Stranger Danger Bogeyman

One of the more over-used comments has to be from people exclaiming about how the world is so much more dangerous than it used to be. Remember those halcyon days when we let kids go cruising around all by themselves? It goes hand-in-hand with the obsession of "stranger danger." We're too drawn in by the local news coverage of lurid crimes. The NY Times just did an exploration of murder stats in NYC. One point jumped out at me in particular. Women accounted for only 17% of the victims - not only that, in each year between 2003 and 2008, the number of women killed by strangers was in the single digits. The vast majority were murdered by someone known to them (husband, brother, boyfriend, etc.).

The real threat to most children, men, women, teens, etc. is usually from the people they know the most. Kids are more likely to fall victim to cyberbullying by classmates, than they are to get lured to the lair of some freak they don't know. Not that it's not worthwhile to tell kids not to get in the cars of strangers, but it's just as or more important to arm them with strategies of what to do when someone they know and thought they could trust betrays that trust.