Back To School -- Beware
By Tenna Perry
It is back-to-school time across the nation and children every
day are being shipped off and watched over (theoretically)
by a group of strangers who are unknown to the parents. Sound
a little paranoid to you? Perhaps it is the survivor inside
of me who thinks of these things, but it is exactly how I feel
about my children going to school.
In September 2002, a fifteen-year-old girl was standing at
the bus stop near her home in Houston when two drunken pedophiles
grabbed her, took her several miles away, held a knife to her
throat, raped and sodomized her, then turned her out naked
in the woods to find her way to safety. Parents, please read
what I just said. A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD! Not a small
elementary-aged child but one most parents would consider a
safe age to be out alone waiting for the school bus to come.
Fifteen is an age when many parents consider the child old
enough to get him or herself ready for school and wait alone.
The summer before last, this came very close to happening to
my own child in a small rural Texas town. Child sexual abuse
and rape happens to children around the world every day and,
yes, fifteen is still a child regardless of what the fifteen-year-old
may think.
My eldest is now fourteen and she starts out our front door
alone every
morning, but her best friend, who lives directly across the
fence from us
(we live on a dead-end and only the fence line separates our
property),
immediately joins her. They walk together to the bus stop that
is almost a
half-mile from the house and join a group of six to eight other
children who
ride the same bus.
As for my younger daughter, who is six, I walk her to the
bus stop every
morning and while there are several children waiting for the
bus, ranging in
age from kindergarten to fifth grade, I am the only parent
to be found. The kindergartener lives only a couple of houses
from mine so she, too, walks a long way and is out of sight
of her house. The bus stop isn't even on the same street we
live on and she is turned out alone.
I can't help wondering about how many children are turned
out like this. If
this particular kindergartener was picked up by some pedophile
at 7:30 a.m., it would be hours later before anyone would even
know she was missing. Our schools don't call the parent whenever
a child misses school. For her, it would be almost six hours
before she would be missed. That is, if the mother even misses
her or if she simply assumes the child may have stopped at
a friend's home after school. As for the older children, they
leave at 6:30 a.m. on the bus and don't get home until around
4:00 p.m.! A child who is picked up in the morning could be
in another state, country or dead before s/he is even reported
missing.
Parents, please take a moment and think about your children's
safety to,
from and during school. Drill the safety rules into your child's
head and
then find a friend who you know but the child doesn't and allow
the friend
to provide a test for the child.
Here are a few ideas you may want to cover with your child:
Have a secret code word that anyone picking up your child
must repeat before the child will go with that person. Be sure
this code word is something the child can remember but not
something so obvious that a stalker-style predator could guess.
Pet, street or town names are not what you are looking for.
Nor are nicknames of the child.
Have your friend test your child on coming up to the car door
to look at
photos of supposedly lost pets and children. This is not only
one of the
most common but also one of the most effective lures strangers
use to kidnap children. Take heed -- it is also an effective
lure for teens of all ages and adult women.
Have a safe area for your child to wait for the bus. Don't
leave your child
right on the side of the road. It takes less than ten seconds
for a child to be grabbed and pulled into a vehicle.
If there is no safe place, try to contact the owners of the
adjacent
property and see if all the parents in the area could pitch
in and build a
small covered bus stop that is away from the road.
If your child is the only one catching a bus and it doesn't
come down your
street, petition the school board to change the route. Regardless
of what
the drivers like or dislike, those buses WILL go in reverse.
Watch your children! Remember the young girl in California
who was playing outside her apartment with a friend? She was
right in front of her own door and still wasn't safe. Remember,
there is a certain amount of safety in numbers but not all
pedophiles/child murderers care if they leave witnesses behind.
Recent history has shown this.
On another note, always remember how
precious the child in front of you is. The anniversary of
September 11 should remind
each of us how fragile and unpredictable life can be. I have
three very active children and I know how easy it is to get
off in "a mood" in the mornings when they dawdle
over getting ready, leave the toothpaste cap off, the toilet
seat up, clothes on the floor, wet towels on the carpet or
draped over antique furniture, beds unmade and a thousand other
little things that can cause a good morning to suddenly go
sour. When they are about to leave though, don't send them
off with a harsh or condemning word. Let the last words to
pass between you be, "I love you" and regardless
of what that teenager may think, give him/her a hug to go with
it. If the unthinkable should happen, think of how it would
eat at you to know the last thing your child heard you say
was said in anger.
When my mother died two years ago, even
though I was forty years old, it
still hurt that the last thing she said to me was, "Why
can't you be more
like your brother? You have never loved me like he does." This
will stay
with me the rest of my life; what will stay with you and yours?
