Why do people abduct children?

SharetheLight

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I need a little help with this. I am assuming that most (non-family) abductors are child predators, and they abduct children to molest and then destroy. I am not familiar with too many child abductions so I guess I want to know if there is any study as to why people abduct children??
I think of the case of Elizabeth Smart, she was abducted, but wasn't killed. As was Shawn Horneby. So there must be other reasons to abduct a child.
Then there is the obvious, that children are abducted by people who can't have their own children. (which i don't think is the case with the Lyon sisters)
Children could be abducted in an act of retribution. Children could be abducted and sold into slavery. Are there cases of serial killers just killing children, without molesting them?? There are clearly cases of abductors taking children and not killing them.
I am trying to determine what the motivation was in this abduction. Trying to figure out if absent any evidence to the contrary, are all child abductions just assumed to be acts of child predators who will molest and kill.
Any info, statistics, or history that anyone can provide as to why children are abducted is greatly appreciated. Or maybe better stated, what is the outcome of children once they are abducted. Are they all molested, are they all killed, or something else entirely. I suspect the answers vary and there are percentages of each group represented for any given time frame. I'd just like to know what the outcome, thus the motivation, is for the majority of child abduction cases.
Sorry to ramble on.
 
I need a little help with this. I am assuming that most (non-family) abductors are child predators, and they abduct children to molest and then destroy. I am not familiar with too many child abductions so I guess I want to know if there is any study as to why people abduct children??
I think of the case of Elizabeth Smart, she was abducted, but wasn't killed. As was Shawn Horneby. So there must be other reasons to abduct a child.
Then there is the obvious, that children are abducted by people who can't have their own children. (which i don't think is the case with the Lyon sisters)
Children could be abducted in an act of retribution. Children could be abducted and sold into slavery. Are there cases of serial killers just killing children, without molesting them?? There are clearly cases of abductors taking children and not killing them.
I am trying to determine what the motivation was in this abduction. Trying to figure out if absent any evidence to the contrary, are all child abductions just assumed to be acts of child predators who will molest and kill.
Any info, statistics, or history that anyone can provide as to why children are abducted is greatly appreciated. Or maybe better stated, what is the outcome of children once they are abducted. Are they all molested, are they all killed, or something else entirely. I suspect the answers vary and there are percentages of each group represented for any given time frame. I'd just like to know what the outcome, thus the motivation, is for the majority of child abduction cases.
Sorry to ramble on.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/child_abduction/4.html
 
Interesting statistics.
"Stranger abduction events are usually committed for sexual purposes (49%) and in over 40% of the cases, the victim was murdered."
From the article mentioned above:this percentage is less than I'd imagined, so what was the purpose of the other 51%? And 60% aren't murdered?? That is higher than I'd imagined. The odds are greater that they would not be murdered??

Another interesting statistic from the article above:
"In over 85% of the cases, the child was kept within 50 miles of the abduction location and most frequently (28%), the victim was held in the home of the suspect."
This is farther away than I had thought.

"The duration of a kidnapping episode was usually less than 24 hours (90%). Only less than 10% lasted longer than one day. Non-family abductions showed the same patterns though 30% lasted less than even 3 hours."

This is a very sad reality. By the time these girls were noticed missing they were probably gone. They were most likely taken around 3pm, and not reported missing until 7pm-8pm, 4-5 hours later. Very sad.
 
quote from SharetheLight-This is a very sad reality. By the time these girls were noticed missing they were probably gone.

Marc Klass,father of Polly Klass said,"A mile a minute,that is how fast your child can disappear."

It is sad and I think it's also what the abductor was counting on.
 
Don't you think 50 miles away seems like it is pretty far??

Let's see from Wheaton, if you are traveling east, that puts you just over the bay bridge into the wye mills area. If you are traveling south, that would put you around Quantico, Va. If you are traveling north, that would put you right about to the PA state line, and traveling west you would get to loudon or fauquier county.
So basically anywhere within this huge radius.

Okay I just went back and read it is WITHIN 50 miles so my points would be the outskirts of 50 miles. I don't know why but I figured the girls were taken out of the immediate area, but still nearby.
 
Don't you think 50 miles away seems like it is pretty far??

Let's see from Wheaton, if you are traveling east, that puts you just over the bay bridge into the wye mills area. If you are traveling south, that would put you around Quantico, Va. If you are traveling north, that would put you right about to the PA state line, and traveling west you would get to loudon or fauquier county.
So basically anywhere within this huge radius.

Okay I just went back and read it is WITHIN 50 miles so my points would be the outskirts of 50 miles. I don't know why but I figured the girls were taken out of the immediate area, but still nearby.

I agree,I also don't think that 50 miles would be realistic in this case because there were 2 kids. IMO,it wouldn't matter if the abductor were a stranger or known to them,50 miles would have had them in a panic no matter who it was. He wouldn't have been able to control them both and drive.The only way he could have gone that far is if he had drugged them much like the abductor of Steven Stayner did. I was thinking more like 10-15 miles tops.
 
This may help to sort of frame part of their day - or at least how it was supposed to turn out. In this article, they found a neighbor who had just given birth to a new baby that week and Kathrine had plans to visit her home to see the new baby that afternoon.

I suppose this might have been the first time that anyone was checking on their whereabouts. Their parents were still expecting them home at any minute when the neighbor called to see if Kathrine was still coming by to visit.

(Frances) Kuester had given birth to another daughter, named Judy, a week before the girls disappeared. Katherine had stopped by on March 24 hoping to see the baby, but Judy was asleep.


"I told her to come by the next day," Kuester said. "I promised her I'd be sure to have Judy up."
When Kate didn't show, Kuester called the girls' mother, Mary Lyon, who said the girls were running late and should be back any moment.

http://www.gazette.net/gazette_archive/2005b/200512/montgomerycty/county/265841-1.html
 
The girls may have ran into something, or someone, and seen something they should not have seen. They could have been taken simply to silence them. In which case it may not be a serial abductor we are looking for but rather a perp with lesser crimes. Drugs??
There is no evidence that they were taken abrubtly, but then again there is no evidence to suggest they were taken in any manner. Just evidence that they were taken because they did not arrive home on 3/25/75, and highly unlikely they ran away never to be seen or heard from again in 34 years.
 
Did the girls know about the underground tunnels? Could they have decided to explore them that day and ran into something they shouldn't have seen?
 
.... Just evidence that they were taken because they did not arrive home on 3/25/75, and highly unlikely they ran away never to be seen or heard from again in 34 years.

The police went into quit a bit of detail regarding children who run away and the press did some feature articles about the subject right after the Lyon girls disappeared.

Basically, the police never thought that the girls ran away for quite a number of reasons. To name a few: First, they were younger than most run-aways. There had been no family stress or argument which precipitated them running away. They were seen by a number of witnesses going about their normal mall business. They were dressed rathly lightly for the warm weather and took no other clothes or items with them. They had only a few dollars on them and had not touched the money in their banks.

Of course, the news articles and police reports go into a lot more detail, it was stated several times that police quickly ruled out the run-away scenario and felt that it was an abduction. And their immediate thought was of pedophiles and perverts.

There are, of course, other reasons why an individual might want to commit an abduction, and police did consider them in the course of their investigation. But the circumstances and lack of evidence make it difficult to support some of the other theories.

There had been an abduction in Baltimore only a month earlier of two little girls. The motive there was either ransom or intent to hurt the drug-dealer father of the little girls.

As discussed earlier, there was at least one ransom demand to the Lyon family from someone wanting ten thousand dollars to be placed in a restroom of the Anne Arundel County Court House. Police and John Lyon played along, but determined that it was only an extortion attempt and not connected with the girl's abduction. They felt that the extortionist had read of the girls in the papers and was trying to make money off the family.

One has to keep an open mind in this case. However, one also has to analyze what information is available.

IF someone were planning an abduction of these specific girls, would he have chosen a holiday when children were NOT in their usual routine of specific times for bus, school, etc?

In this case, the girls themselves did not know that they would be going to the mall when they got up that morning. It was almost a spur of the moment decision to get dressed and go. It was to be only a short trip to look at displays, eat pizza and return home by 3PM. Even the path they took could have varied some. And it was only accessable the entire way by foot.

The only part of the route where a vehicle could have been used was a short stretch on Jennings Road, which was closely lined with houses. Then a short stretch along Drumm and Faulkner, and again they were lined with houses - about 41 in all - spaced only 20 feet apart. They could have walked through only about 100 feet of parking lot and entered Wards.

Again, if a person were intent on grabbing these specific girls, he might have sat in that parking lot or on those roads all day and NOT seen them.

Someone once posted that perhaps the girls had gone to the mall that day with the idea of meeting someone - perhaps someone they knew or had met before. If so, they never mentioned it to anyone. And it would seem possible that the whole idea of them going to the mall may have come from their mother, who did not want them making noise at home and waking their father.
 
This is precisely the reason the girls could have come across something they weren't supposed to see that day, and they were taken to silence them.
It would not be a planned event at all, just a chain reaction to an unfortunate event.
It is possible. We can't account for these girls after 2pm in the mall that day if the street sightings are not credible. So where did they meet foul play and why? In a crowded shopping center, or somewhere else?
It's just incredible that in the middle of the day, on a sunny day, in a crowded shopping center that nobody saw these girls exiting.
 
I'm not a psychologist- but my educated guess is that people who abduct children are persons who feel powerless in some aspect of their life. Having someone younger and weaker in your control even for a short time may compensate for some of that. So often when these predators are caught they turn out to be seemingly 'nice' guys.
 

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