A rattled Toni Street revealed on her radio show that a creepy man had filmed her two little girls as they’d played in a Queenstown playground.
On The Hits Toni told her co-presenters Sam Wallace and Sarah Gandy that she and her husband Matt France had been in Queenstown for the New Zealand Golf Open with their entire family and had left their two daughters, Juliette and Mackenzie, in the care of Toni’s parents.
Toni’s mum and dad had taken the girls to a pub for dinner and were watching them play in the playground while they waited for their pizzas to arrive.
“Next thing, mum looks up and she sees a man in his mid-forties, well a group of men, there were three or four of them, and one of them has his phone out, and he is filming my kids.”
Above: A shot of Toni playing a round at the golfing event.
Toni said her mum wasn’t sure what to think at first.
“Initially mum was like, okay, let’s not overreact here, let’s take it for what it is and she sort of half listened … and she thought she heard the man say something about mummy. Mum… thought ‘maybe they know Toni and they’re like haha you know, send this to her’, and then she thought mmm actually that is not the case…”
The next thing, Toni said her daughter Juliette went to slide down a fireman’s pole. Toni says, “She’s in her short little unicorn dress about to go down this pole and he gets his phone out and as she’s about to go down the pole [the man filming her] he says, ‘Hang on, wait, three, two, one …’
“He’s filming her going down the fireman’s pole. A complete stranger, (with) a group of three or four men, drinking heavily.”
Street said her mother’s “blood starts to boil”.
“She thought this is not okay on any level.”
She complained to the pub owners and was told that the men were about to be kicked out, as they’d been causing problems earlier.
Toni says the man told bar staff he hadn’t been filming Street’s kids on his phone and instead was “FaceTiming my wife”.
Toni with her The Hits co-presenters Sam Wallace and Sarah Gandy.
Sarah asked Toni how she felt about the man having footage of her kids on his phone and she said, “Well, he said that it was Facetime… but what worries me is why on earth is a man in his forties filming two girls in a playground?”
Toni said that if she’d been there “I would have gone and got the kids and been like we’re out of here.”
However, she was glad her parents hadn’t confronted the men because they’d been drinking heavily and “who knows what could have happened.”
She said her husband Matt was “fuming”.
“We were trying to be calm… I don’t know if this has happened to anyone else?”
Toni and Matt are expecting their third child, who is being carried by a surrogate, who is a childhood friend of Toni’s.
Toni is unable to carry a baby due to a life-threatening autoimmune disease Churg-Strauss syndrome, for which she went into remission last year.
Toni and Matt with their daughters Juliette and Mackenzie in 2015.
In an interview with NEXT magazine she revealed her desire to have another child.
“I’ve always wanted a big family. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I couldn’t because I’ve got two lovely little girls, but there’s still something in me that thinks I’m not done. My ideal number is probably three. I always thought four – until I had kids!
