Robert Siciliano, a safety expert, discusses preventing child abduction and kidnapping. Most predators are known to the victim. He recommends what-if games and teaching kids to recognize risky adult behavior instead of using scare tactics.
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They've been in the news a lot this year, but nearly 50,000 kids are reported missing each year. Some of them vanish without a trace, but yesterday the FBI uncovered human remains that might be those of the two missing Oregon girls.
And we're following that story, but we want to talk about new technology like the Amber Alert and some other things are helping in the search, but what else can we do to keep our kids safe? Robert Siciliano is a safety and security expert, and he joins us now from our newsroom in Washington. Thanks a lot for being here this morning.
Good morning.
There is an astounding figure: 85% of the predators are known to the victim, which means that it would be obviously a lot easier for them to get to the victim.
Yes, if the child knows the predator, they're not considered a stranger. So it would be important that you educate the child that strangers aren't necessarily the predator, that they very well could be known to the victim, that they could be a neighbor, they could even be a family member.
Let's put it in perspective. That's a huge number, 50,000 kids each year, but how many of those are related to family squabbles, although that's under— underplaying it, I'm sure, but— and how many are taken by strangers? I mean, not strangers, but people who are not in the family.
It's about 50% of that, actually. So figure half are actually child abductions and the other half are known family members, friends, and so forth. They are situations where it is an estranged husband or wife taking the child. And so there, you need to just basically consider that there are going to be situations where it's going to be a complete stranger abduction and others are going to be either a neighbor, a friend, or a family member.
You're the expert on this and you've got some prevention tips. The first one you talk about is don't use scare tactics. Explain that.
Right, well, figure this, that your children, if you were to say to them, uh, if somebody grabs you by the throat and throws you in your trunk, what are you gonna do? That's gonna scare them.
Yeah.
It's gonna set them off, it's gonna create unnecessary fear and trauma. So be gentle with them, spend time with them, ease them into it, feed them questions. Questions that would elicit a response from them that would give you an idea into the mind of the child, into the, uh, window into the child's mind so that you can find out what their fears are, what their concerns are. Instead of just scaring them, you'll be able to involve them in their own education.
And you also say in your tips, play what-if games. Give us an example.
What-if games are great. For example, What if we were in the supermarket and you were lost? What would you do? Where would you go? Would you go to the cashier? Would you ask to find my mommy? Or say, what if somebody grabbed you and they had taken you out into the parking lot? How would you respond to that? What would you do? Would you fight back? So by playing the what-if game, by asking the child questions, you're actually getting into the window, the into the mind of the child, and you're finding out what their fears and concerns are.
Obviously, you explain to them who they should stay away from, and I guess there are pretty obvious rules to this.
Yes. Well, we're told all our lives not to talk to strangers. Now, a stranger could look just like me, it could just look like Mommy, it could look just like Daddy. So by telling the child not to talk to strangers, you're also setting them up to totally trust people that they know. Now, strangers— by educating them not to talk to strangers is a false sense of security. They need to be aware of the actual behaviors of adults that put them into volatile and vulnerable situations.
Mm-hmm.
So by educating them on the different lures that an adult would get them into, That's much more effective opposed to just telling them not to talk to strangers.
Right, and if people want more information on this, what do they do?
Well, they can go online to childrensecurity.com. They can go to missingkids.com and learn more about their child's safety and spend some time with them, educate them.
How about this one we have up here, streetsafe— streetsafesecurity.com. All right, Robert Siciliano, safety and security expert. Thank you, sir.
