Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Chicago police are searching for a man who exposed himself to a little girl in the women’s restroom inside a Target store.
NBC Chicago is reporting on the incident which occurred last week at around 4:08 p.m. in the women’s restroom at the Target which is located in Chicago’s South Loop. The girl’s mother was with her at the time.
Police say the man came into the store and insisted that he had to go to the bathroom. Because Target allows both genders to use their restrooms, he entered the ladies’ room, pushed himself into the girl’s stall and exposed his genitals before leaving the bathroom.
Shoppers at the store were horrified by the incident. “It’s very sad. Children are innocent,” said Stanley Hughley. “However old the pedophile was, it’s wrong. It’s pure evil no matter how you look at it.”
Another shopper blamed the store’s policy. “He believes he can go into the women’s room, and that’s wrong,” he told NBC.
Target spokesperson Danielle Schumann, insisted that the man was drunk when he pushed the girl out of the stall and went to the bathroom.
“At Target, the safety and security of our guests is critically important to us,” Schumann said. “Immediately after a guest notified us of this incident, we called law enforcement and provided them with video footage from our store entrance to help with their investigation.”
If the safety and security of their guests was that important to them, Target would never have embraced such a risky policy in the first place. That they have not revisited this decision in the wake of a long list of incidents in which women and children have been preyed upon in their stores since the policy’s enforcement in 2016 is even more troubling.
But, as the Daily Wire reports, the more blowback the store received from its critics, the more Target CEO Brian Cornell doubled-down on the controversial policy. He even went so far as to compare critics of the policy to being like those people who people who opposed the company’s use of black models in their advertising.
“We’ve had a long history embracing diversity and inclusion,” said Cornell. “A couple weeks ago, one of our team members sent me a note reminding me that if we went back to the mid-60s, our company was one of the very first to use African-American models in their advertising, and back then, it wasn’t well received.”
The only problem with this analogy is that the use of African-American models didn’t put the lives of shoppers at risk the way opening up the store’s private facilities to potential predators does.
It’s no wonder that so many people have opted to shop elsewhere. Since the new bathroom policy went into effect, Target has suffered a $10 billion loss in value which critics claim is connected to a highly successful boycott that found more than one million people vowing to stop shopping at Target until they reverse the policy.
Chicago police are asking for help with this latest incident. They are asking the public to provide any information they have about the culprit who is said to be black, about 30-40 years old, around 6’ tall and weighing about 190 pounds. He was wearing a red jacket, dark-colored hat, gray pants and sunglasses at the time of the incident. Anyone with information is beign asked to call Area Central detectives at 312-747-8380.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
