To think a large amount of attempted abductions are just the result of over active imaginations....

[Pantone363]

Possibly I am. Just pondering yet another report of a local child being approached on the way to school and nearly abducted.

Reports usually posted on FB and involve a car stopping and child being called over or a van driving past slowly and then driving off fast.

Today's report is a teenage girl who fought off a man wearing a balaclava driving a big black van. On a very busy stretch of road during rush hour. Which nobody else saw. Police are investigating according to the email from the school.

IABU to think that a lot of these reports are products of over active imaginations, attention seeking or the result of fear mongering around peadophiles? Or are there actually monthly attempted abductions of small children by strangers?

How many abducted by men in a white van while on the way to school?

I have no idea, op wasn't talking about white van man op was talking about peoples over active imaginations.

We have had two reports in two years, of two cases of cars, can't remember name or make, behaving suspiciously round schools and during this time, there was extra police patrols round the schools.

Do I think that was active imagination? No.

Re white van man, that was pretty much Robert Black's modus operandum. But he's been inside for quite some time now.

I wonder this. I don't deny it happens.

There was a report on out local radio of a teenager approached by an elderly man and woman in a car. It's a real report it's on our police website.
But the police website says no more than that and that there may well be an explanation.

Yet the radio was reporting it as an attempted abduction.

It's a bit...I don't know. Worrying. They may have just been asking for directions for all we know.

Thing is we all hear about the "suspicious activity" but never heard the 99.99% of cases where it turns out to be something innocuous.

The same way newspapers print retractions an apologies in small type by the adverts ....

Clearly not all children lie about things like this. Unfortunately, some do though - twice when we were at school there were ridiculously serious allegations made about an attack and an attempted attack that had the whole community freaked out - unfortunately they were proven to be totally false. As usual, it's not about either believing everything blindly, nor about dismissing it without proper consideration.

The attack has been reported in today's paper.

Headline "Masked man attempts to drag child into van"

Actual story: van stopped and man encouraged child to get in.

Original email that was circulating on FB was not from the school, police aware of social media rumours and are investigating what actually happened.