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**Elizabeth Smart was one of the lucky ones.**

**I know Danielle Van Dam's grandmother. What a horror. I'd rather live
cautiously than ever have to live through something like that.**

But, but, but.... neither of those girls was kidnapped while away from home
and their parents oversight, nor was their kidnapping the result of careless
or unsafe behaviour on the part of the child. How on earth can their tragedies
be seen as a mandate for not allowing children to go or be places on their
own? Not to mention that that kind of situation is thankfully extremely rare -
if it were common we wouldn't all recognize their names - in the same way that
people across the country do NOT know the name of the boy who died in a
bicycle/car accident in my town last week.

Children out and about in their neighborhood are rarely at danger from human
predators as much as they are from automobiles and stray dogs. Most sexual
abuse of pre-pubertal and young adolescent children is committed by persons the
parents have brought into their home or in other ways given express access to
the child. People the parents "know". Not strangers.

Deborah in IL


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