Stranger danger is the idea or warning that all strangers can potentially be dangerous. The phrase is intended to encapsulate the danger associated with adults whom children do not know. The phrase has found widespread usage and many children will hear it during their childhood. Many books, films and public service announcements have been devoted to helping children remember this advice.
Although there are other dangers such as kidnapping for ransom, the main threat with which stranger danger campaigns are concerned is child sexual abuse. Portrayals in the news media have tended to reinforce public fears of strangers as potential paedophiles, despite sexual abuse of children being more likely to occur in families.[1] In the early 2000s the emphasis of such campaigns shifted somewhat, to reflect the risk of abuse by persons known to the child.[2][3]
Proposition
Although there are other dangers such as kidnapping for ransom, the main threat with which stranger danger campaigns are concerned is sexual abuse. In the early 2000s, the emphasis of such campaigns shifted somewhat, to reflect the risk of abuse by persons known to the child.[4][5] Common phrases children will hear include:
Do not trust strangers
Do not talk to strangers
Do not walk with strangers
Do not go anywhere with strangers
Do not accept gifts, food, drinks, candy, or sweets from strangers.
Do not talk to strangers even if they ask for directions, ask you to pet their dog or tell you a parent has been injured or in an accident.
If a stranger approaches you, tell a trusted adult. There are other things you can do like blocking them and consulting an adult.
Do not get into a car or boat with strangers or enter a stranger's home
If a stranger approaches you near your school, return to your school immediately and tell a staff member[6][7]
Do not communicate with strangers through text messages on cellular phones or e-mail on the computer. If strangers attempt to contact you through messages on cellular phones or e-mail on the computer, tell the police, a parent, or any other trusted adult.
Your body is your private property. No one else has the right to touch it. (When you were really young, maybe members of your family, like your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, or uncle needed to touch your body when they helped you in the bathtub or changed your diaper as you were too young to do it by yourself. Also, doctors need to touch your body to keep you healthy, because they are in the body business.)
Some proponents of stranger danger propose telling children that it is safe to talk to strangers in circumstances where the child is in danger, such as if the child is lost or injured. In such circumstances, avoiding potentially helpful strangers could, itself, be dangerous. Conversely, other proponents of stranger danger warnings propose teaching children never to approach others without parental permission. This admonishment extends to not entering a car, even if the child recognizes the driver.
Child identification
In addition to stranger danger warnings, programs from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement agencies and other organizations offer free fingerprinting services usually done in schools, childcare centers, shopping malls, fairs, and festivals. Parents/guardians are provided with child identification sheets to use in cases of child abduction and other emergencies. Child identification sheets include the child's fingerprints, photo and other personal data. Neither the FBI nor any other law enforcement agency retains this information. DNA samples are also provided to parents.[8][9][10]
Legislation
In the wake of the July 2011 murder of Leiby Kletzky, New York City Councilman David Greenfield said he would propose "Leiby's Law", a bill under which businesses could volunteer to be designated as safe places for children who are lost or otherwise in trouble. Employees would undergo background checks and business owners would put a green sticker in their store windows so children would know the business is a safe place to get help.[11] On August 16, 2011, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office announced a similar program called "Safe Stop". As of August 2011, 76 stores had signed up to display a green "Safe Haven" sticker in their windows to help lost children.[12]
Degree of risk
Media stories have often exaggerated the risk of "stranger danger" by emphasizing rare and isolated incidents.[13][14] Especially regarding child sexual abuse, the greatest risk comes from members of the child's family. Nevertheless, "stranger danger" is more likely to be the focus of news headlines and education campaigns.[15]
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, most missing children are runaways, and 99% of abducted children are taken by relatives, typically a noncustodial father.[16] In response to these statistics, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has reversed their campaign focusing on "stranger danger".[16]
Constantly warning children of possible danger in the form of strangers has also been criticised for unnecessarily spreading mistrust, especially when considering that (for example) in the US, about 800,000 children are reported at least temporarily missing every year, yet only 115 "become victims of what is viewed as classic stranger abductions".[17] Only 10 percent of the child victimizers in violent crimes are strangers, and sex offenses are the crimes least likely to involve strangers as perpetrators.[18]
A 2002 study looked at the nearly 800,000 minors who had been reported missing over a one-year period. Many were runaways. About 25 percent were family abductions, about 7 percent were nonfamily abductions, and only 115 – about 1 in 10,000 of all children reported missing – were "'stereotypical kidnappings,' defined in one study as 'a nonfamily abduction perpetrated by a slight acquaintance or stranger in which a child is detained overnight, transported at least 50 miles, held for ransom or abducted with the intent to keep the child permanently, or killed'".[19] Journalist Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, referred to this statistic as an example of his point that "most people are pretty terrible at risk assessment. They tend to overstate the risk of dramatic and unlikely events at the expense of more common and boring (if equally devastating) events."[20]
In circumstances where the child is in danger for other reasons, avoiding strangers (who might help) could in fact be dangerous itself, such as in the case of an 11-year-old Boy Scout who avoided rescue searchers because he feared they may want to "steal" him.[17]
According to the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, "stranger danger" disproportionately increases fear of strangers in comparison to fear of abusers known to the child. This is because humans have to operate on the basis of trust and reciprocity with acquaintances and it is difficult to view acquaintances as threatening or to fear them.[21]
Effects on children and families
The notion of "stranger danger" has been criticized for positioning children as passive objects of potential threat which allows adults to justify their means of controlling or isolating children. Gill Valentine argues that producing misleading or exaggerated messages about "stranger danger" results in the notion that public spaces are naturally adult spaces where children must be constantly protected,[22] or where they do not belong at all.
Exaggerated fears of "stranger danger" have caused many parents to limit children's ability to be physically and socially active, such as by exploring their neighborhood unsupervised; for example, fewer parents allow children to walk to school alone than in the past.[14] This increased tendency to keep children indoors has resulted in an alleged nature deficit disorder in children.[23]
In the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, stranger danger has long been a key theme in the safety of children. The potential danger of a child being abused or killed by a stranger has been seen as a major factor in children having less freedom from the mid 20th century onwards, although factors including other crimes as well as increased road traffic (increasing the risk of being run over) have also been deemed as factors in parents becoming more protective of their children in more recent years.
The conviction of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley of the Moors murders in 1966 was seen by many as the event which led to parents allowing their children less freedom – as well as making parents and children more alert of the fact that there are also dangerous women as well as dangerous men. The brother of one of Brady and Hindley's victims recalled many years later that his murdered brother had been regularly warned not to accept sweets or lifts from strange men, but had never been told not to speak to or go anywhere with a strange woman, as few people at the time were aware that a strange woman could be potentially as dangerous as a strange man. Although child murders already were frequently reported in Britain before the Moors Murders came to light, the fact that a woman was involved was obviously a factor in the case being so high profile in the media and public eye – and remained so in the years ahead, despite the vast number of other high-profile murder cases which made the headlines. The first of Brady and Hindley's five known victims, Pauline Reade, was even a neighbour of Myra Hindley. The other four victims, however, were all unknown to Brady and Hindley.
In more recent years, "stranger danger" killings of children including that of at least four young girls by Robert Black during the 1980s, and that of Sarah Payne in West Sussex in July 2000, may have led parents to become increasingly protective of their children – as well as prompting parents and teachers to make children more alert of the dangers of strangers. Black was a stranger who lured his victims from different parts of Britain while working as a lorry driver, while Sarah Payne's killer Roy Whiting was not known to the victim or to any of her family, who had confirmed this to the police when Sarah Payne was still missing and Whiting was first identified as a possible suspect.[24]
However, statistics by government and police bodies have shown that "stranger danger" abductions of children are incredibly rare, and murders in these circumstances rarer still, and that the overwhelming majority of cases of child abuse and murder were committed by someone who was known to the child.
The Soham murders in Cambridgeshire, where two 10-year-old girls were found dead two weeks after their disappearance in August 2002, are a notable example – the killer of the girls, Ian Huntley, was known to both of his victims, and his role as a local school caretaker clearly portrayed him as a man with a position of trust, who would not appear to be a likely danger to children whether known to them or not. The police had even mentioned to the media while the girls were still missing that they may have been abducted by someone who was known to them. Huntley was arrested some 12 hours before the bodies of the two girls were found, although until this development the disappearance of the girls might have been judged by the majority of the public and the media as a typical "stranger danger" abduction.[25] Subsequent child murders, including those of Tia Sharp in South London and April Jones (whose body has never been found) in Mid Wales during 2012, were also proven to have been committed by a killer who was known to the victim – in the case of Tia Sharp, the murderer was a family member.
There have also been cases of murder where the victim was an older child or teenager whose greater freedom (compared to the average younger child) made it impossible for the police to determine whether the killer was definitely known to the victim. A notable example is Amanda Dowler, the Surrey teenager who disappeared in March 2002 and whose remains were found in Hampshire six months later. Levi Bellfield, already serving life imprisonment for two other murders, was found guilty of her murder nearly a decade later, and police said that she may have known Bellfield as he was the step-father of one of her friends at school. In 2005, 15-year-old Rochelle Holness was murdered and dismembered by her distant neighbour John McGrady on a high-rise council estate in South London, but as with the case of Amanda Dowler, police were unable to confirm whether Rochelle Holness knew her killer.
Such is the rarity of "stranger danger" abductions and killings of children in the United Kingdom, that in May 2015 an online video portraying the dangers of strangers and potential abduction situations was in fact condemned by critics, due to these crimes being so rare. Indeed, the murder of Sarah Payne 15 years earlier may very well have been the most recent murder of a pre-teen child by a stranger in Britain.[26]
An Amber alert or a child abduction emergency alert is a message distributed by a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children. The system originated in the United States of America.
Adam John Walsh was an American child who was abducted from a Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981. His severed head was found two weeks later in a drainage canal alongside Highway 60/ Yeehaw Junction in rural Indian River County, Florida. His death garnered national interest and was made into the 1983 television film Adam, seen by 38 million people in its original airing.
John Edward Walsh, Jr. is an American television presenter, criminologist, victims' rights activist, and the host/creator of America's Most Wanted. He is known for his anti-crime activism, with which he became involved following the murder of his son, Adam, in 1981; in 2008, deceased serial killer Ottis Toole was officially named as Adam's killer. Walsh was part-owner of the now defunct National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C. He also anchored an investigative documentary series, The Hunt with John Walsh, which debuted on CNN in 2014.
Poisoned candy myths are urban legends about malevolent strangers intentionally hiding poisons, drugs, or sharp objects such as razor blades in candy, which they then distribute with the intent of harming random children, especially during Halloween trick-or-treating. These myths, originating in the United States, serve as modern cautionary tales to children and parents and repeat two themes that are common in urban legends: danger to children and contamination of food.
A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, death in a location where they cannot be found, or many other reasons. In most parts of the world, a missing person will usually be found quickly. While criminal abductions are some of the most widely reported missing person cases, these account for only 2–5% of missing children in Europe.
Jane Nartare Beaumont, Arnna Kathleen Beaumont and Grant Ellis Beaumont, collectively referred to as the Beaumont children, were three Australian siblings who disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, on 26 January 1966 in a suspected abduction and murder.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a private, nonprofit organization established in 1984 by the United States Congress. In September 2013, the United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, and the President of the United States reauthorized the allocation of $40 million in funding for the organization as part of Missing Children's Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2013. The current chair of the organization is Jon Grosso of Kohl's. NCMEC handles cases of missing minors from infancy to young adults through age 20.
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) defines the “umbrella” of crimes and activities that involve inflicting sexual abuse on to a child as a financial or personal opportunity. Commercial Sexual Exploitation consists of forcing a child into prostitution, sex trafficking, early marriage, child sex tourism and any other venture of exploiting children into sexual activities. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the lack of reporting the crime and “the difficulties associated with identifying and measuring victims and perpetrators” has made it almost impossible to create a national estimate of the prevalence of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the United States. There is an estimated one million children that are exploited for commercial sex globally; of the one million children that are exploited, the majority are girls.
The murder of Karmein Chan is an Australian child murder case in which a 13-year-old Chinese-Australian girl was abducted at knifepoint from her Templestowe, Victoria, home during the night of 13 April 1991. Karmein's body was discovered at Edgars Creek in the suburb of Thomastown on 9 April 1992; the prime suspect for her abduction and murder is an unidentified serial child rapist known as "Mr. Cruel", who had abducted and sexually assaulted a minimum of three prepubescent and adolescent girls in circumstances markedly similar to Karmein in the years prior to her abduction.
See No Evil: The Moors Murders is a two-part British television serial, directed by Christopher Menaul, produced by Granada Television and broadcast on ITV on 14 and 15 May 2006. The serial tells the story of the Moors murders, which were committed, between July 1963 and October 1965, by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. The narrative is from the viewpoint of Hindley's sister, Maureen Smith, and her husband David.
Unreported missing describes persons who cannot be found, yet have not been or cannot be reported as missing persons to law enforcement, specifically the National Crime Information Center database of missing persons in the United States. The term applies whether the missing person is a child or an adult.
A child abduction alert system is a tool used to alert the public in cases of worrying or life-threatening disappearances of children.
Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.
Kidnapping is a crime in the United States. Throughout its history, a number of incidents have taken place.
Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Jane Gordon were two Australian girls who went missing while attending an Australian rules football match at the Adelaide Oval on 25 August 1973. Their disappearance, and presumed abduction and murder, became one of South Australia's most infamous crimes. The presumed murders are thought by South Australia Police and the media to be related to the disappearance of the Beaumont children in 1966. The case is sometimes referred to as the Adelaide Oval abductions.
Crimes That Shook Britain is a television series first aired in 2008 on Crime & Investigation UK, focusing on uncovering the truth behind crimes that shocked the nation. Some episodes were also rebroadcast in random episode order from 2014 to 2019, on Channel 5 originally under the title Britain's Worst Crimes.
A stranger is a person who is unknown to another person or group. Because of this unknown status, a stranger may be perceived as a threat until their identity and character can be ascertained. Different classes of strangers have been identified for social science purposes, and the tendency for strangers and foreigners to overlap has been examined.
Sara Anne Wood was a twelve-year-old American girl who disappeared while riding her bicycle home from Norwich Corners Church in Sauquoit, New York. She is believed to have been abducted less than half a mile from her own home by convicted child killer Lewis Stephen Lent Jr.
The murder of Rachael Runyan is an unsolved child murder which occurred in Sunset, Utah, on August 26, 1982, when a three-year-old girl was abducted from a playground and murdered by an unknown individual. Her body was found three weeks later in a creek bed in nearby Morgan County.
During the summer of 2002 there were a number of high-profile child abductions in the United States. Despite the statistical decrease of non-custodial child abductions since 1999, extensive media coverage of selected cases created a nationwide sense of panic. The focus on child abductions led governmental entities to take action. Many states instituted Amber alerts systems and a national Amber alert was included as part of a package of federal legislation known as the PROTECT Act of 2003.
↑ Barbovschi, M.; Marinescu, V.; Velicu, A.; Laszlo, E. (2012). "Meeting New Contacts Online". In Livingstone, Sonia; etal. (eds.). Children, Risk and Safety on the Internet: Research and Policy Challenges in Comparative Perspective. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. p.177. ISBN978-1-84-742883-7.
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