Monsters win, we lose

Monsters win, we lose

Watch and "streetproof"children, but let them live fully on vibrant and safe streets.

Published: The Vancouver Sun, May 19, 2001, Op-ed column
By Deborah Jones

The car was an older-model, grey German sedan. I first noticed it while out walking, a block from an elementary school, because it was moving slowly. Almost unconsciously, the driver's description lodged in my mind: glasses, middle-aged white male, brown hair.

Minutes later, there it was again, right at an intersection by the school, heading the other way. At this point, still subconsciously, I noted the car's make and model number. By the time I'd walked past the school, the car was coming around the block yet again and, with a spark of alarm, I noted the licence plate number. Just in case.

Paranoid? Probably.

A five-year-old named Jessica was on my mind. The chubby-cheeked little girl was last seen perched on her front stoop with her sister at her family's Lethbridge, Alta., apartment home. Just before suppertime on May 4, Jessica said she was going to play with a friend, and in the time it takes to drive around a block, she'd vanished.

For a week newspapers, televisions and radios were full of rending stories about how Jessica's family, the Koopmans, were distraught. Canadians from coast to coast heard about the search for a child in little pink sandals, blue shorts and a white tank top. They listened to her family's pleas for her safe return, and learned that an anonymous donor in Calgary had offered a reward.

Jessica's mother left the family's apartment porch light on constantly, to guide her daughter's safe return. Then about a week ago, a woman walking her dog in a field 50 kilometres west of Lethbridge noticed two little feet poking out of a pile of cut wood. They were Jessica's. She was dead. Jessica's mother turned off her porch light.

The tyke with the mischievous eyes framed by long brown bangs joined a tragic list of children who disappear forever. Their ranks aren't large, all things considered, but when any such child is killed the crime is so stupendous that we feel crazed.

Our response is much the same as it's always been in reacting to danger, especially danger to our most precious, our children. We become hyper-vigilant. We eye our neighbours with suspicion. We take note of strangers passing by, no matter how innocuously.

And just as people have always tried to shield ourselves against danger, we retreat inwards. We hide behind our locked doors. We drive our children to school. We buy them electronic games and TVs rather than send them outside to play. We organize every minute of their day, from piano practice to sports to playtime to schedules for television shows -- lest they slip out of our grasp.

And, so gradually we don't even notice it, our lives grow ever more barren. Each time we look at our neighbours askance, or go inside and lock the door, or refuse a friendly overture, we chip away at our mutual trust, our sense of community, our very freedom.

And no matter how careful we are, there will be another child victim. There will be more disappearances, more deaths, because monsters lurk in our midst, and we've not figured out ways of either preventing them in the first place or keeping ourselves safe from them. We also don't know how, or won't do what's necessary, to stop troubled children who grow into adult child molesters or even killers. We don't know how, or won't do what's necessary, to stop them from being a continuing threat.

Danger is there, but it's overwrought. It's true that a few children are killed each year in Canada at the hands of strangers -- only four of them in 1999 (out of a total of 58 homicides) -- but our kids face much greater risk from illness, accidental death or suicide than from stranger abduction.

While I don't have the answers to stop the monsters, I do know that our defence against them is more harmful to us than it is to them.

Our paranoid fixation about child abductions has led to a siege mentality. Many children today are deprived because they don't play outside untended, are driven to school and organized to within an inch of their lives. The monsters affect the daily lives of all our children far beyond the numbers that actually lurk in our alleyways. The monsters win, we lose.

There's an alternative: We need to take back the streets, playgrounds, neighbourhoods. Instead of retreating from our communities, we should get to know our neighbours, fill our parks with children and adults, organize block parties. There is safety in numbers, and there's freedom in the knowledge that many eyes are watching.

Building a sense of community is no easy proposition. We're far too busy. The community, family and religious structures that once paved the way for social life are diminished, and besides, many of us don't even know our neighbours' names. But it can be done.

Invite the four closest families near you to a potluck, make time for your local school or community centre picnic, skip a TV sitcom to watch your kid do skateboard tricks on the sidewalk outside and, while you're at it, talk about the weather with the next-door neighbour.

Meanwhile, we all desperately need some perspective on the dangers our children face. So many times that I've lost track, I've heard people lament how dangerous modern life is. Hogwash. The parents of today's children grew up with immense freedoms -- yet the monsters were about then as surely as they are today. The difference, of course, was the quantity and content of information available to us.

Before media was so instantaneous and pervasive, people throughout Canada would not have received hourly updates about the search for Jessica Koopmans. Such immediacy can be bad for us, creating a false sense of pervasive danger. Last year, about 63,000 kids, from birth to age 18, were reported missing in Canada. The vast majority were runaways or were taken by parents, and most returned home. And of all the thousands of kids, 42 were taken by strangers (which was 10 fewer than the year before).

Of course, even one stranger abduction is too many, but let's put these numbers into perspective and realize that not all of our children are at constant risk. Watchfulness is necessary, paranoia is damaging.

This coming Friday is International Missing Children's Day. Let's acknowledge it by admitting that while we must watch and "streetproof" our children, they must live fully. To do that, they need a vibrant and safe community.

Oh, about that grey sedan. I've since seen it in the neighbourhood, with a woman driving, and a passel of kids in the back seat. Maybe I'll meet the family at a block party sometime and we can laugh about my suspicious thoughts.
Deborah Jones is a member of The Vancouver Sun's editorial board.
Copyright Deborah Jones 2001
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Paranoid fixation with child abductions = siege mentality

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