Attempted abductions uotside schools - risk?

[Kenduskeag]

Another day, another attempted abduction outside a local school. This time, a man in a white van pulled up beside a 10 year old boy and tried to physically manhandle him into the vehicle. As the child kicked and shouted, a nearby gardener was alerted and the man was chased off. Police are, as ever, investigating.

But it seems there's one or two of these every week! Just scouring the local papers - Sep '15, a boy grabbed by the driver of a red Nissan, escaped. Dec '15, a boy grabbed by a man in a balaclava. A woman claiming to be a friend of a young boy's mother tried to coax him into a car: police are investigating. In Stockport in January, police had 6 reports in 10 days of men, and in one case a couple, trying to coax children into a car. 1st April, an attempt in Heywood, 12 year old girl. The Bolton schools shared a social media warning two or three weeks ago and a primary not far from here had a warning out also - two incidents, drivers with similar descriptions. That's just local. How many nationwide?

So what's going on? We very rarely (if ever, in the last few years?) see any news stories claiming a successful outside-school abduction. Does that mean they all (due to children fighting them off) fail? We don't see media reports of these drivers being caught, charged and trialled. There doesn't seem to be much media interest, beyond the usual warnings - no 'who are these people?' or 'Are these drivers all linked?' Could some be fraudulent - children late for school or home, quickly coming up with the old man-in-the-car chestnut, which explains the lack of media follow-up?

AIBU to think this needs some closer investigation? Is it on the increase or occurring at the same rate? I'm just not sure what to think. On the one hand I like to think of myself as sensible and able to sift through clickbait headlines and fearmongering in order to ascertain real risk, and the ol' 'man in the car who says he's a friend of your mum' routine seems like something long-forgotten from the 1980s. On the other, there does still seem to be a risk of people who don't seem to give a stuff how many people see them grabbing shouting children and who the papers would have us believe are rarely or never caught.

No but they will have investigated it and seen fit to issue a warning! How can you possibly know that nothing really happened and they're just issuing warnings because they have to? These are just assumptions you have made based on what?

Of course they have to issue warnings if something is reported to them! Doesnt mean what has been reported is true or hasnt been misconstrued though. How do I do know nothing really happened? Oh a wild guess, as stranger abductions are really really rare, and even rarer from right outside a school, children are more at risk from someone they know. And the stuff you see on FB is generally hysterical nonsense.

My Ds was walking home from an after school club (he's 11) when a man in a car stopped and told him to get in the car and he had chocolate. Luckily Ds ran straight home.

This was in October and he still gets worried around silver cars

It happens but it's rare, very very rare. Most children are abused and killed by people they know, as sad as that is. Random men pulling up in vans and dragging them in is one of the rarest crimes that can happen. Especially now in the age of the Internet, peadophiles often groom their victims online.

"It's happened a couple of times here"

What, two children abducted by men in vans outside school? Could you link to the reports, please?

"It happens but it's rare, very very rare... Random men pulling up in vans and dragging them in is one of the rarest crimes that can happen."

Well, yes, precisely. And yet the local news, city-wide, has had a number of articles on nearby attempts (I'm not counting any Facebook-only posts) and police forces saying they're investigating X car, X-description of person. Which begs the question: Are these incidents all real, perhaps on the rise, and should we ask why none of them ever seem to be caught, or b) are the newspapers printing frequent man-in-van inaccuracies to scaremonger?

I'm always surprised at the amount of posters on MN who seem desperate to convince us it's all made up hysteria and we are foolish to believe it.

Me too, some people seem to think adults who want to harm children simply do not exist .

As an older person, whose family has grown up safely TG, I'm always puzzled about the amount of anxiety around bringing up children these days. Talking to husband today about it , he thinks it could be because of the general anxiety and uncertainty about the future put over by the media.
When I was a child my best friend was abducted by a man while we were playing out in the fields, (I ran away and alerted the police etc) and when out with my own children we once saw an "exposeur" in the woods. They've always been around.
But these experiences didn't affect my attitude to allowing my children to have freedom to explore etc. What has changed?

I work for a local newspaper.the vast majority of these 'attempted abductions' are complete bollocks. We get maybe two a month ringing us with details and when they ask the police they've either not been reported to them or they've been shown to be bullshitting kids or hysterical parents being suspicious of any male sitting in a white van (it always seems to be a white van.)

I guess there's maybe one every year that the police take seriously. Even then, they never actually get anyone for it.

The newspapers aren't scaremongering. If there are hundreds of peop,e talking about an 'attempted abduction' and the police are investigating (which they are duty-bound to do) then the local paper should rightly report this.

FWIW I've been a reporter for many years and I've only ever seen one child actually abducted and they were aprehended before the abductor managed to leave the area.

"Me too, some people seem to think adults who want to harm children simply do not exist hmm."

I think there are plenty of adults about who want to harm children. I just don't think they hang round outside schools wearing balaclavas waiting to drag children into white vans!

And the reason I don't think that happens is because they have never ever succeeded. And you would think that they would have done at least once!!

It highlighted a Home Office report from 2004, which looked at 798 police reports of child abduction in England and Wales. Just over half (399) were attempted abductions. Out of the 798 reports, 56% (447) involved a stranger, 47% (375) were attempted abductions by a stranger and 9% (72) of all reports were successful child abductions by a stranger;

Did you miss this in the link I posted Bertrand?

I am not, I repeat, saying that stranger abductions don't happen. I am saying that children are not abducted by men in balaclavas driving white vans from outside schools.

Well we don't know do we, because personally I don't remember over 70 stranger child abductions in 2004, do you? Yet that happened but clearly weren't all nationally reported. I concede that particular scenario is unlikely to happen but combined with local police and school warnings I really feel uncomfortable with people being told they're hysterical and none to bright for giving it consideration.

Too not to

Why do people think none of these attempts are ever successful?

It does seem rather improbable that the school gates at closing time would be a particularly favoured place for a would be child snatcher, given they will be in broad daylight and on full public view and have plenty of witnesses hanging around and possibly cctv. Not only adults, but adults known to the child 'that's not little Jonny Smith's dad, what is he doing getting into that white van with that bloke'.

The number of narrow escapes is quite suspicious too, given that if so inclined, an adult in the white van could presumably easily overpower and outrun a child. It does also seem that in these cases of 'evil peedow in white van trying to snatch the kiddies' no one ever seems to get a description or a registration plate down.

I'm not saying child abuse doesn't happen, far from it, but this particular trope - skin of the teeth escape from being snatched outside school - has a ring of folklore about it.

Obviously a child or two split off from the pack of kids leaving school, walking home alone are more likely to be targeted. I don't really give much credence to the van parked on the zig zags outside the school waiting to snatch a child either but some posters on here dismiss the entire after school thing out of hand yet this is what we have been warned about in our area.

You just have to cross check anything on FB with your local police website because they normally confirm or deny.

The reason why it would be more likely to be a van in an abduction scenario is quite simple. Vans don't have windows so a restrained or unconscious child wouldn't be visible as the vehicle was driven. It's not really rocket science.

Incidentally I was involved in one of these incidents as a teenager and I'm fairly certain now (as are the police) that the man involved was Levi Bellfield. But he couldn't be traced at the time because he deliberately changed his vehicles all the time and made sure they were never traceable back to him because of what he was up to. So it's not always 'nothing'.

Bloody hell Bill. I'm very sorry that happened to you.

"So it's not always 'nothing'."

Of course it isn't- that must have been awful.

"You just have to cross check anything on FB with your local police website because they normally confirm or deny."

All the local police will do is confirm or deny that there has been a report. Not that it was credible, or investigated - just that there was a report.

If you google Kent and child abduction, you will find lots of information with lots of incidents, both false and real (where people were either arrested and charged). Last month, a case was dismissed as false allegations (on the police website). Last year, this man tried to abduct a child and he's now in jail www.itv.com/news/meridian/2015-06-10/kent-man-jailed-for-trying-to-abduct-schoolgirl/

I'll elaborate on my earlier post - this is the incident I was talking about.

m.millets.co.uk/product/kid-o-bunk/205072?option=421075&istCompanyId=b238823a-59fd-4816-9c36-7dd47877f2a8&istItemId=armtpmlxp&istBid=tztx&gclid=CKDE9ffFrswCFRHhGwodihUBAw

It's my local secondary school, and we received an alert from our primary within a couple of hours.

I'm quite happy to be considered hysterical for considering that it may have been a real attempt.

Wrong link, sorry! Hold on ...

I'll try again

m.sevenoakschronicle.co.uk/Abduction-fears-second-pupil-approached-street/story-27938569-detail/story.html