I did have a Guardian article about race/class bias but I can't find it now.
Anyway, this was in today's Guardian.
"The disappearance and likely abduction of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells has been described as every parent's nightmare. And looking at the public reaction to cases of this nature - for example, Sarah Payne and Amanda Dowler - it would seem that stranger abduction is indeed something that parents worry about disproportionately to the scale of the risk involved. Children, too, have nightmares about stranger abduction, and are threatened with it in folklore - how many of us remember being told we would be taken away by the wicked witch or the bogeyman?
The huge media attention given to the deaths of children killed by strangers is likely to leave us with a distorted view of the risks. According to Home Office statistics, between five and seven children a year are killed by someone they don't know - a figure that has remained constant over 30 years, even though the population has grown. Each one is a tragedy, but the chances of your child dying at the hands of a stranger is minuscule.
It is far more likely - about 45 times more likely - that a child will be abducted by its father during contact visits, often resulting in the mother never seeing the child again if it is taken to live overseas. These cases are reported differently, as "tug-of-love" stories, despite the fact that here, too, a child has been forcibly removed from its other parent, siblings and life. In 2001, 273 children were abducted in this way, and yet we hear so very little about them.
Most likely of all, though - 20,000 times more likely than abduction by a stranger - is that a child will go missing voluntarily. Every year, 100,000 people under the age of 18 go missing, forced to run away to escape something unbearable at home. Research by the Children's Society found that the reasons for children leaving home range from physical and mental abuse, sexual assault by a family member (one in seven runaway children cited this as the reason) and poor parenting (including alcoholism, poverty and neglect). Some 10% of calls to the National Missing Persons Helpline each year (about 10,000 in total) are from children between the ages of eight and 12.
Girls are twice as likely to run away than boys, particularly those in care homes. According to the Children's Society, 45% of children in care run away overnight (and half of those children had run away from home before going into care).
Most children are found after one night, but about 1,300 will still be missing after two weeks. This means that in the 12 days since Holly and Jessica disappeared, another 40 children will probably have left home, to go missing for just as long. Some will disappear for months on end, and some will never return. It is impossible to know how many of them die as a result of murder, overdose or simply the ill health that is a consequence of living on the streets.
Some girls and boys, who have often left home to escape abuse, are then led into prostitution or pornography. There are no exact figures for how many children are currently involved in street prostitution in the UK, but Barnado's reported that police and social services had contact with at least 600 underage girls working as prostitutes in one year.
It is comforting for us to think that, though runaways may be at risk, "normal" children are safe in the home. But what if home is not a safe haven for a child, but a place of abuse, torture and degradation? And what if the abuser is not a stereotypical psychotic, but a family member? Almost by definition, we don't know how many children are sexually abused at home - though some of the children's charities have estimated that one in four of all children experience such abuse - but even the most conservative estimates leave us in no doubt that, statistically, home is the place where children are most at risk.
As a society, we have a romantic, sentimental view of children. We say that they are the most precious creatures on earth, and yet in so many cases we stand by while harm comes to them. We tend to protest loudest when a "well behaved" child goes missing from a "respectable family". It is as if the safety of a happy child is more dear to us than that of those who are society's rejects.
Let's always insist upon the most vigorous police investigation of cases such as Jessica and Holly, and be touched by a community response such as the one in this case. But can we also remember those children who may never even have been reported missing, such as one of the victims in the West case?
Let us remember, too, where the most likely danger for children lies - in the family, at the hands of men who know them."
I don't like the demonising of men in this article I have to say!