Thursday, November 06, 2003
Panic in NDG
So this morning when D. took my daughter to the bus stop, one of the mothers there was telling everyone that there had been an attempted abduction at a nearby (like three blocks away) park two days ago.
As most of you know, this follows reports of attempted abductions in several parts of the city over the past four weeks or so. In each case (which the police say are not all related), the children are between 9 and 11 and in each case they got away. In one case, it was really just a guy asking a kid to "help him with his cat", but the kid didn't go anywhere near him.
Now, I'm not the type to panic about this kind of thing, and I'm finding this whole thing quite bizarre. Does media coverage of these cases mean that people are reporting things they might no otherwise report? Or is there some guy or group of guys going around trying to abduct kids, but not succeeding because kids are so so brave and savvy? Or are they just not really trying to abduct them, but to scare them?
My first reaction when I heard what this other mother said was "mmm, panic rumour". I wanted to verify whether it was really true. I work in a place where we can look into this sort of thing, so I'll let you know if I find anything out.
But why didn't I freak out? This park is so close!
Well, I guess I feel like my kids are safe, because we are always with them. Also I consciously try to resist fear and rumour in these cases, because it's just too easy to think that the world is a dangerous place when everything in my experience says it's actually quite a good, safe-ish place.
Now, I know for a fact that there are perverts out there. I have personally surveyed all my friends and colleagues and about 8 out of 10 people have had a childhood experience of someone touching them inappropriately or exposing himself or whatever. I find this fascinating. We've all had these experiences, but most of us were not traumatized and pretty much took it in stride.
In my case, I was very frightened by one of my older sister's (adult) friends who tried to french kiss me when I was nine, but he was trying to force me and it was about to become violent, I'm sure, when I started bawling and jumped out of the car. He was driving me home from babysitting at my sister's. I was pretty freaked out by that experience, and remember everything about it today.
The world is definitely a weird place. And we have to look out for children, obviously, because we're bigger than they are. But I will be very curious to see what happens with these attempted abductions, and whether the police will come up with anything, or whether it will all "blow over" after awhile.
So this morning when D. took my daughter to the bus stop, one of the mothers there was telling everyone that there had been an attempted abduction at a nearby (like three blocks away) park two days ago.
As most of you know, this follows reports of attempted abductions in several parts of the city over the past four weeks or so. In each case (which the police say are not all related), the children are between 9 and 11 and in each case they got away. In one case, it was really just a guy asking a kid to "help him with his cat", but the kid didn't go anywhere near him.
Now, I'm not the type to panic about this kind of thing, and I'm finding this whole thing quite bizarre. Does media coverage of these cases mean that people are reporting things they might no otherwise report? Or is there some guy or group of guys going around trying to abduct kids, but not succeeding because kids are so so brave and savvy? Or are they just not really trying to abduct them, but to scare them?
My first reaction when I heard what this other mother said was "mmm, panic rumour". I wanted to verify whether it was really true. I work in a place where we can look into this sort of thing, so I'll let you know if I find anything out.
But why didn't I freak out? This park is so close!
Well, I guess I feel like my kids are safe, because we are always with them. Also I consciously try to resist fear and rumour in these cases, because it's just too easy to think that the world is a dangerous place when everything in my experience says it's actually quite a good, safe-ish place.
Now, I know for a fact that there are perverts out there. I have personally surveyed all my friends and colleagues and about 8 out of 10 people have had a childhood experience of someone touching them inappropriately or exposing himself or whatever. I find this fascinating. We've all had these experiences, but most of us were not traumatized and pretty much took it in stride.
In my case, I was very frightened by one of my older sister's (adult) friends who tried to french kiss me when I was nine, but he was trying to force me and it was about to become violent, I'm sure, when I started bawling and jumped out of the car. He was driving me home from babysitting at my sister's. I was pretty freaked out by that experience, and remember everything about it today.
The world is definitely a weird place. And we have to look out for children, obviously, because we're bigger than they are. But I will be very curious to see what happens with these attempted abductions, and whether the police will come up with anything, or whether it will all "blow over" after awhile.
# posted by becca : 9:54 AM
