If you’ve checked out even just a few episodes of the HGTV hit Home Town (which has kicked off its own franchise), you’ll know that stars Ben and Erin Napier hold several things dear to their hearts. This, of course, includes their desires to bring old / abandoned homes and items back to life and using that love to help revitalize small towns like theirs, but it also really includes their love for their family and two young daughters. Erin Napier has spoken openly about a number of parenting struggles before, and now she’s opened up about a scary incident that happened to her family just last year.
What Scary Time Did Erin Napier’s Family Go Through A Year Ago?
While Home Town viewers tune in to watch Erin Napier and her husband, Ben, take old houses that have usually fallen into some state of disrepair and bring out their full potential, something you won’t see much of on the series is a lot of their two young daughters, Helen (4) and Mae (11 months). The home renovation experts have only shown brief glimpses of Helen on the show before, and usually choose to hide their kids’ faces on the series and social media. Now, Napier has taken to Instagram to talk about a very scary time that the family went through, starting on May 4 a year ago, revealing:
Ben started getting messages from lots of folks in town about a 54 year old California man dressed like a Star Wars storm trooper, wearing an ankle monitor bracelet, who had come to town and was saying some very strange things. Things like, 'God sent me here to protect the women of Laurel, specifically little Helen.' He had bought a house a block from ours and was living in it with nothing but a suitcase and these toys for when my 3 year old daughter 'comes over to visit.' Ben saw red, his blood boiled. I was terrified and 9.5 months pregnant. In those two weeks that followed, before he was finally sent back to CA, he found Mal and Jim’s baby girl on walks with her nanny and said unsettling things. Disgusting things. We all had 24 hour security officers at home, while we slept, while we worked. Helen asked who they were and why they were here, and we never told her the truth. 'They work with us! They’re friends of ours who are staying with us for a little while!'
Nothing will make someone’s instincts kick in like hearing that a stranger is saying scary things about their loved ones, especially if those loved ones are children. As Napier explained, she and Ben had been in the process of filming an episode of Home Town, with a crew from CBS Sunday Morning also in attendance, when they got word of the man who’d been talking about their oldest daughter.
It sounds as though if others in their town hadn’t been paying attention to what the man had been saying, that they could have found themselves in a way worse situation. Luckily, the Napiers (who recently took a break from social media), and others they work with, had the chance to guard themselves and take the necessary steps to protect their family’s as much as possible.
This time may have been an even scarier one for the Napiers, considering that Erin was pregnant with their second child (and fairly close to delivering her) as all of this transpired. As you might imagine, it isn’t easy to get over having such a frightening thing happen. Erin continued:
A year on, I still think of this thing every day but it doesn’t scare me anymore. I’m thankful for the way our neighborhood guarded us and put up a hedge of protection when we needed it and it further validated what I already knew: protect your kids in the online world much as you can.
Napier has spoken openly about how difficult the “dance” of parenting can be for them, with their very busy schedules and two small kids, and even shared a very relatable post of Ben awkwardly trying to catch a nap as their new baby also slept. But, something she’s also done on a regular basis is talk about their desire to protect their children from predators, and early last year Erin Napier had to clap back at fans who were debating why she always hides Helen’s face. You can take a look at her full post, below:
As Erin Napier said, all this incident did was prove that she and Ben have been going about things the right way when it comes to trying to keep their kids safe.
