Stranger abductions are rare, but they do happen. A recent case in Washington shows just how quickly a day at the park can become a nightmare.
Three siblings who were staying with a babysitter were playing unattended at a park when a man scooped up the youngest child and carried him away. Surveillance video from nearby businesses show the man carrying the 22-month-old child as the toddlers 8-year-old sister and 10-year-old brother give chase. The little girl told a business owner that the man had taken her little brother, and the woman's grandson gave chase.
The would-be abductor dropped the child two blocks from the park after being chased, and the toddler ran crying to his brave sister.
Police say the incident appears to be a random abduction attempt, and they are warning parents to be vigilant.
While child kidnappings by strangers do occur, they are extremely rare, statistically speaking. According to the most recent statistics from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), approximately 800,000 children were reported missing in 1999. Of those, the overwhelming majority were runaways or children who simply miscommunicated their whereabouts to their parents. About a quarter of the cases were family abductions, such as in the case of abduction by a noncustodial parent. Another 58,000 were abductions by non-relatives whom the children knew. Only 0.0001 percent of the missing children that year--115 children--were kidnapped by strangers.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) described these 115 "stereotypical kidnappings" in its 2002 NISMART (National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children) publication:
Stereotypical kidnapping: A nonfamily abductionperpetrated by a slight acquaintance or stranger inwhich a child is detained overnight, transported atleast 50 miles, held for ransom or abducted withintent to keep the child permanently, or killed.
Nearly half of all victims of stereotypical kidnappings are sexually assaulted by their abductors.
Of course, these statistics are more than a decade old, so it may be prudent for these agencies to revisit the data and conduct updated research.
Last year, Oklahoma had at least two notable cases of stranger kidnappings. The first, in May, occurred when an 8-year-old girl was snatched from the playground of a Tulsa apartment complex. That girl was found and the suspect apprehended when the employee of a store in Creek County notified authorities that a man matching the description on the Amber Alert came in to buy clothes for a little girl.
In November, another "true stranger abduction" occurred in Ardmore when a 34-year-old man abducted a 7-year-old girl and drove her to his home in Love County.
In both cases, the girls were found alive and reunited with their families.
