Stranger Danger!

back in five years. Who was that? Oh? I think had been a one hit wonder but it was one heck of a one hit like I want to say tor Amos, but it wasn't. No, it definitely wasn't. It was like Diane West or something like story was too good for that dribble. She was good. I thought that was a pretty good, good little song. I like the message. Sure, just a stranger on the bus. Just a slob like one of us. That wasn't the player, Yeah, just a slab kid, you not my friend boy? Yeah, just a

slab like all of us. I didn't know that was being insulted. When I was grown out to that song on the dance floor, you couldn't feel her. Supernumerary finger poking you in your chest. I could not so. Um, Chuck, I feel like we should stop this chit chat and get down to it, because we're talking today about something that made up our childhood, and I was very dismayed to learn still makes up some kids childhoods. A lot

of kids childhood's still being taught today. Um, and that you could conceivably make the case that it eroded at the very fabric of society. A very misguided campaign that came about in the very early eighties that had the very ge term known as stranger danger. Yeah, it's funny when you look at this and you couple it with everything else. The eighties had a lot of misguided campaigns. Didn't they just say no, break No, They're all over the place, satanic panic. It's really weird. I think it was.

I mean, when you look back, it was clearly like uh, I think there are a lot of factors, like the the I think the Reagan era sort of moral majority years conspired to kind of just they wanted to scare everybody, wait into everything, Yeah, scared you straight straight into their political ideology. That's definitely, I mean, that's definitely part of it for sure, because there is a there's a definite UM.

And this isn't just me riffing here, like I saw this in multiple places, uh with legit sources even UM and we'll talk a little bit about legit sources are not And I think there's some good examples in here

of being careful who you listen to. UM. But there, but there does seem to be like a kind of a general consensus that part of those moral panics in the eighties came from UM Christian conservatives who very much into their credit are are UM dedicated to the idea of protecting children from predation at the hands of adults, and that that's where a lot of that stuff came from. But that it was really done poorly and probably overblown, and in very short order. It was not the Christian

right that was leading in charging more was everybody. Everybody was involved in this kind of stuff. Yeah, because I think you know, if you were a kid in the eighties, you knew a few things. You knew that if you listen to rock and roll music that you might be possessed by the devil. Uh. If you went outside to go play by yourself, there was a really good chance you might not come home, and that if you travel to like in New York City, like the Big City

or someplace, you stand a really good chance to being murdered. Yeah, it was just gonna happen. Statistically speaking, you if you went to New York City, you're going to be murdered. Yeah, and none of those things portry or or if you smoke a cigarette then you're going to end up, you know,

like a cocaine fiend, right. Or if you take LSD, your children's genes are going to be all sorts of messed up and you'll be addicted to LSD for the rest of your life and have taken multiple times a day flashbacks for the rest of you if only Yeah, for real free trip. But we'll go ahead and start because this ed the Grabanowski. The Grabster helps to help us with this, and he very logically started out with

some statistics. The National Crime Information Center from the FBI have been they kind of good at collecting missing persons stats. They've been doing that since the Crime Control Act in nine And it's like with anything else when you collect statistics on like missing children, Let's say you also have to clean up that list every year, right, because a lot of kids run away from home, a lot of kids come come back home. A lot of kids were never lost to begin with that are reported missing, that

kind of thing. And in twenty nineteen, I believe once they added and then subtracted, they added about six hundred, nine thousand, two hundred seventy five missing persons. That is eye popping. And that's all missing persons. It's not just kids for that year though, that's not over the course

of a century. That's in two thousand nineteen alone, right, But they also purge six hundred and seven thousand, one d and four, leaving about two thousand actual missing persons remaining in their system, and about a hundred of those were juvenile. And then some of those our kids who ran away from home more than once, so they're on the list more than once. So if you just look at naked statistics and actual kidnapping in modern times of a child is really really air and even rarer still

to be kidnapped by a stranger. Exactly. So, Chuck, I got my trusty old calculator out, and I got a lot of stuff wrong, But I'm going to read what I came up with. Okay, does um and just got me with that. Uh So out of the let's say two thousand people who are two thousand kids who are abducted every year, That's what I saw in one place,

I think from the FBI, two thousand kids were abducted. Um, that means that out of the seventy four million kids in America in two thousand eleven, each one technically had a point zero zero, zero, zero to seven percent chance of being abducted. Okay, and that's just abducted. Okay, So hating with me for one more second. You have twenty you have a quarter of a million of a percent

of being abducted. Statistically speaking, if or a child in the US in two thousand eleven, of that quarter of a millionth of a percent chance, you had an additional two hundreds of a percent chance of being abducted and murdered by a stranger, which is, as anyone will tell you, the money fear of being a parent, and that is what drove it that there was this irrational fear of

the worst case scenario. And even though it was the chances were vanishingly remote, every single parent in America starting in the very early eighties was was staying up awake at night for decades, worried that this was going to happen to their child. Yeah, and you know, that's we were talking nineteen, which is the lowest number since they've been keeping track. I think that number peaked in the nineties. But even in the eighties it wasn't a common occurrence.

It's you know, these days with camera doorbells and self owns and CCTV and how security cameras like, obviously that kind of stuff isn't going to happen as much because it's just harder to get away with it. And you can make a case that in the eighties it was easier and maybe happened a little more for that reason, but it still was founded upon parents worse fears and and it was never a statistical probability, no, not even remotely.

And there definitely were more kidnappings in general. I think they used to get around a million entries rather than the seven hundred thousand or six hundred thousand and change um. And so that's definitely gone down, and we'll talk about why. And then the recovery rate has actually gone up from the sixties of the of from the sixty percentile to the ninety percentile, So it definitely has improved. But like you're saying, even at its worst, it was driven by fear,

which makes it the definition of a moral panic. Yeah, and driven by the media that has the statistic of newspaper articles about how to protect kids focus on threats from strangers, and only about four percent talk about um abuse within the family, which is far and away the

most common threat to a child or people within the family. Yeah, yeah, I think um something like fifty eight thousand kids were abducted by familiar, non family members, like people they already knew, and most of the time they were targeted for sex. So it's not to say like there isn't a there isn't a big problem with child sexual abuse, Like I think it's even at the time, it was a hidden problem even when everyone was focusing on it, because everyone

was focusing on the wrong group strangers. Whereas it's like, no, you're far more likely if you're going to be sexually abused, to have been sexually abused by someone you know or even a family member. You know, the stranger picking you up, abusing you sexually and then murdering you. Was it just almost never happened in the United States. Did you happen to to sit through the frustrating experience of Abducted in Plain Sight? Was it a documentary? No? I didn't see

that one. Don't bother I. Well, I kind of like those vintage like P s A films. I mean, it's a remarkable story, but it's on Netflix. It'll it is one of the more frustrating things that you will ever ever sit through in your life. Do they keep like going further and further back in time to give more and more backstory and context. No, it's just the story of this one family. But I don't want to give anything away. If all right, it's just you're gonna want

to throw your television into the street so frustrated. Abducted in Plain Sight? Yeah, I mean it's I don't know if I can recommend it. You know, it's one of those things it's just like, I mean, I'm kind of glad I watched it, but it was just so frustrating, like listening to the Shags album or something. Hey, did you ever see that one after school special where Helen Hunt smokes PCP and jumps out of the second floor window or school? That was a great one. Yeah, all

time So what were you about to start with? Let's take a break. Oh, I think that's very appropriate, man. Yeah, we'll take your break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about the beginnings of the stranger danger era in the late seventies right after this. Stop you you know, stop stop fearing. You shouldn't you know? No you stop you you know, stop stop fearing. Shouldn't you know? Stop?

You should know? Okay, Chuck. So it's this is one of those rare things where you can kind of point to a moment in history where society change, there is a sea change, And it really happened in May of nine, um when a little, cute, cute, little six year old boy named Eating pats Um vanished. He he was walking for the very first time in his life, uh, by himself to the bus stop two blocks away from his family's house in in Soho. And by house, I'm sure,

I mean like a two square foot studio apartment. Um. Yeah. And it was the last day of school before summer. This was his last chance as a six year old to walk by himself like a grown up to the bus stop. His mom let him do it because it was a hectic Marian and she knew he was really wanting to get more independence. He had a dollar in his pocket for a soda, his favorite Eastern airlines had on and he was never seen again. To this day,

they have no idea what happened to him. Really. Yeah, and this was a huge, huge news story, um, partially as we'll see, because it was a little white boy who was very cute and um, media heavily slants their news stories towards white people in general, white kids. Uh. And like I said, we'll get into that morning minute. Um. His dad was a professional photographer, so that definitely helped. There were tons of great photos of eating that the news could dig into and put all over the place,

and they did. Um. And you know, like you said, this is one of those deals that, uh, it's the parents worst nightmare. So when a news story gets run like this, every parent in the country is going to pick up the phone. These days it would be you know, online, but they would pick up the phone and call their friends and say, did you seek here? What happened? Did you see what happened? Like this is the kind of thing that that we're also scared about, and it's actually happening.

It does happen. Yeah, and there were some other extenuating circumstances to that just made it even worse. Like this school didn't bother to call to ask about where he was when he didn't show up, because I guess they didn't know he was walking by himself the first time ever. Um. And so his parents went the whole day without being wear it all until he didn't come home from school that he had never showed up. Um, there was just a there was just a lot going on for something

about it. It just struck everybody in just the right way. It's just heartbreaking and it scared parents to death. And that was in May of nineteen seventy nine, and you can fast forward to just over two years later, uh, this time in Hollywood, Florida, another six year old, another cute little white kid named Adam Walsh, was abducted from a Sears store while his mom shopped like two miles over.

He was playing like video games in the store and his mom was doing some shopping, something that parents did all the time back then. Like it was astounding that he was even in the same store at the mall as her. He could have been anywhere in the mall, like at that time, and he was abducted while she

was just a few miles over. And then even worse than I think eaten and this this really kind of cemented, like the Eating Pat's disappearance was in a one off, like we're we're dealing with a huge social problem now. Is that Adam Walsh's um poor little head was found floating in a canal about ten days after he went missing. And that that was it. I mean, that was it.

That didn't just scared parents, that scared everybody. Anyone who heard about it was now scared to death of stranger danger and abductions and being murdered by some mirando who picks you up. Yeah, And uh, if you noticed Josh earlier saying we don't know what for sure what happened in the Eaton Pats case, his body was never found. In twenty twelve, there was a man named Pedro Hernandez who was a store clerk that worked in the same neighborhood in New York who confessed to killing him, and

he was convicted in seventeen. But uh, it was a pretty flimsy case and a flimsy confession, and I think generally everyone kind of says, you know, it's not case closed. We still don't really know for sure what happened, even though there was a confession, because there was nobody that

was ever found. And I don't think the parents ever felt closure like they deserved no, no for sure, and they I mean they had already previously zeroed in on another suspect named Jose Ramos, who was somebody who had a relationship with one of Eaton's babysitters and who was a peder asked um and I don't know if he ever admitted to it or not, but he was never charged, but the um pat's has won a civil suit against

him that saying he was responsible. So to two people have been once been convicted and one's been ruled against, two different people in the in the murder of him, even though they have nothing to do with one another. Right. So that brings us to the famous Milk Carton Kids campaign. Um not the Amazing Folks Singing Duo? Is that the name of a band? Yes, these two guys, they're they're great. They they sort of a Simon and Garfunkly Everly Brothers

type of thing, but there's there. They like, play it straight. They're not like they might be giants or something. No, I mean they the music is played straight, but they there is a lot of humor in their banter. But they're not They're not like a joke band. Okay, gotcha, Hey, yeah, it's it's good stuff. I don't know if they might be giants, could be considered a joke band. Well no, no, no, I don't mean they're a joke band. Right here we get with the emails. If you ever heard his reels

polka stuff, it's great, sure it is. Everybody loves weird out. Hey, man, back off. His non parody music is wonderful. Did you see the documentary? It was not a good documentary at all, but it was still really interesting about the amazing Jonathan. I never saw that there. It's it's it's very interesting in that it really kind of explores the amazing Jonathan.

But the documentary itself is not not great, and the documentary and even knows it like part of the documentaries him struggling with figuring out how to how to do this right? You know, so kind of something worse than a great documentary subject being made by a C grade commentary. I see, I see, there's a chance that this guy is listening right now, because he looked to me like a stuff you should know listeners. So I'm just gonna say, no,

give it a shot. Well, I'm not saying this was a C great filmmaker, but I've seen plenty of C grade documentaries about really great topics, That's all I'm saying. So the milk carton kids, not the folks thinging duo. Uh. This began in Iowa and the miss the disappearance of Johnny Gosh in nineteen eighty two and Eugene Wade martin four, both twelve year olds, both newspaper boys in Des Moines, kind of spurred this campaign. Um, I do love that.

Ed dear sweet Ed when he he gave credit to the Anderson Anderson Ericson Dairy in Iowa for starting this in nine eight four, and he said the only source I could find was something called quote Uncle John's Bathroom Weader Reader in quote, it was like, have you ever listened to the podcast before? I just since you going like what something called red is going on here? This is like I'm in bizarro world or something. Well that's good enough for us. Uh, And I think I believe it.

I think They were probably the first company to put kids on the side of a milk carton to raise awareness and say, hey, here's a picture of this kid. Here's what they look like, how tall they are, when their birthday is um, you know some things. They might just like little clues how to identify this kid if you see them out clue there's like they're like, put on your pirate hat because X marks the spot and

we're gonna go find Johnny Gosh, here are your clues. Well, I mean this was this is the best they could do pre internet. It's like, what's always sitting on the table while you're having your breakfast cereal that you're staring at is that milk carton? And I mean great idea. All of us have read the milk carton out of boredom when you know there's no good cartoons on or something like that. You just kind of read this stuff. So yeah, it made total sense. And from what I understand, yes,

Anderson Ericson was the first day to do that. Uh. And it also makes sense that they would be the first one because they were in des Moines and Johnny Gosh and Eugene martin Um were both abducted from Des Moines two years apart, probably by the same person from what I read um and they so like this local dairy doing this is like part of a get out

the info campaign makes a lot of sense. I did see that a local grocery store chain was actually the first to print their images and missing like info on their bags, and that Anderson Ericson probably got the idea or somebody got the idea and went to Anderson Ericson and they said sure. The offshot of this, they were the first producers of milk cartons. And a lot of people say, well, it was eating Pats who was the first kid who was on a milk carton, probably on

a national level, but on a milk carton. Ever, it was two kids. It was Johnny Gosh and Eugene Martin, and both of them were paper boys, abducted from their routes in the early morning. It was just their stories are so sad, man, Yeah, super sad. The milk carton thing picked up again in Chicago and then California, and then,

like you said, eventually became a national thing. In the National Child Safety Council, which is a nonprofit, they launched this nationwide campaign and that's where beaten Pats probably comes into play. And then it was on you know a lot of stuff. It was on grocery bags and pizza boxes, and it wasn't around long though, Like I kind of thought it might still be a thing even but I think it only lasted you know, a handful of years.

And let in nineties mid nineties, the whole milk carton thing had kind of gone away, gone away, with people saying, you know, it was successful while it lasted, but it just had its run. And then other people, of course, now I look back and say, but was it really successful in that? Did it lead into you finding some

of these kids? And I don't necessarily think that is the only measure of success, uh if it's an awareness campaign, but they definitely can't go back and say, well, yeah, look at this list of kids that were found because of the milk carton campaign. And actually there is I saw the number three that there are three named kids who were rescued and found and returned based on milk cartons. But there's only one actual name I can find, and you can find it all over the place. Her name

is little Bonnie Lowman. I had in the little her first name is actually Bonnie, not little, and she has one of the most name for a kid, little Bonnie Lowman. Yeah. Um, until you reach in a middle age and you're like, oh my god. Um. So she has one of the most amazing stories you could possibly encounter when it comes

to kids on milk cartons, don't you think? Yeah? I mean she was kidnapped by her mom and stepdad and as the story goes, recognized her own image on a milk carton and like kept it, you know, cut it out and kept it on our wall. And I guess a kid's or a friend's parents saw it and called the cops. But is that that's not true though, my friend, I would put a significant amount of money on the fact that Bonnie Lohman is not a real person, that

it is the internet legend. Yes, dude, I looked on the New York Times website is search for Bonnie Loman missing milk carton. I even put quotes around Bonnie Loman. Did it on the Washington Post website. I did it on the Denver Post website, and Denver is supposedly where she was found living, abducted by her mom and stepfather. Nothing,

Nothing comes up, not even a vague reference. She's an internet legend and we figured it out, we think, until someone writes us and says, no, no no, no, I knew little Bonny Loman, right, And we'd say the Bonnie Loman and say, well, I don't know. Actually it was my cousin's friends co worker who knew Bonny. But no. Another giveaway, Chuck, is that this story is repeated almost verbatim around the Internet.

They don't say where she was abducted from and returned to the only the only thing I've seen consistently is that the story itself and then that it happened in Colorado, And then a lot of the sites that carry this story are like Jesus Daley or board game tips dot com, not necessarily the most credible sources for like a um an actual like child abduction case. So I'm I think we may have rooted that one out, all right, So what's going on here is panic? Uh, these milk cartons

come out. It's a good campaign, but all that does is sort of reinforced to parents that you know, a stranger is lurking outside your home kind of at all times, just waiting for your kid to be playing on the playground by themselves for just a minute and then they're gonna get snatched. And while this panic is going on, there are people that were sort of ringing the bell for good sense way back in the eighties, even the

famous pediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock. Uh, he was quoted in the Washington Post and five is saying children are bombarded by more than photographs. They stand in line at mass fingerprinting sessions and shopping malls and watch cartoon characters on TV, reminding them to be wary of strange adults. Uh. There's a little bit more to the quote, but he was kind of saying, like we're going overboard a little bit here, and we're actually maybe doing harm by raising children in

this culture of fear. We did you were you fingerprinted as a child? I was never fingerprinted, but I certainly remember everything else. I mean, I forgot about the Saturday Morning cartoons. It was stuff all over those two. Yeah McGuff remember the crime Dog to teach you how to run away from strangers, And like that's what they would teach you, is like you should scream and yell and kick and run for your life if a stranger ever approached you, Like if they just hit the basic minimum thing.

We're like, Okay, strangers approaching you, run as fast as you can for your little life. Um, And it was like, it's it's definitely easy to to to buy into the idea that that culture of fear had real repercussions on us growing up, because I remember I was scared of all this and my dad took me to get fingerprinted. You were yeah. I was like, why are we doing this again? It's like, just in case they find you at their head cut off one day, we can identify

I might have been fingerprinted. Something about that really seems familiar to me. Yeah, And I didn't commit a crime now now, not a little chuck. Still to this day, I'll bet uh no, I've never been arrested. That's good. And you know, I realized later that my dad preemptively ratted me out to the cops really well, yeah, by

having me fingerprinted. But that was the level of like, my dad took me to a fingerprinting fair for a little kid, so that they had your fingerprints in the system in case something bad happened to you and you turned up, they could identify your body or you even if you've just been abducted, but you knew what was going on, you knew why you were going there, and that that definitely did affect me. And I think a lot of kids our age, Yeah, Ed has a and this is one of those kind of stats that I

think is a little dumb. But from the early nineties, there was a study that found that seventy two percent appearance cited abduction is something they worry about. That's just a little weird. I mean, I think every parent that is deep down worried that it could happen. But it's not like I don't know, there's just so many qualifiers there,

like how how much did they worry about it? They sounded like it was one of their chief fears, along with like failing their kid, not they're not providing for their kids, like like deep down fears, like a big fear. That's what it sounded like in the abstract I read. I didn't read the whole study, but you know, that's how they don't get A prominent fear would be the word I'm looking for, rather than big fear, because it

is the biggest fear. But whether or not you think it's a reality that you really should worry about a lot is a different thing. I don't know. I would bet dollars nuts that they there was a prominent fear in your definition for sure. All right, Uh, it did do some harm, like in actual instances that we can site. Uh, in the boy Scouts they still teach danger of danger.

And in two thousand five, a cub Scout um was lost in the woods and actually if they did rescue for a few days because people like there were people there trying to help him, like, hey, are you lost a little boy, and you know, stranger danger would run away. And so in that case, like this kid was trying, you know, people trying to help him out, and he he ran away from him. So that's that's one definite instance. Yeah. And that WAPO article that you mentioned earlier, it was

just rattling off. This is eight five. This is like right in the middle of all this when it was kind of rare to question this this mentality, and they were rattling off all these instances of kids just like losing their minds out of fear. Like they mentioned a girl who was got hysterical when it was her time to get off the bus because she lived on a rural road and she was sure that if she walked alone down this rural road, she will be kidnapped. It's

just a certainty in her mind. And you know, kids were like anytime they were parents that said high to the little kids, they freaked out, you know, like you just couldn't. You couldn't, you couldn't give any attention to little kids or else they would be really scared. And there's this aspect of the moral panic as far as stranger danger goes, where the dangerous group is not Satanists, you know, it's not um. It's it's not um witches or something like that. It's strangers. And all of us

are strangers to somebody else. So that means that everybody is under suspicion of everyone else at some point in time, where a suspicious character to somebody who doesn't know us, and possibly a kid, and then that alters how you act around kids, and that that has had, over the years an impact of how adults deal with kids, and it's removed us from that. It takes a village to raise a child kind of community where it's like that's

your kid, I'm not going anywhere near them. I don't even want to look at them because I don't want somebody to think I'm trying to kidnap them or something. And that has had a real impact on how adults deal with kids, and that is surely having an impact on how children develop in a community in society. Yeah, didn't you find a thing where it said that men and these are these days men are more reticent to

like help out a child because of that fear. Yeah, something like sixty seven or seventy said they would not help a kid who was who needed help. They would like so much smaller percent, but basically most of them said, I just keep walking because I'd be so worried that that people were wondering why I was approaching a little kid.

And then a smaller proportion said that they would go find a woman to help, or maybe the cops or something like that, but they would not step in and fulfill their normal social roles an adults helping a kid in need, and that that's just that was a UK survey, I think, But that's um, you know, that definitely applies over here as well too. I didn't know it's the

UK should told me that this. Did the studies say, you know, are men on the way to the pub survey and said little humor there trying to light the move. I liked it. It worked. It also made me want a nice draft beer. Oh boy. I went to this great pub in Manchester when we did that show. That was just that was one of my great days in England. It was so awesome. That place was on a probably a one ft slant that floor. It was so old.

That's awesome. I actually found a Topas place in Manchester because remember we were there for like a couple of days and I ate there probably like three or four or five times. It was so good. But I was aware that I was eating at a Topas place in Manchester. I finally hit a pub in No I did I. I hit one in Manchester to kind of buy the venue. Yeah. They're pretty neat, little little places, aren't they. It's a

good time. Yeah, you gotta get back there. Uh. So. There's something called the children's independent or called children's independent mobility, and it's a measurement of how free your kid is to move about your neighborhood and to explore or things without supervision, Like sure, walked down to the playground or walked down to your friend's house. That kind of thing. And a higher see I am is a really good thing that correlates with psychological development, with analytical skills, with

motor skills. It gives the kid um just sort of more um confidence and knowledge about their community. And get this, it gives it makes kids more aware of true dangers than if you're constantly watching them instead of stranger danger. It makes kids more aware of like a real danger that might be out there, like they have they have done studies and figured this out right. So we talked a lot about that in our Free Range Children episode.

I don't know if you talked specifically about that that measure, but um, I mean, we definitely found that that. Yes, your your kid is just more well rounded and developed if they're allowed to explore the world on their own terms.

You know, within reason. Nobody's saying like let your kid play with flaming knives or anything like that, but we really exactly also known as the swing set um, but the the you know, there's a there's a pendulum that swings between things like that, and it has swung way too far in the other way. If if you guys will just allow me to get up on my soapbox for a second, please do it. Okay, I just got one toe up and then came back. All right, well

you're off your soapbox. Let's take our final break. We'll talk a little bit more about the criticism of stranger danger and sort of some of the best practices these days right after this, you know, stump, No, you know, stump. Alright, So we mentioned earlier news stories, uh, as far as child abductions covering cute, little white kids, and that's kind

of always been the case. And that's one of the biggest criticisms of media coverage, uh, is it's very much disproportionately covers white children in those cases and ignores cases of people of color. Um. There's an organization called Black and Missing because of this, and they report that thirty seven percent of missing kids just a few years ago were people of color, which is a much higher percentage

proportionately than the overall population. But you're not hearing about this stuff in the news like you would if it was you know, the pageant queen, right exactly. It's just I mean, it's just that kind of gets it across pretty pretty clearly. Yeah, So what we're not saying is that there is no risk to your kid being abducted by a stranger. It it obviously happens, because we do see it on the news, um and and it is every parent's worse nightmare. And I think that's probably why

it's always been such a thing. It's because it's the it's the worst thing you can imagine happening, because not only has that happened, and that that is horrific in its own right, but that also means that you have failed to do your number one job is to protect your kid at all costs. Yeah, man, I can't. I just it's astounding that people can go on from that,

they can manage to keep living. You know, I don't get it at all, but it's one of the things that they do though, and I think one of the things that gives them purpose in life from that point on is a lot of parents, especially some of the early more prominent national cases like Eating pats as parents, the Walshes, Adam Walsh his parents, and Johnny Gash's parents, they all threw themselves into like lobbying for social reform, and their their lobbying efforts did lead to things like

the National Center for Missing Exploited Children to be developed and um National Missing Kids Day to start to be recognized on May which is the anniversary of John of Eaton Path's disappearance, and UM, the Walsh's I think set up the Adam Walsh Foundation four days after Adam Walsh's funeral, like and then John Walsh all is very famous for doing that, UM America's most wanted thing, and like has has like legitimately dedicated himself to like stopping this, and

so has UM a lot of other parents. So I think that's one way that they've they've put their their time and effort and energy into this, imported into doing what they can to to make it so that other parents don't go through this. Yeah, they're there been quite a few of those. Jacob Wetterling Act that created the the Sex Offender Registry, and interestingly, his mother eventually on a podcast said she she expressed regret about these registries

that were expanded. UM she felt like overly expanded and endlessly punitive basically and saying like you're on this list forever and you're never allowed to reintegrate into society. And is that fair? Especially when they've expanded those registries to include things like if you got caught urinating in public, you are registered sex offender, which is really interesting. I've I've never been caught, but boy, I've been in public plenty of times. I've got a little bladder and sometimes

I just gotta go. But that happens, and and um, apparently again, especially the one where you're having like, um, consensual sex as a teenager and like, depending on your state, so you're seventeen and the girls sixteen, you can you may if you're caught, if the parents prosecute you, um, you may be on the sex offender registry for the rest of your life. And apparently that happens just proportionately

two kids of color. So the whole thing is like, like, the sex offender registry is not in and of itself a bad thing, Like it's meant to be a tool to warn communities, like, hey, there's somebody who has perpetrated and more in many cases a crime against a child, and you should know that that they live at this apartment. But it's not just a cut and dried issue. People can be categorized unfairly, get caught up in that dragnet. The categories can be far too expanded. And then yeah, like, um,

Jacob's mom was saying there's no redemption there. In fact, like there's only like in most towns because you can't live within X number of feet from a bus stop or a school or a plate or a park. There's like very small pockets where a sex offender can legally live. And that means that you've got like these little sex offenders. Yeah, of sex offenders who are on the sex registry list, and they become shunned and outcasts, and a lot of them get run out of town or run to go

live homeless under overpasses and that kind of thing. So, um, there's a lot of tinkering that could be done to make it more just if. That's kind of where where our minds are. But I think when it comes to sexual abuse of children, that's justice isn't necessary. Justice for the perpetrator isn't isn't where America's mind is typically, you know, I mean Jerry Seinfeld is a registered sex offender. On his TV show for What what did he do? Pet in the barking deck and got caught? I don't remember,

is there right? Yeah? When they couldn't find their car and they're all split up and looking for their car and got caught someone else might have to George might have pee, but yeah, technically ter sex offender. So like, I mean, that's a good example of how it could be made better. But the the point of the upshot of the whole thing is that there is there is a need and a desire to protect kids, and that's great and we should be be putting our efforts towards that.

But we can figure out how to direct it more, yes, more smartly, I guess, and in doing so help kids more effectively. You know. Yeah. In the UK is a good example, they have a campaign um instead of like a stranger danger, it's called clever Never Goes, which it doesn't jump off the page is self explanatory at first as an American, but the point of it is is like, not every adult is waiting to kidnap. You go to someone with a uniform or a badge, even if that's

like a store clerk or you know, a nurse. It doesn't even have to be a cop walk in the beat. If you feel like you're in trouble or something like that, you can approach responsible adults. And the idea clever never goes is in you know, never go anywhere with a stranger because that's how they operate, which is, hey, get in my car because I have a cool cartoon playing at my house, that kind of thing like never ever

go somewhere with a stranger, clever, never goes. And speaking of the UK, I saw something Chuck that I thought was a little um surprising. So they had they used to have this cartoon p s A for kids called Charlie says, and this this cat would keep his little human friend out of danger by like going ballistic when the kid did something dangerous. And um, there was a n p s A about stranger danger, about not going

with strangers. So this is yeah, almost a full decade before the US was even tuned into this stuff, that UK were already scaring their kids. Good for them. Yeah, I think we got to talk about the Amber alert because this is sort of the smarter version of the milk cart and kid and it actually works. This is name for the very said case of Amber Haggerman, who

was kidnapped and killed. The N and Amber Alerts started going out to initially to nearby radio stations and now thanks to the A and S the Alert notification system, you're gonna get that on your phone you might get that on your weather radio. You might get that if you're driving down the highway. That's a big one. These you know, sort of electronic highway signs, those are huge because they can actually say, you know, there is a a brown forward tourist with this license plate somewhere on

this road within the last hour. And I believe they have caught close to a thousand or or recovered close to a thousand kids thanks to the Amber Alert system. So it's pretty effective. And those electronic billboards that they have on highways can now flash like their picture too,

is along with the other stuff. And supposedly from people who are in that industry of recovering children who are missing or abducted, say that the number one, far and away best way to recover kids safely is to get their picture out far and wide immediately after they go missing.

U And that was a big that's now kind of a big retroactive criticism of the milk cartons is that, you know, um, they're circulating these kids pictures often years after the abduction, and they probably don't look anything like those pictures anymore, and like the trail has gone cold, and um, the idea that that doesn't mean that pictures don't work. It's just the timing of the pictures. Is

is um a paramount? Yeah? I mean, man, nothing is more sad than when you read a story of the kids that never there's never closure and the parents just never know what happened. Never a body, never confession. It's just my my kid disappeared thirty seven years ago and we don't know anything. It's just man, it's hard to even read those stories. Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of anything much sadder than that. Man. Um. I do have

one other thing too. I saw also in addition to that clever never goes that people are teaching their kids now, Um, they're they're kind of focusing more on how like what abuses, like, like what sexual abuse is like, so inappropriate touching their teaching kids that like they're in charge of their own bodies and they don't have to let some Yeah, makes total sense because it's more laser focused, um in the actual the actual danger that kids can face, which is

sexual abuse, because apparently we do have an enormous sexual abuse problem. The problem is is we've been looking at strangers and ignoring the fact that it's almost always a family member or somebody that the kid knows. So if you can teach the kid what sexual abuses like and how to look out for and what to do if somebody makes advances on them, then they can trust strangers because they can they can trust people in general. They can just know that that can come from anywhere and

if it happens, this is what you do. So I can imagine kids learning that today will turn out a lot better than a lot, a lot less messed up than you and I in our generation. Den we're so broken. Yeah, and the and the body autonomy is not just for uh, you know, it's obviously great for that, but it's kind of for everything. It's about with other kids, like you know, they don't want to be pushed that way or played

with that way. It's like it's their body. You gotta you gotta ask them for permission to to do whatever you want to their body. And kids, you know, my daughter, from the time she was in preschool, they were teaching them that. And she'll tell me when she doesn't want me doing something, she'll say, no, Daddy, my body, and I'll say, you got it. That's great. Yeah, that was something I saw was like, you really have to back

them up. So like as comes over and wants to plan a big wet kiss on their right and they don't want it. Yeah, you have to listen to them. Yeah, or else what is it worth? You know what you taught him? So so way to go parents of today. I'm glad you guys are figuring it out. Um and uh, I'm glad that we could lead by example, right Chuck our generation. That's right. If you want to know more about stranger danger, there's a lot of it on the internet.

Just be careful to verify what you're reading and where it's coming from. Uh. And since I said that, of course the s Y s K one of our mottoes. That means it's time for listener mail anything. All this love from an Army vet. Hey, guys, want to thank you both for being such a valuable new addition to my routine. I'm currently going through particularly nasty divorce and

have lost my career in the process. Have been a paratrooper and a medic in the Army for about six years, but now I must find a new path while bearing this incredible loss. Because of this, I've had to travel back home to live while I get back on my own two feet. I used to listen to your podcast in the Army during field ops, and began listening during the cross country drive from Colorado back to the Midwest. Now that I'm home, I still find myself listening to

at least one show a day. Sometimes I find myself adopting a pessimistic view of humanity, and it's been very therapeutic to know that such kind hearted people still exist in the world. Your podcast has not only grounded me and ignited my fire for curiosity again, but it's also refreshing to hear from two people understand the unending beauty

of the world. Hummingbirds, anyone. I just want to say thank you for your for the enormous presence you have been keeping in my life, making it fun and beautiful. Never underestimate to buy what you do. Uh ps. Is there ever been a consensus on how to measure standing water in your lawn? Nope? Okay, and chuck b s

p p S. I also love tiny things. We used to get tiny, little one inch Tabasco bottles in our m ris in the Army, and everybody complays, but there's something about and they still pack a punch, just a little bit of it. Sure, I'm gonna keep this anonymous because I didn't hear back from the persons. Okay, good, thank you, Mr Anonymous, Army back. That was an all time great email. Thank you Anonymous. That was really really moving.

I'm glad we can be doing something to help you keep going during this time and keep your chin up. Everything gets better, right, Chuck, that's right. Just stay away from the strangers, all right, Claire never goes. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck uh and Jerry, your Frank the chair anybody guest producer Dave Real, producer Dave God who knows you can get in touch with us by saying it's an email at stuff podcast radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production

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