Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 96

Child abductions are often sensationalized in the media, but only when the children are white (e.g., the Lindbergh baby, Megan Kanka, Polly Klaas, Amber Hagerman). The 1970s and 1980s served as an abduction epidemic moral panic, “entrenched [with] a perception of ‘stranger danger’” (J. A. Walsh, Krienert, & Comens, 2016, p. 21). Analyzing 19 years (1995–2013) of NIBRS child abduction incidents (N = 14,161 incidents and 29,293 victims), J. A. Walsh and colleagues (2016) found these were highly gendered and only 16% were perpetrated by strangers. Abductors were predominantly men (72%) and white (65%). Victims were predominantly 12 to 17 years old (51%), girls (64%), and white (68%). The most common victim–offender relationship (VOR) was family (48%), followed by acquaintance (27%), stranger (16%), and intimate partner (9%). Notably, the authors report that “family” abductors were usually parents of the victim (and usually fathers), and the intimate partner VOR was where the victim (was 17 or younger) and offender were currently or formerly in an intimate relationship as spouses or girlfriend/boyfriends (2% were same-sex couples). Intimate partner abductors were 98% men and all (100%) victims were girls (under 18). The authors describe the intimate partner abductions as “an extreme form of dating violence perpetrated by young males against young females” (J. A. Walsh et al., 2016, p. 37). Although they inform us that a victim was murdered in 28% and sexually abused in 14% of the incidents, unfortunately, these variables are not broken down by VOR. It is also unfortunate the authors did not further break down the “family” perpetrator data, that is, how many were mothers and fathers. Although men were overwhelmingly the abductors, when women were abductors, over fourth fifths of the time (82%) they were “family members” (seemingly usually mothers) of the victims, whom the authors note “are not motivated by intent to harm the victim, but rather to protect the child from perceived harm or to emotionally harm the other parent” (p. 31). There are certainly cases where mothers have “kidnapped” their children when the courts failed to protect them from an abusive father (Kutner, 2016; Neustein, Lesher, & Felder, 2005).