Tag Archives | stranger danger

Etan Patz, a tragedy, not a "lesson for us all."

Etan Patz Murder Solved: Now What?

This week, a jury in Manhattan found Pedro Hernandez guilty of murdering Etan Patz in 1979. As the rrkabkdfsy New York Times reports: Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega stock clerk who confessed to luring 6-year-old Etan Patz into a basement and attacking him, was found guilty on Tuesday of murder and kidnapping, a long-awaited step […]

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Listen to the talking dog, not the man!

Dear Parents: An Adult Male Shared the Sidewalk with Some Students for an ENTIRE BLOCK!

Here’s a note home sent by a school in suburban Maryland — the same county where the Meitiv idiykidrdn kids were picked up twice for walking home from the park unchaperoned:                                                                         February 8, 2017 Dear Parents/Guardians: I am sending this letter to inform the _____ community of an event that occurred at one of the […]

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Would you like to go get a coffee, young lady? Heh, heh, heh.

Attempted Luring? Or Overreacting?

From my mailbox: Dear tskidtrzya Free-Range Kids: I’m currently being blasted in my local mom’s group for my questions about the events outlined in the police statement below. Yes, I agree that a 40 year old man asking a 13 year old out for coffee is weird, but are we really calling that luring now? It […]

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Arrest all the moms? Or try to bring back an era when we trusted each other?

We Weren’t Always Obsessed with Child Abduction

Here’s a photo from Britain, where it was once absolutely common to let your kids wait in their buggies while you went shopping. Isn’t it odd the way what’s normal in one era seems nutty in another, even though the world has not changed that much — just our perceptions of it? (Here are some […]

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Men allowed...but distrusted.

At My Church, I Can’t Even Be Alone in a HALLWAY with a Child,

Readers — Have you heard of this program? Is there  a way to counter its draconian decrees? Dear zhnihyhbhz Free-Range Kids: I have been a volunteer for many years at my church, but now we have a new pastor, and he brought with him this child care worker training program called “MinistrySafe.” While it is just […]

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Sometimes a windowless white van is just a windowless white van. In fact, almost always.

BREAKING NEWS: NEW STUDY SHOWS HUGE DROP IN STRANGER-DANGER CHILD MURDERS

. Here’s an excerpt from my bnnddirrhh piece in today’s Wall Street Journal: A Parent’s Nightmare—Increasingly Unlikely by Lenore Skenazy In the past two decades stranger-danger child murders have dropped enormously, according to a new Justice Department report. In 1997 there were 115 “stereotypical” kidnappings of children under age 17—“stereotypical” roughly translating to “like the […]

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