We are arguing again about whether children should be allowed more freedom to
play outside unsupervised. The report from the Children’s Society, coming as
it does against the backdrop of the innocent, wide-eyed face of Madeleine
McCann and the daily images of her quietly determined parents, has a
particular poignancy. It says that children are being damaged by being tied
to their parents’ apron strings because of fear of abduction.
What strikes me each time this argument is aired is the lack of factual basis
to most people’s opinions on the matter. So on the Today programme Esther
Rantzen, of Childline, insists that it is to children’s benefit that we are
more aware of the dangers facing them, and argues that they need more
playtime supervised by adults; while her “opponent” Anne Atkins, a writer on
childhood, tells us proudly how her eight-year-old son once spent many hours
lost in Ireland having got separated from his siblings when they had been
sent out playing together, and that it was “a very positive experience” that
tested his resources. I wonder if it felt like that to him at the time.
Then there is the old figure trotted out by the vociferous play-awayers that
“stranger danger” is no more common now than it was 20, 30, 50 years ago. I
cannot track down where this fact comes from: the NSPCC, the Children’s
Society, the Home Office do not know. There are no statistics to back it up.
What we can all agree on is that abduction and murder of a child by a
stranger is extremely rare. It has become trite to declare that the
revulsion and horror at the abduction of Madeleine McCann is precisely
because it is so rare, but it is true.
It is also true that many more children are killed in road accidents, yet we
keep driving them around. But it is the peculiarly horrific nature of a
stranger abduction that sends the chill into a parent’s heart, particularly
when combined with an element of sexual abuse. The thought that one’s child
might be abused repeatedly by a stranger or strangers before being killed in
a lonely place is unbearable, and it is what has made the McCanns’ pain so
hard to contemplate.
The question is: does our horror actually cause harm? Is the mass media
coverage of what has happened to Madeleine, and other abducted children,
detrimental to the wellbeing of the nation’s other young kids, as appalled
parents hug them ever closer?
I, like most parents, find the decision hard to calibrate. How great is the
danger of “playing out” in an unsupervised public place? You have to look
for a start at how often stranger abduction occurs. Here the Government and
the police are not much help, for meaningful figures are hard to come by.
Attempted and successful abductions, by family members or strangers, are
lumped together in a single figure (abduction followed by murder is not
included; that is categorised as homicide). The number of abductions has
risen year on year, from 390 in 1997 to 1,028 in 2004-05. The Home Office
says it may be because of differences in the way it record the figures;
well, why doesn’t it try and prove it?
One attempt was made to unpick the figures covering 2002-03. Home Office
analysts discovered 59 successful stranger abductions that year, and 377
failed attempted abductions by strangers (out of a total of 843 total
abductions), which sounds pretty high to me; well over one a day. Two thirds
of the victims, though, were found within 24 hours; the rest no one knows
about as the police didn’t record them properly.
Just over half the abducted kids were female; three quarters were white
(interestingly, paedophilia perpetrated by or on black people is very rare);
the average age was 10 years. Thanks to the Children’s Society report, we
know that only a third of ten-year-olds are allowed out on their own. If you
knew how many ten-year-old white girls there were in England and Wales, a
statistician could calculate the chance of one of them being abducted each
year.
Lawyers and police officers involved in the fight against child abuse will
tell you, too, that the growth of the internet has without a doubt led to an
explosion in paedophilia. The reason is access: where in the past a man
seeking images of a young child being abused would have needed to find a
dodgy bookshop somewhere, today he can do it online in minutes. The flasher
was always out there – I saw him, you saw him – but he is more likely today
to have “met” other flashers with an interest in exposing themselves to
children. So he has a community of like-minded men. He gains access to
images he would not have been able to find 20 years ago. This breaks a
taboo. It’s a bit like the soft drugs leading to hard drugs argument; you
see, then you want to touch. And other people are telling you it’s OK to as
well.
According to the Internet Watch Foundation, last year there was a four-fold
increase in reports of sites containing the most violent and severely
abusive images of children, nine in ten of whom appear to be under 12. Fewer
than 1 per cent of paedophile sites are hosted in the UK. Most are in
America and Russia. This presumably is good news for British children
playing in parks.
Rising use of the internet has been mirrored by an explosion in cheap, exotic
travel. The man now interested in doing more than looking at pictures can
easily fly to Sri Lanka or Thailand and find the children he is after. He
can probably even buy them, permanently or for a couple of weeks. We don’t
make as much fuss about that as we should in Britain, although as one person
in the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the police child
protection agency, told me yesterday, apart from the moral duty to try to
protect that Sri Lankan boy on the beach, it also makes the traveller more
likely to abuse a child back at home.
So there you are – you chew over your facts and you take your chances, or your
children’s chances. Personally I would worry less about the perv than the
SUV (they can kill a child on a bike at 10 miles an hour, you know; but the
Government doesn’t collect figures on 4X4 roadkill either). But it has to be
the individual parent’s choice. What I consider liberal you will consider
irresponsible and my friend think overprotective. The Children’s Society, my
neighbour, your mother, should back off. This is one instance where a mother
ought to be allowed to know what’s best.
"peculiarly horrific nature of a stranger abduction"
Obviously never seen a small child after a car has finished with them, have you? The media should be ashamed of themselves in highlighting and prioritizing scare stories over what is factual abuse of children
ajac, London,
i am so paranoid about my kids lately much more about my daughter i am so cared when i take her any where.we went to barcalona a couple of months ago to a wedding and its was the worse time ever in my life everywhere me and my three kids and there dad went all the men were trying to touch her and talk to her shes blonde and blue eyes i dont no weather that was it but my boys are as well but they werent getting theattention she was getting i was so terrified because of what happened to madeleine and i didnt want it to happen to us i was that bad that i sat in the airport to go home 8 hours before are plane went.and am terrified about my lads going to as there have been loads of shootings and people getting stabbed where i live and i dont live that far from where rhys gones got killed.you dont know who is out ther anymore its scary thinking about it and i think you worry about your kids going out because it getting a big bad world these days
lis gerrard, liverpool, uk
The magistrate court of lay judges have the father's admission of having child porno images on his computer and AUTOMATICALLY saved on his INTERNET FAVOURITES while he was trying to put his daughter on Internet child modelling and accessing adult sites. Father applies for unsupervised contact. CAFCASS ignores all this. The child is terrified of even seeing the father referring to what he did to her in the past (both physical and emotional abuse). As the judges are lay judges, they heavily depend on CAFCASS recommendations. Father is a very good salesman well trained for the job by US trainers to 'make people see things in his way' in his CV . He is disabled but courts have his letter saying he uses his disability to get his things done. He has applied this skill on CAFCASS to win their complete confidence and trust in what he says AND THEREFORE disbelieve any account by child or mother different from what he says. Lay judges ordered contact saying IN BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD. Help!
Anxious Grandparents, London, Middlesex
Stranger abduction, as a percentage of things that could go wrong is, indeed, rare. The real tragedy is that a majority of children who are victims of abuse are abused by someone they know.
Parents have to be very careful what kind of messages we send our kids and I'm not sure "stranger danger" is the best approach.
I don't know if you've heard about the case of 11 year old Brennan Hawkins who got lost in the mountains of Utah. Brennan spent 3 days hiding from potential rescuers because his parents taught him to avoid strangers.
As children get older, they become more and more responsible for their own personal safety. The best thing they can do is to have a plan of what they need to do if they're approached by a stranger because there won't be time to think about it in the moment if it happens. We have fire drills why not role play with stranger safety? Unless we walk children through these issues, most are not llikely to remember if we just tell them what they should do.
Brian Runk, Lawrence, Kansas, USA
nannyism bad, freedom with responsibility, good
paul, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Your tech consultant , Malcolm Stewart, obviously has never had his neighbours' choice of music forced on him when trying to relax in his garden. Could he not have encouraged the correspondent, who wanted to fix up outside speakers, to buy an MP3 player?
S Brown, Romsey, UK
Preparing your children for the risks in life is essential regardless of the level of actual danger.
Some will be abducted or hit by a car (4X4s are more dangerous because of a loop-hole they do not need to meet such rigorous pedestrian safety levels).
Children's exposure should be attenuated to how well equipped they are to deal with potential risks. Failed abductions point to successfully prepared children.
Where children are harmed, but not killed (by cars or predators) how the are encouraged to accept the ordeal as over and move forward is also an area where parental wisdom is crucial.
We cannot control the world, but we can control our experience of it.
Richard Boyce, Haywards Heath, Sussex
Humans are bad at estimating the risk from infrequent dangers. More dramatic threats appear more serious to us, despite their actual unlikelihood.
The greatest danger to a British child is heart disease due to too many chips and too little exercise. Keeping them on a short leash contributes to this danger.
Paedophilia has not exploded, although the internet has certainly provided them support and access to pictures they might like. But how many people have actually become paedophiles? Not many, most likely, but that's what an actual 'explosion' of paedophilia would consist in.
It's interesting that you make an analogy with 'soft' drugs leading to 'hard' drugs, since it's a good one -- that is also a fallacy. If it were true, there would be no alcoholics drinking beer. They'd all be drinking Bacardi 151, or would have long since moved on to heroin.
Watch your children, and protect them. But let them play, and be children.
Dai, Motown, Michigan, USA
Why can't analysts distiquish between paedophiles versus predators!? Numerous studies report that about 1/5 of college age males self report having a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Very few of these people ever act improperly on their feelings and attractions and most do not want to act on them. Predators are what we need to worry about paedophiles such as Lewis Caroll, Baden-Powell, Tom O'Carrol, and Roman Polanski have shown much to offer our society.
Scott Stewart, London, UK
It is just one more hidden effect of cars. Successful adults are seldom to be seen walking on the streets, Then cars make the roadside an unpleasant, even dangerous place to be. Finally other, not entirely realistic fears are projected onto it. Children become entirely dependent on organised activities, simply because they are not allowed to drive.
Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK
"What you consider liberal, I consider irresponsible". The funny thing is, on almost every issue, we're both correct in that opinion.
Paul, Richland Hills, Texas
I think the suggestion that the way we dress our kids has led to an increase in abuse is absurd!! That is the equivalent to saying if you wear a short skirt and stilletos then you deserve to be raped. I am appalled at this entry. Whether quite young children look sexually attrctive or not is completely irrelevant- the fact is they are children and as adults we must protect them. Personally I don't find 'quite young' boys dressed in what look like small mens clothes attractive in the slightest. The way we dress either our children or ourselves has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
lynn, motherwell,
Can parents take chances ?
The answer is NO !
In my day children were free to go about almost any where.
To day there is an apparent obsession with sex or all kinds.
If this is disputable just look at the daily tabloids.
Bernard Parke, Guildford,
When I was a child, children looked like children. Boys wore shorts and had skinny legs, girls were the same but with skirts and thick woollen knickers.
Today children look like small adults, especially the girls who seem to be dressed like tarts from an increasingly younger age. That combined with our modern diet, which means that kids aren't skinny anymore, means that quite young children now look sexually attractive.
Kids have sex these days at ages of 12 or less,when I was that age I new nothing of sex.
I would suggest that whilst the internet can shoulder a lot of the blame, parents and the presentation of their offspring are not without guilt.
The society we now live in seems to encourage perversion, small wonder that our Muslim community want to cover up their women and girls, perhaps they are right?
Rupert Wilson, Whitchurch, Hampshire
Here's a stab at the statistics:
Let's say that there are 65M people in the UK and that, for the sake of arguement, they are spread equally across the ages 1-65; (I know it's a simplifiaction !): that means there are about 1M ten year olds and I think we can safely say that, as near as damn it, half of them are girls, thus 500,000 10 yr old girls. Assuming 80% are white: 400,000 white girls.
Given (your figures) approximately 440 attempted abductions by strangers in 2002/3, 'just over half' were female (say 225) and three-quarters white (say 170).
So, given the assumptions and approximations, the chances of an attempted abduction of a particular white girl of ten by a stranger is around 170: 400,000, i.e. about 1: 2350.
You state that 'successful' abductions by strrangers amounts to around 13.5% of the total attempted, so the chances of the successful abduction of a white ten year old is around 1: 16900
It's a far higher chance than winning the lottery.
Andy, Rugby, Warwickshire, UK
Last time I (a father by the way) sent my 2 boys (10 and 8) out to play they came pretty soon saying there was no one to play with!
Now I don't live in crime infested Britain but in the sunny utopia of France. Well it isn't a sunny utopia and the same social trends are present here as well so don't use this as another self loathing exercise.
We've also lived in Africa, in a 'gated community'. The kids ran wild and were never short of fiends and never happier.
An artifical environment for sure but not as far as they were concerned it was utopia.
Perhaps this is the way we should go. Forget the concepts of free movement , individuality and private property and embrace controlled security, a 10 mph speed limit.
jason white, Paris,
i once heard an extreme muslim cleric once justify the covering-up of muslim womens faces/bodies because "in the west women dress like whores and are raped as a result". I think most (in the west) would agree that this is an absurd conlusion to arrive at. However, suppose for a moment that such a link exists; given the small number of women raped, would women trade their freedom to dress how they wish (and risk being raped) for freedom from ever being raped (and therefore cover their faces when outdoors? women friends i have polled would not, so i must assume that other women would also not make this theoretical trade.
A similar reasoning can be adopted in the case Of Madelaine. Given the one in a million chance of a child being abducted while 'playing-out' should parents sacrifice their childs personal growth to reduce the risk of anything bad ever happening to them?
I think it is time that people regained their perspective on such matters.
Simon Mawdsley, London,
I find it staggering that this debate was launched yesterday with no proper analysis whatsoever by most journalists or broadcasters (yes you "Today") - is that not your job?
In the early 70's, I remember being out in the street at night with my friends at a young age. I also remember my parent's neighbours were their friends, social circle, and workmates - we kids were not strangers in our own locale, and we all went to the nearby school. Today this isn't the case - society is more fractured, from working and social patterns, to parental choice of schools - it's rare to find children who are groups of best friends who also all live next to each other - the sleep-over reigns supreme in the young society! Children are simply strangers in their own street - I know my otherwise extremely sociable 6 year old is. That is the crucial difference from then and now. It's not about the crude fear of abuse or abduction, it's about a basic disconnect outside the front door on a much wider level.
Steve, Norwich,
A child is 20 times more likely to be hit by lightening than to get snatched. Lesson - don't wear a tall, metal hat ;-)
Ben, York,
The day is coming when all paedophiles will be condemned in hell and burn for all eternity. I dont thnk there is any excuse for sexual abuse of children. These people are evil and are behaving in a very abnormal way. If evolution is true, then children, babies, and animals would never be abued because they look very cute. It goes against all nature and it must be the work of satan. Even some parents would harm their own children to satify their evil lust, There are enough prostitues and immoral women to go round the world to satisfy the lust of these vermins. Thank God for judgement day and all who harm His precious creation especially children and animals would be thrown in the lake of fire.
Virginia, Brisbane, Australia
Not any more, it's been edited to "parents".
Can't cars also kill at 10mph?
john dempster, London,
This farrago of inaccurate facts is not going to help any mother 'know best'.
The 'explosion of paedophilia' she refers to is because the definition of the crime has expanded to include internet viewing. You will not find any police professional who agrees there has been a corresponding 'explosion' in hands on i.e. real, child sex attacks by strangers.
There is also something very odd with her "59 successful 377 unsuccessful abductions", a very high ratio of fails. These are mysteriously rubbish kidnappers, especially given the physical defencelessness of their targets.
She is right that proper statistics should be available, Individual police Forces do record these, the problem is that the formats are not the same across all Forces, hence the Home Office weasel-words about recording. Why didn't she ask the Met? With 8 million people it could give a fairly reliable idea of offences to population.
Alistair Stuart, London , UK
As a father of two girls under 5, i oscilate between i think too much smothering and thinking "there must be a better way". As a child in the late 1970s i think i and my parents enjoyed greater freedoms. My parents were not effectively lectured to, threatened with punishment (not things that happen to me, but i am alarmed to see how the system has changed now as my 4 year old is soon to start full time school), instead i was allowed to ride in cars/ride bycicle without helmet or other gear etc... Neither in infants nor in secondary school was i forced to wear uniform, yet i can say hand on heart, i believe our generation is relatively better disciplined and integrated. Multicultural schooling, ensured by centralised control on draconian levels is influencing attitudes, behaviours and outcomes towards seperatism. The main thing really being taught is the utopian illusion of the third way. As an optional extra myself against the all "knowing nannies" what can i do?
Muji Bally, London, England
Alice is quite correct. Recently it was 'missing children week' and I heard the figure of 70,000 children going missing per annum!! quoted on the BBC, surely this cannot be correct?
Regardless of statistics and the view of 'expert' bodies a parents intuition tends to be the safest guide to action. Neighbourhoods nowadays tend to be more transient than hitherto there is insufficient time for a local consensus to develop on the relative safety of people or places
Stephen Calver, Bournemouth, UK
"Personally I would worry less about the perv than the SUV (they can kill a child on a bike at 10 miles an hour, you know; but the Government doesn’t collect figures on 4X4 roadkill either)."
For goodness sake! yes you are correct about traffic risk generally but do you really believe that any child on a bike could (with CERTAINTY) survive UNHARMED after being hit at ten miles an hour by ANY car. Some car manufacturers have attempted to address the head on impact scenario of ordinary cars with pedestrians but to imply that 4x4 drivers are more of a risk than paedophiles because they drive these vehicles is ludicrous. Which do you think would save more lives - an enforced 5 mile/hr limit in all car parks and residential areas OR banning 4x4's OR rounding up all paedophiles and shooting them? Obvious is'nt it.
John2x4x4, Suffolk,
The 'paedophile' or 'abductor' is the new 'bogeyman'. The problem is that the bogeyman was to frighten children for a purpose (to get them to bed/sleep etc). This total capitulation of common sense (a woman on Radio 2 who would not let her children out of her sight and wouldn't walk through woods because of Rachel Nickel) is damaging, because we are not letting our children take risks, ever. How on earth are people in the future going to learn how to asess risk if they are prvented from ever doing anything risky?
David Leslie, Perth, Scotland
Parent's fears in this matter are understandable and no end of statistics will help allay those fears. But what are we going to do about it? It surely cannot be helpful for children to miss out on socialising experiences with other children.
Unfortunately, schools are increasngly becoming "learning factories" with less emphasis on socialising and play and more on a single minded desire for good SAT results. Risk aversion and budgets have cut down opportunities to go on field trips. School playgrounds are being seen as unnecessary.
As a society we really need to start thinking about how we provide for children socially not just academically. We need to see that we cannot always come up with tests to deliver fully rounded human beings but sometimes experiences count for more. I believe that an over emphasis on measurable 'success' has actually led to failure. A failure that can be seen every Saturday night on high streets up and down the UK.
Philip, Birmingham, UK
I know a lot of parents, especially those who live in rough neighborhoods, who don't let their younger children outside because they are afraid of the influence of other kids. They don't want their children hanging out with ten year olds who are taking drugs, engaging in sexual activities, shoplifting, damaging property, and trying to act like "gang" members.
Susan P. Widdowson, Atlanta, USA
In concurrence with James, I was wondering about that comment. Specifically blacks make up approx. 2% if the British population, so are more than 2% of paedophiles black, is so, this makes a nonsense of the comment. Also, why not mention Asians?
Ray Barnes, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Black/Asian families prefer to deal with the abuse within the family - there was a major report from India published recently. Just because white Europeans are more honest about what is going on in their communities does not make the communities worse but more honest. Hiding things is totally dishonest, and accepting men's 'rights' to abuse their women and children is totally unacceptable, even though it is practised in many communities trying to appear superior to ours.
Peggy W, Blyth, Northumberland
I thnk you will find that many children are killed in car "accidents" (ie due to driver incompetence) as pedestrians, not as passengers. Therefore it is sensible to drive children around. This is stupid, but there it is.
As for the risk of paedophiles, it is simply not worth worrying about. The vast bulk of them don't do much harm anyway. I would rather my son were fondled by a pervert in the park than hit by a 1 ton car at 30 miles per hour, and I know which is more likely!
Stephen, London,
Rod
'Mother knows best' is a saying
Andy Clark, Newport,
Rod from Sydney: god yes you're right! Just look how casually she says 'mother' when she should have said 'parents'. That's highly indicative of the general opinion of the role of fathers.
Will Duffay, London,
This current accent on paedophilia is all part of the terror accent, ‘pour encourager les autres’, though I think that should be décourager if there is such a word. It is the regrettable way we are governed. I am sure you are right about the motorised threat, which is effectively much greater and, more to the point, always a possibility. Of the 50 ways to lose your child, I am sure paedophile abduction is way down the list.
Henry Percy, London, UK
"Just over half the abducted kids were female; three quarters were white (interestingly, paedophilia perpetrated by or on black people is very rare)"
Does anybody else see how ridiculous this statement is? Black British comprise only several percent of the population, and if this figure is accurate comprise one quarter of the abductions. A shocking figure and certainly not in line with my ideas about what "very rare" means.
James, Adelaide, Australia
Parents........not mother!!!!!!
Rod, Sydney, Australia
No right thinking person would disagree with the need to find ways to rigorously police access to child pornography, and to deal with offenders appropriately. However, there is a wider issue here as well. Being a "stranger" is also a challenge even when your motives are entirely innocent. The media have helped hugely to create a climate of fear and mistrust. The world is a busier and probably more complex place than it was, but it is an open debate as to whether it is inherently less safe, or whether as a society we have bought the line that we can make the world a place entirely free of risk. We can't. This fear of risk leads in short order to accusing fingers being pointed, false accusations being made, assumptions being taken as fact, demonisation of individuals or groups for no better reason than that they "might" fit a particular profile and then poorly framed regulation etc. Being the "stranger" in this increasingly paranoid world is a really tricky place to be.
Tim , Kingston on Thames,
The comment is made that three quarters of the abducted children were white. Presumably that reflects the percentage of the population as a whole.
To make a reasonable choice parents, not just mothers, need accurate, current information.
It's a pity that the media, including the Times, don't try to discover the facts, rather than sensationalise the exceptions.
Nick Hamilton , London,
The predators can mainly get to our children if we aren't watching them (short of them gassing us or killing the parents first) it's a sad fact that most children who have been abducted were unsupervised. I'd rather be labelled 'over-protective' than take that small risk of my child being snatched. Agree with Sylvia of England about Internet porn. In a recently case in Australia involving a prominent SC and his child-porn addiction, one of his defence said 'he didn't require a strong sentence as it was a victimless crime' ?????
How have we come to that? We need tougher laws put in place so these people who get off on viewing sexualised images of children aren't on our streets in the first place. Thank you for your article.
JL, Sydney, Australia
I was a victim of child pornography which caused me to suffer extremely severe consequences (fuelled by the fear that anybody anywhere at anytime could recognise and abduct me) some of which will never wane so I will never tire of trying to stress that the internet has created a paedophile`s paradise. It has been acknowledged that the internet has led to a vast increase in people "just looking" at pictures of naked children - just the other day the chief of the new Child Exploitation Centre stated that such people should not necessarily go to prison if they have only looked at a few pictures but every picture is a child being sexually abused and sexually exploited for paedophiles` pleasure. If you knew what it is like to be a victim of child porn you would never let your child out of your sight. It`s time that society understood the true damage that "just looking at a few pictures" of naked children can do to the child victims.
Sylvia Macpherson, wickford england, England
There can be no greater evil than the abuse of a child.
Such people are beyond contempt..
Bernard Parke, Guildford,
Im a child myself im now 14 and believe that children sould be able to play outside but im also now think that its not always save i guess what im really trying to say is that children need freedom but freedom isnt always about letting them go outside i was a child that was let outside alot but i never really though that it wouldnt be save i have also got 3 newphs under the age of 6 and i try not to let them out i really dont no what to think children do need freedom but the need freedom to be save
chantelle, brisbane, qld