he may well have become violent.

Strange to say, she may have done the right thing: de-escalated the conflict and got him out of there. Instinctively, intuitively, she may have known that was what she needed to do. So don't pile on her too hard for not being assertive enough. That may have killed her, if the guy was enough like the scary father you talked about. People who deal with rape survivors know this. So, now he's out, and the woman and kids are all alive and well, thank God.

Now she needs to get him arrested and to press charges. That is next on the agenda.

I think it absolutely essential, damn the money, you can deal with that end of it later.

Yeah, you can probably sue them for a lot more. If you feel like it, go for it. But I think the first order of business is the maniac that is still loose on the streets.

you are probably right. I meant that, if they are a real company, they owe her big for that (and I do mean BIG). This appears to be a particularly egregrious case, and won't be settled for less than six figures. If they're not a real company, she won't get anything, but she should not "agree" to having work done on her house. As others have mentioned...this gives them an opening to exploit her to carry out the scam.

Problem is we don't know if she is dealing with a real company. Maybe she doesn't know, as other posters have also pointed out. If she is reading the letters I join with the posters who are urging her to post the name and number.

In any case, she needs to contact the police, pronto, at least as per the individual and possibly as per the "company".

Cary, there's some great stuff on this thread, please post an update explaining to this woman that she AT LEAST needs to involve the police as soon as she can get to a phone.

I was simply saying that, not having been in the situation ourselves, we should not be too quick to judge it. If she had headed for a phone he might have felled her before she ever got to it. She made a decision...I have to get him out of here peacefully. She succeeded in that, maybe it doesn't give us a sense of great satisfaction that she didn't kick him in the ass, but she did it.

We weren't there. Just because he didn't become violent doesn't mean he couldn't have. We can't know that. I am just saying let's entertain the possibility that she made a pretty good decision under stressful circumstances. We don't know the ages of her children. They may have been helpless as anything but witnesses. He may have been a serial killer. Serial killers have several "misses" for every "hit". She may have been a "miss" for whatever reason.

People who do what this perv did are insecure and easily triggered. She did what he wanted since it wasn't too extreme and got him OUT THE DOOR. That is ALL that is important and it does not matter HOW she did it.

Of course she is fatally passive and she needs to work on that but this incident....might be a best case scenario. I can think of several worse ones which she might have set off with a different set of actions.

To know how else she might have handled it, we would need to know a few things...did she own a cordless or cell phone...did she have neighbors...could she have even gotten outside with the kids quickly and safely...we don't know all that.

I'm with the posters who say "you got a second chance, learn from it to avoid the next time". There must be no next time. But once you're in the situation, any actions that get you out safely, passive or not, are the right actions. Let's not forget that....

he may well have beaten her to a pulp on the spot. She didn't set him off, she knew, I think from the letter, that it was unwise to set him off. Our survival instincts work in funny ways and sometimes they malfunction. But maybe she did right. That's all I'm trying to say.

we still don't know if this was a cold call or someone she was expecting.

She says she was planning the work already, if she called and they sent someone you wouldn't expect her to keep him standing on the stoop, would you?

This is why this issue is serious for the company involved. They are either not vetting their hires carefully or checking on them, or something. If they are reputable then they are liable for this person, and if he is elderly he probably has a record of some kind. It is the company's responsiblity to hire people who are safe to come to your home. They purchase insurance to this end.

There are a lot of unknowns in the letter. We shouldn't assume too much. If it was a cold call, then, yes, cold callers shouldn't be let into the house. But if you hire someone to replace your kitchen, you kind of can't insist that they do it from outside.