Sexual predators of children are highly recidivist, calculating, deflective, manipulative, and very creative. Predators hide behind their masks of normalcy, while honing their skills of deviant behavior with each innocent victim taken. Many possess an uncanny ability of remaining stealth from law enforcement for years or even decades.
The loss of an unsuspecting innocent child to a sexual predator is a nightmare for the parents, and for the entire community.
http://articles.cnn.com/2002-07-24/...uctions-erica-pratt-elizabeth-smart?_s=PM:LAW
A parent's worst nightmare: Are child abductions on the rise?
It's every parent's worst fear: a dangerous stranger snatches their child. However, the vast majority of missing children are not kidnapped at all. They are runaways and throwaways, kids who leave and don't come back or are told not to come back, according to a 1990 study by the U.S. Justice Department. Of the remaining cases that are considered abductions, some 350,000 each year, are committed by family members as part of a custody dispute.
In a country with some 59 million children, abductions by a stranger are perhaps the most terrifying of crimes. But they are also the rarest.
There are about 114,600 such stranger abductions attempted each year, and about 3,200 to 4,600 or around 4 percent, are successful, according to the study.
Of those, an even smaller fraction, about 200 to 300, are what the FBI calls "stereotypical" kidnappings, where a child is gone overnight, transported over some distance, intended to be kept by the perpetrator or even killed. These incidents make up far less than 1 percent of the total stranger abductions.
http://safety.more4kids.info/14/child-predators/
Child Predators: Where They Lurk
By Alan and Shonna Hammond
Child predators gain access to children in many ways. Where there are children, there are predators.
Child predators crawl from underneath every slimy rock imaginable. They manipulate children and adults alike. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Polly Klaas Foundation are excellent places, full of all manner of information, to begin your education and prevent your child, and other children, from abuse.
