Missing Children

[Scared]

I don't know about anyone else, but the latest story of the two missing girls just terrifies me. I don't want to turn into one of these mothers who won't let their child out of their sight, but think that it is a distinct possibility.

I tend to look at the parents of children who go missing and wonder how they let it happen, but I know that it wasn't their fault really. It's just the unfairness of life that allows a child to wander off when the parent looks away for a second.

I watched a programme on James Bulger, and it broke my heart. I still cry when I see news articles about the killers being released. It scares me for my ds. I know I would never get over it if anything ever happened to him. I don't think that I would want to carry on living if it did.

As a child I went through a stage where I was really obsessed with strangers, because we had a 'funny' man (weird euphamism) outside our school gates offering money to girls. I wouldn't go anywhere on my own, and it reached a stage where my mum despaired about me. I still worry about being out on my own in certain situations.

Anyway, I guess that I am asking how people on this site have ensured the safety of their children, without making them scared of everyone in the town!

Dear Sobernow, I too have read that the actual number of children being abducted has not increased significantly over the years. Rather that cases are more publicised now than they used to be. I know this doesnt help much and I cant begin to imagine what the parents of the two missing girls are going thro right now. I too am verging on the paranoid side of keeping my son always where I can see him and stories like these just make me worse.

Sobernow I readthe same thing and heard that abduction by a relative (parent) is far more common !

Don't feel too paranoid, I think the only reason there aren't more abductions are for just that reason. Last weekend my husband took my oldest daughter to a fishing fundraiser in Cambridgeshire(she's 10). A few hours after they got there had a really worried phone call from dh saying some bloke was being very overfriendly with dd, trying to get dh to leave him with her for the day while he went fishing (they had never met before), saying she could wait in his tent with him! Dh obviously said no, but dd was a bit upset because this man had a woman and child with him so she assumed it would be ok. Later it turned out this man had only met the mum and daughter that day after communicating with her via a chat room for a while.
Dh said that when this man first saw dd he went straight up to her and gave her a hug, which was done before dh could do anything. This man followed them along the riverbank ,telling my husband how good he was with children, then proceeded to tell a very uncomfortable story about how he took some girls out to teach them to fish but their parents called the police saying he had interfered with them. All this from a complete stranger remember. When dh refused point blank to let dd out of his sight this man then got the woman and child involved , telling them to persuade him to let her stay with them.Dd reported to me after that the man also tried to kiss her hand when dh wasn't looking but she pulled away, and dh said he made a big thing about kissing her hand goodbye, saying it was ok because dad was watching. Another of his stories resulted in him telling dh that his wife was waiting at home, although he was spending the weekend with this woman and child, and when dh asked didn't she mind he got very cross and changed the subject. Also turns out he's a scout leader. I have no doubt that he definitely had ulterior motives, and am now very worried about the young girl he was playing with , according to my husband pulling her onto his knee, cuddling her etc.

This is not the first of this type we have encountered. We have had a strange man trying to take pictures of my daughter in her school choir while singing in public. Not so odd until we realised he was trying to get the camera up their skirts, (they were on a platform), and another time we became aware of a man watching the children in a public paddling pool one day, with no children himself and a magazine held very firmly over his trousers.

Makes me feel sick just thinking about these men, but it reassures me that my paranoia is justified.

Sorry about how long this is.

Lou33 did your dh report this man's decidedly odd and worrying behaviour to the police?

The problem is that we don't know him, he came up from somewhere in Kent and so we couldn't even say where he lived. It was the first thing I said to him though. Had I been there I probably would have called them when he was still around, but unfortunately I wasn't.

Lou33 - that is scary. Hope your dd is not too worried by it.

I am so glad that I posted this thread, because I was worried that I would be too overprotective, but now I realise that most parents worry as much as me. I still don't know how I will deal with it when I need to, but I'll try to make him understand without becoming paranoid.

When I was little, I wouldn't go out on my own, because a 'strange danger' film at school scared me witless. My parents got really worried about me at one point, but I eventually got over the fear for the most part. However, I am still a bit funny about going anywhere on my own, especially now I have ds to worry about too. It is not too bad, but a niggling worry.

Watching the news about the two girls makes me want to hug my ds, and never let go.

Sared - I totally understand what you're saying. i've just seen on the News that they've found a disturbed area of earth near where the little girls went missing, which they're searching.

All I want to do is hug dd(7yrs) but can't as she's off having the time of her life on the Isle of Wight!

Thoughts and prayers to all parents of missing children........

It's certainly hard not to be paranoid. If dd or ds are out of my sight for a moment when we're shopping, etc, my heart stops! By the time they're 10 years old I'll definitely be paranoid.

Re James Bulger's murderers, they were children themselves when they committed this dreadful crime. They could have been your child or mine. I hope that their identities remain protected (although it seems unlikely). Physically harming or even murdering them would not be justice.

Just makes me wonder what humankind is coming to. What sort of person would watch those girls' families go through this hell, knowing they could put them out of their misery, but choosing not to. Appealing to their consciences will do no good, these people do not have a conscience.

I often wonder what I have let my poor dd in for, being born in such an evil world as this.

I heard a man on the radio say that about 8 children a year will be killed by a stranger. I believe that the statistic for children murdered by one or both parents is one a week -it may be more.

Those poor families, I cannot imagine what they are going through. Our thoughts and prayers are with them, too.

The two 13 year olds in missing in Manchester were found after 5 days. That is the only good news out of all this recent missing children business. The 2 in Manchester couldn't speak good English so it's a miracle they were found. I'm not 100% certain but I think they got lost. Imagine wandering round a strange area for days.

I've said it before but there are safeguards. Reins for young children - for traffic apart from anything else. They are more likely to get knocked down and murdered by a driver than someone snatching them. People can't be bothered to spend £4 in Argos for reins. It makes me so mad! I do remember Denise Bulger saying she thought James had "gone off as usual". I don't doubt that it must prey on her mind, especially in the beginning.

And need it be repeated that children should NEVER go out without saying where they are going. Even when I was at home in my 20s, I didn't do that, out of courtesy apart from anything else.

It's getting the balance though isn't it? That's the hard thing.

Changing topic slightly, can anyone remember 12 year old Thomas Marshall? He was murdered by a man who was having a sexual relationship with him. I think the man was in his 50s. Thomas was skiving school to see this man and the reason he had met him in the first place was because he was hanging outside the man's house with his friends, giving him homophobic abuse. The judge said in court that the parents were partly to blame - even though of course he knew the man who killed the boy was evil. How can a 12 year old be going out with someone so much older and nobody notices? What was he doing off school so many times with nobody doing anything about it? Why was he hassling this man outside his house and calling him a "puff" etc etc? Thomas's friend admitted to all these crimes that he and Thomas had committed, in court as part of the evidence that Thomas knew his killer. The man apparently broke the relationship off according to one report in a tabloid (though I personally wouldn't believe that 100%) so the boy threatened to tell his parents and the police about their relationship knowing the man would be prosecuted and he would be seen as a victim. That's when and why the man murdered him.

The whole thing beggars belief from start to finish. The judge got criticised for apportioning some blame to the parents but I can see why he did though in a way.

There was a case 3 years ago in the North East - the region where my family are - and a woman got all her children taken off her and put into care when her daughter was murdered by a family friend. This "friend" had previously tied up the poor girl in front of her mother and the mother had just dismissed it as a game! I felt so sorry for the father of the girl though because he was trying to get custody at the time because not surprisingly, he wasn't happy with the child living with the mother. I'm not sure about the rest of the children because it's not my local news really.

Children seem to be let down by everyone at times.

I've just realised that the missing children in Manchester was hardly publicised except in Manchester itself.

I've just found this article out of a newspaper. I know it's an important and harrowing job trying to establish what happened to these poor 10 year old girls but we can't have police officers working for literally 24 hours. I can't see how that would do anyone any good at all.

:::A breakdown of what happened to the eyewitness account from a taxi driver who may have seen Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman being ferried away by an abductor shows how easily a potentially golden nugget of information can be lost in a huge inquiry.

While Cambridgeshire police wish Ian Webster's statement had been processed more quickly, officers admitted yesterday that the scale of the inquiry made immediate action on all but the most specific leads extremely difficult.

The potential for confusion was there from the start. Mr Webster, 56, did not ring the incident room number, but approached police in Brecon, Dyfed Powys, where he was staying at the time, when he realised that the swerving car he saw on the night the girls disappeared might be a vital clue.

He gave a statement last Wednesday - he claimed he had tried the day before but there was no CID officer available - and the details were forwarded to Cambridgeshire, which received them at 10.46am.

The message was processed with thousands of others and was not marked for immediate action when it was vetted by desk sergeants in the major operations room. The inquiry is assessing hundreds of sightings of girls in cars and vans, and Mr Webster's was not considered extraordinary.

Instead the statement was passed to a "grading office", where it was tagged high priority. This meant the details were logged on the Holmes 2 database (Home Office major inquiry system) so that it could be cross-checked against other significant material.

An officer reviewing the messages marked Mr Webster's statement to be "actioned" by police, and it was put in a separate queue, awaiting allocation to detectives. Last Friday, two days after the statement was received, a team of eight officers was given the task of interviewing the taxi driver. But the unit also had a further 30 leads to pursue.

Back home in Newmarket, and fed up with not having been seen, Mr Webster went to the local police station on Friday and spoke to a mobile police unit on Saturday evening to ask what was happen ing. He was called on Sunday morning and eventually seen at 1pm.

He said yesterday he had contacted the police on three occasions before being interviewed by the inquiry team: "I was cross I didn't get a response after the second prompting, and even more cross after the third time was a priority. I find it incredible that they didn't respond sooner."

In its defence, Cambridgeshire police said yesterday that Mr Webster's initial account did not match the statement he gave to the inquiry. And the force reiterated that it had been deluged with calls.

On Monday, the incident room received 1,800 calls, bringing the total in the past 10 days to 10,000. When the information was first collated, officers were concentrating on the claim of a woman who said she had seen the girls outside her home in Thetford, eight miles from Soham, on the morning after they vanished.

Realising that the inquiry did not have enough Holmes-trained officers, Cambridgeshire asked forces around the country to lend it officers capable of accessing the database. There are now 38 officers working in the Holmes room, compared to 10 at the beginning of the inquiry.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb said yesterday that officers had been working 24-hour shifts and some had cancelled their holidays. But with 320 officers and 16 forces, the MoD, the RAF and British transport police now involved in the hunt, police will be asking privately whether the four days that it took for Mr Webster's story to beacted on highlights a flaw in the vetting system, or whether the delay was the inevitable consequence of an inquiry of such vast proportions.::::

What a mess! It's worse when the police are given false leads (hopefully genuine mistakes - surely nobody would mislead the police on purpose, we hope). The Cambridgeshire police had to ask people not to put Man United tops on local children because they were getting a lot of false sightings and things.

Just want to ask a question here. From what I've read in the newspapers, paedophiles have known methods of abduction. I have read of one, buried in a long article involving chlorophorm soaked material. Apparently, the pros and cons of methods like this are discussed on paedophile websites. A sickening thought.

It seems that the media do not detail these methods. I think there is a dilemma here.

Such knowledge is dangerous, so why publicise it? Rading about preferred methods could encourage another paedophiles to act out their fantasies.

However, should we be fully informed so we can assess the risks and, if we want to, talk about them with our older children?

Lou 33 - you have to mention this to the police - not because if may or may not be linked to the missing girls, but I heard today that there has been another attempted snatching in Cambridge. Such bizarre behaviour has to be reported - if only so someone can keep an eye on him.

PS; so relieved to hear that the girls weren't "found" last night. Can't bear to think what their poor parents are going through - but at least there is now still some hope.

Lou - I agree about informing on this man. You need to tell the police about this. They will be able to track him down with the evidence you have, I feel sure. His behaviour was totally unacceptable. He seems to be a potential abuser, and not all parents will be as vigilant, or even as present, as your dh.

I don't want to reveal much here, but I am speaking from experience, direct and indirect. This how abusers behave, believe me.

Lou33 agree totally with everyone about the police and Willow2 I felt so upset last night about it and am so relieved too that they weren't found there.

Willow2

Bit worried to hear about another potential snatching in Cambridge (I live near Cambridge), where did this happen? I've not heard about this one.

Lou - even though you may think you don't have enough info it may tie in to other reports / complaints (jessica and holly aside) - it can't do any harm .

Tiktok, I know that's how they behave too, that's what worries me, but we have no information really that would lead the police to him, so am not sure if going to them would honestly do any good. This fishing fundraiser was attended by people from all over the country, and it is not a group of regulars that all know each other. I don't think that I have enough evidence for him to be tracked, a scout leader in kent is about it( assuming that was true). Also in my experiences of dealing with the police they have only ever been interested in following anything up when they have a definite chance of success. Sad but true. We have had people deliberately trying to harm our family, had cars broken into, and they have never even visited us, because unless they have actual physical proof (not just the word of someone) they won't do anything. But I am still considering my next action.

Just an update, I called my local police station who said they thought the behaviour was suspicious, and told me to call the police in cambridge, so I shall wait until dh is home, as he has more info than me, then do it.

Don't jump to conclusions about this man though lou33. I have a 26yr old brother, from the outset he looks fine but if you were to start chatting to him you would know something wasn't quite right. He has severe learning difficulties. His mind is like that of a 7 year old. His friends are all children, he will talk to children he sees on the street, he plays with them in the street. If you saw him talking to your son or daughter you would be very suspicious indeed, he is a very large young man! From the way he talks you might think he was drunk or on drugs, as he is quite childish in his speak. Yet my brother would not harm a fly, he is as innocent as a 7 year old. He is more likely to be a victim himself than an abuser.

From what you have told me of the conversation between this man and your husband, this man also sounds a little bit like he might have learning difficulties too. After all, not many paedophiles would try to take a child with her father there, they would do it whilst no-one was looking. And he did not try to abduct her did he?

It is wise to report this to the police, if he is harmless he will have a social worker who can vouch for him. But please do not think that every man who talks to children is a potential molester. I can see many problems in the future for my brother.