16-year-old abducted from driveway: What do parents do now?
My mother-in-law phoned on Saturday to see how we were doing after a very bad February. After getting through the preliminaries and family news, the conversation turned to local news.
"Did you hear about the 16-year-old girl who went missing from here?"
"From Penhold?" I asked, surprised.
"Yes," she replied with quiet horror. "She left home at about 9:45 to go to the gas station for some snacks and her vehicle was found back at home in the driveway. The lights were still on and the door was open and her stuff was still there but she had disappeared."
"NO WAY. She was abducted right from her driveway?!"
As soon as I got off the phone I told my husband everything. He was just a little bit less reactionary being affronted with gory stories everyday as a part of his job as a crown prosecutor in an Alberta city. Because of this, and because of sex abuse in my history and that of many family members and friends, we are both very concerned about the safety of our children: every door and window on our home and garage is monitored by a security company; our children will never be allowed on sleep-overs; our children are never allowed to go to the playground without adult accompaniment; we don't let our kids have play dates at homes of people we don't know (which often upsets our 5-year-old who's always making new friends); and we lobby for greater security at our children's school.
While hardly the first sexual assault or attempted sexual assault on a child or teen in central Alberta, this is certainly the most brazen I have ever heard.
Gratefully, and perhaps miraculously, this 16-year-old girl (who cannot be identified because the Criminal Code bans the publication of the names of victims) escaped after 46 hours of confinement and phoned her parents from Bower Mall in Red Deer. I CANNOT IMAGINE BEING IN HER PARENTS' POSITION. I think my brain would have just exploded.
How does a person abducted from her own driveway ever feel safe again? Will a day come when we don't feel safe letting our children play in our own fenced-in back yards? Is that day already here for some of you?
Moreover, it disturbs me that no matter what I do to keep my children safe, our justice system is not doing its fair share when the maximum sentence allowable for sexual assault (Criminal Code s. 271) is 14 years 10 years (and it is extremely rare to get that long a sentence), with possible parole within the discretion of the parole board. And what will these perpetrators be doing during confinement? Watching tv? Getting buff? They cannot be forced into therapy. So, when they've "served their time", they're out again. Perhaps they've learned their lessons. Perhaps they've learned how to better get away with crime, having had all that time to obsess about it.
(I can't wait to find out what kind of a prior record this abductor has. Call me cynical.)
What do you do to keep your children safe? Do you talk to them about stranger safety? Do you know someone affected by a sex crime or other violent crime? What sort of consequence do you think is reasonable for such crimes (not including cruel or unusual punishments, for some silly reason)?
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