground to the second one at the same park.
Playground torture
“And then, in the other playground, they had a spinning thing,” she mentioned. Wherever the man pointed, she went, assuming he was just a stranger with no ill intent. In the next playground, Seleh was excited to try a mini merry-go-round.
“They had a spinning thing where you stand on it, and someone spins you,” she said. Seleh got on the ride, and the stranger started spinning her. Meanwhile, her parents noticed Seleh was missing from the first playground. Seleh remembered her parents and relatives freaking out when she disappeared. So they searched the park for her, only to find her playing with an old stranger.
“They are furious. They drop all their things, they rush over,” Seleh recounted. She recalled her parents confronting the man, and then her supposed friend began backing off. The man tried to leave, telling them he was going, but they told him no.
“And they basically forced him to get on the spinning thing,” Seleh said. Her mother allegedly yelled in the man’s ear, asking him, “You like to play?” Meanwhile, her father and uncle allegedly forced the man onto the platform, then started spinning him around.
“At first, they were like, so furious. But then, they basically started to have fun with this guy,” Seleh said. She recalled the man begging for them to stop. Seleh defended the man, telling her family, “That’s my friend! Stop.” Instead, her mother allegedly threatened the man.
“You want to go faster? You want to go faster?” Her mother allegedly taunted. Her father and uncle started spinning him faster, but his ordeal had only begun. Seleh said that her family called the cops on the man. In hindsight, she now looks back at the memory with fondness.
“They should be dealt with at the community level. They should be made a spectacle of. People should, like, create entertainment out of torturing them,” she said of child predators.
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