The real statistics
Child abduction is the airplane crash of parental fears.
Intellectually, we know the odds: The chances of dying aboard a plane are slim (Lifetime odds: 1 in 500,000, and that’s for frequent fliers). But emotionally, we aren’t convinced. Flying scares us.
The difference, though: Despite our fears, we continue to fly. To refuse to board a plane would be to condemn ourselves to a limited life.
But we think nothing of limiting our children’s lives, based on fears that are even less likely to be realized.
As most people know by now, the majority of child abductions are custody related. There are also thousands of “lesser” nonfamily abductions, which “do not involve elements of the extremely alarming kind of crime that parents and reporters have in mind,” according to a 2002 U.S. Department of Justice report. Examples included in the report: a 17-year-old girl held in her ex-boyfriend’s car for four hours; a 14-year-old boy held at gunpoint by a man who accused him of hunting on his property; a 15-year-old girl forced into the boy’s bathroom at school and sexually assaulted.
Not happy scenarios, but not Lifetime television special material, either.
But how common are what the Justice Department calls “stereotypical” abductions, the nightmare-caliber crime involving a stranger or slight acquaintance who whisks away a child with the intention of holding him for ransom, keeping him or killing him?
When a child goes missing 