After a group of terrified young girls came out of the bathroom, they explained that a creepy older man had stuck his head under the stall to get a look at them. However, despite trying to flee, the pervert ran right into a group of angry fathers.
While dining at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in South Carolina, a group of girls was in the women’s restroom when a startling incident unfolded. According to a 15-year-old girl, she was using the toilet when she noticed something moving near her feet. To her horror, 53-year-old Douglas Lane was looking under the divider from an adjacent stall to get a peek at her, WSPA reports.
Immediately, the teen fled the restroom with several other distressed girls, who were in town for a softball tournament. The teen rushed over and told her father, who then flagged down a female employee to order Lane out of the bathroom, according to WYFF. The man in question was a serial voyeur on the sex offender registry.
“I’ll never forget the way they looked after,” a witness said. “They were traumatized.”
When the father saw Lane exit the women’s bathroom, he was understandably irate. Realizing that his little girl had been violated by the voyeur, the dad’s fury erupted into violence. In an instant, customers were greeted by a bloodied man fleeing for his life from the restaurant.
“The guy came running, sprinting out the front door with a very bloody nose,” a witness said.
Lane attempted to escape the blows from the angry father, making a mad dash to the exit with his face covered in blood. Of course, such a sight immediately caught the attention of other men in the restaurant, many of whom are also protective fathers. Within seconds, a multitude of dads swarmed Lane, accosting him in the parking lot and pummeling him several times before he finally relented.
Douglas Lane desperately tried to evade the group of men. However, he was quickly tackled to the ground by several fathers, who then proceeded to detain him until the police arrived. Video footage captured the registered sex offender sitting defeated on the lawn outside of the restaurant as a crowd of determined men surrounds and confront him.
Lane was later arrested and charged with voyeurism, possession of marijuana, and drug paraphernalia. However, he maintains his innocence, claiming that he didn’t know he had entered the women’s bathroom until he sat down and peeked under the stall. Police later found his cell phone on the bathroom floor and collected it as evidence.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigators confirmed that Lane was registered as a sex offender in 2008. He was first convicted in 2004 for secretly peeping at two children aged 8 and 9. He was again convicted of secretly peeing into another room at a victim who was 18 years or older.
Lane was previously convicted of voyeurism in South Carolina in 1997 as well as failure to register as a sex offender in 1999. He has been charged with peeping at least eight times prior to the most recent incident.
Most fathers would agree that Lane got off easy with only a bloody nose to show for it. In fact, if Lane hadn’t tried to flee in the first place, he may have suffered far worse consequences for his actions.
Sex offenders are constantly entering and exiting the justice system and victimizing women and children after being given every opportunity at freedom. It’s safe to say that after eight previous episodes of alleged voyeurism, Lane isn’t going to stop simply because another sexual offense is added to his record.
