Child Safety.

February 23rd, 2008

How old does a child have to be to walk home 4 minutes down the road on her own at 9pm?

Factors:

1. Child’s age, awareness, appearance.
2. Any apprehension on the child’s part.
3. Area. Whether a rough estate, built up area, open country etc.
4. Street lighting, traffic and facilities to cross busy roads.
(Footbridges, Pelican Crossings).
5. Potential areas of opportunity for an attack on route.
6. Statistics of attacks or attempted abductions on young people in the local area.

Attacks:

This is a grey area, a lot of muggings these days are attributed to the victim carrying a device such as an iPod or mobile phone, white headphones are a dead give away to a would-be mugger. Here’s the irony, these things are fashion accessories and are used to display symbols of status by the younger generation much as the reason why some adults (term used loosely) buy Beemers and ridiculously large 4X4’s, so… they are meant to be on display! I’m sure most young teens are well aware of the potential for being mugged in their local area, probably more so than the parents themselves in some cases. There’s a fine line between fashion and reason, it doesn’t take a person with a degree is sociology to understand that walking through a group of drunk teenagers outside the local One-Stop on a Friday evening, wearing a well displayed iPod while texting on an expensive mobile phone is not a particularly wise thing to do, and I’m sure most young people would avoid such a situation whether carrying expensive technology or not. The child’s ability of dealing with such a confrontation is a dodgy one, having possibly never witnessed such a situation before it is difficult to speculate on this. It is more likely the child will co-operate and then leg it rather than freeze in fear or start a fight, the latter ill-considered reaction would be somewhat irrational as the attacker could potentially be forearmed.

Abduction:

Around 56% of child abductions are committed by a person the child is familiar with, nearly half of them are one of the parents, if you are a parent of the child an abduction is only deemed such if the child is taken out of the country. In the case of anyone else it is simply the detention of a child without lawful authority or reasonable excuse. With most stranger attempted child abductions the most common scenario is a male offender attempting to entice a child into a car or physically attempting to drag a child from a public place, older children should be well aware not to get into a car with a stranger and if they were dragged from a public place it’s highly probable there will be witnesses as public places are generally over-looked and offer better lighting, this could dramatically decrease the likelihood of such an attempt. Where might a child be more vulnerable? On a town housing estate notorious for gangs of teens it will be more likely the child be mugged or be involved in an unprovoked attack, in a small country village this would be unlikely, though it would be easier for an abductor to operate in such an area. So, it would appear to be safest in a moderately busy area not generally known its high crime rate. Statistically the average age of abductees is 10 and girls are more prone to abduction than boys.

Why am I asking?

Well I was subjected to a moral confrontation only last week that got blown out of proportion, I let my daughter pop home to collect her things to stay the night, it was well lit, it is a nice area, my daughter is responsible for her years and did not show any signs of trepidation. My daughter returned half hour later with my other daughter who’s 2 years older, this was their mother’s idea. So in retrospect, they could’ve both been kidnapped! I won’t mention the word neurotic…Damn!!!

Entry Filed under: General