This is where you made your mistake: "[t]he parents tell the police that a pedophile is photographing their children."
No. The article just says someone. It doesn't that someone was one of the parents.
So the parents of the photographed children didn’t know he had photographed them? With the whole neighborhood yelling “paedophile, paedophile” as he was hauled away, the parents didn’t know about it? They may not have been the ones who called the police to report it, but somebody reported it. If the parents didn’t already know their children were photographed, shouldn’t the police have notified them, or at least questioned them about their children vandalizing the man’s garden? The story as it’s told defies logic.