Just a little story I was told the other day that amazed me.
My FIL was walking to school in OROVILLE (if you can believe that), when a car stopped by a little girl standing by her driveway (large acre land houses). The girl screamed, and intead of running toward her house, or to the bus stop where the other kids were heading, she ran into the field opposite her driveway. The guy gets out of his car and chases the little girl into the field, pulling down his pants on the run. The girl was actually running towards her father, who was digging a hole in the field (FIL couldn't remember what it was for), so he couldn't be seen in the tall grass, in the hole. The little girl jumped over her father's head, and the guy chasing her fell in the hole...with Dad. Wasn't much left of the guy's parts from the story, and I wouldn't be surprised.
The whole story boils down to this guy was from 80 miles away, and cruised the small rural communities, looking for a victim. It didn't matter who, but if some child was in the wrong place at the time this piece of $%^# came by, he'd grab them. This was 45+ years ago, but no one knew because there was no massive television coverage, small town newspapers didn't pass the information on to other papers, and there was no internet.
People say it's different now, you have to be extra careful. It doesn't look too different, we just didn't KNOW we had to be careful back then.