Children in the UK are probably safer than people ...

2009-11-09T22:02:34.189+02:00

Children in the UK are probably safer than people realise.

In the last 10 years, I can think of only three high profile cases of child abduction in the UK:
Sarah Payne - abducted and murdered in 2000
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman - murdered in 2002
Madeleine McCann - abducted in 2007

and three high profile attacks on children
two children attacked in Doncaster this year
Damilola Taylor - killed in 2000
Rhys Jones - killed in 2007

This is terrible for the parents of the children involved, but it is not a large number of cases - less than 10 in 10 years.

There may be others I have forgotten. There are cases of children killed by their parents and family, but that is not relevant to parents worried about their children's safety. But my point is that rather than child abduction being common, there are a small number of VERY high profile cases, that make people afraid.

Perhaps, we in the West are too worried. Rather than their being different levels of child abduction, it may be that people in England are just a lot more fearful of it, than people in Zambia.

All these cases I have listed have been reported a lot in the media, both when they happened, and at subsequent court cases, so people are often hearing about children attacked regularly despite their being fairly few incidents.

I don't know if children here are any less safe here than in Zambia. You are right to thank God for the safety of our children. I think we need to learn to do that here too.

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Children in the UK are probably safer than people ...