What I want you to know about the child abduction last week!

Last weeks abduction and attempted abduction of the two brothers in Moora was such a strange and abnormal occurrence when it comes to child abuse. This is not the 'norm' when it comes to child abuse today! 

It's just not what we see or expect in Australia and I want to share a little bit of insight on two aspects of the case. 

1. My experience is in child sexual abuse and I immediately found it strange that the media were reporting that the man was 'unknown' to the family. This is rarely heard of and happens in the the smallest percentage of child abuse cases.

2. It is extremely brazen to enter another persons home regardless of the time and TAKE one child, let alone 2 children from their home. The Cleo Smith case in Western Australia notwithstanding.  
 

This is just facts! So here are my thoughts from my over 10 years experience investigating child abuse to hopefully put your mind at ease and to remind you of what is truly worth worrying about when it comes to your children. 

Point 1 - Moora is a small rural community with less than 1800 people. Pretty small when you consider some high schools have more students than this. 

Being rural, it would be a very close knit town with everyone knowing everyone, or at least knowing of everyone living in town. 

This means that even though the accused wasn't 'known' to the children (close family member, friends or relative), he would still be 'known' to the family through the community and be someone they would know from sight. In fact, it appears he lived very close to the family. 

Point 2 - My experience in this space has identified that drugs and mental health illness play a big part in these types of cases.

The brazenness of the accused in walking into another persons house (this is unusual behaviour to begin with) and taking not one but two children is not normal or reasonable behaviour. 

Add to the fact that from the footage shown, the doors were unlocked and open and no forced entry was required, I'd say it was an opportunistic occurrence by an unstable person. 

Thankfully, this unusual case is rare and both boys are home safe and sound with their family. When I was a detective, this type of case was EXACTLY the type of case which gave me warm feelings. No one was seriously hurt and the bad guy got locked up. 

However, this isn't usually the case with most child sexual absue cases. Most child sexual abuse is by someone KNOWN to the child through either a family member, relative, family friend or a mentor. They are someone close to the family and child. They don't sneak into people's homes late at night through unlocked back doors and they don't try to take your children away from you like the accused did in this case. 
 

MOST child sexual abusers are going to groom your child, groom you as parents, sneak around and lie to your face and do unspeakable things to your children when you aren't looking. They are going to hide in plain sight and they are going to leave traumatic scars on your child and in your family for the rest of your lives.
 

Thank you for your help in fighting against child abuse! 

Kristi