Creepy caller targets underage Calgary babysitters, warn police

Calgary police are warning youth in the city about a man who has been using babysitting services to make “indecent phone calls.”

The Calgary Police Service said Thursday it has received multiple complaints in the last year.

It’s alleged the man uses babysitting service listings to phone girls between the ages of 11 and 16 and engage them in conversation that becomes “progressively more inappropriate and graphic.”

Due to these disturbing phone calls, the CPS is encouraging those who use babysitting service to:

• Not include a photograph of a babysitter on any website.
• Not answer phone calls from blocked/private numbers.
• Not include the babysitter’s phone number on websites and instead communicate via email initially.
• Make sure a parent or guardian is present and listening when the babysitter is communicating with the person looking to hire them.
• Never let a babysitter meet the individual hiring them alone.

Tracey Warren works with Child Safe Canada, which offers babysitting training to about 5,000 Calgary kids each year. She said this isn’t the first time something like this has happened in Calgary and it won’t be the last.

“I think what we can do is start putting layers of prevention — which is not posting any adolescent contact information at all, no phone numbers no emails — none,” she said.

“The contact for anybody should be going through the parent or the guardian only and that parent or guardian then steps in and as part of that process of screening and then following up during the babysitting process.

“Be in there in the interview, part of the screening and then following through with contact during the babysitting process.”

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Warren said if any parents have already posted their child’s information on a community bulletin or public place, they should contact that location and have it taken down. And instead, list the parental information.

Anyone who may have received these kinds of calls is asked to report them to police using the non-emergency number at 403-266-1234. Tips can also be made anonymously using Crime Stoppers.