Hazards of teaching kids to obey adults without question

[thoughtful]

Yeah, but that's such a weird, weird case. Even by the standards of child murders, didn't he kill that kid because he hadn't realized beforehand that not returning him to his folks immediately could get him in trouble, and because it was too much of a hassle to return him a day late? Something like that? Who does that? Other than not returning him, maybe the guy didn't give off any weird signals at all.

At any rate, we can all agree that had he asked just about anybody else for help that day, he'd be home safe right now.

Just pointing out that only the first sentence of that quote was mine -- the rest was someone else.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Yeah, but that's such a weird, weird case. Even by the standards of child murders, didn't he kill that kid because he hadn't realized beforehand that not returning him to his folks immediately could get him in trouble, and because it was too much of a hassle to return him a day late? Something like that? Who does that? Other than not returning him, maybe the guy didn't give off any weird signals at all.

At any rate, we can all agree that had he asked just about anybody else for help that day, he'd be home safe right now.

The killer clearly had mental issues, although he didn't fit within the strict requirements of an insanity defense. I was once on a board with someone whose husband worked at the same hardware store as the killer, and he wouldn't have suspected that he was capable of something like that.

The point, though, was that this little boy didn't run or kick or scream because he had no reason to distrust this man. Up until his murder, the assumption was that you could automatically trust someone in that community. I remember several threads on imamother debating whether it was safe to leave babies and toddlers in strollers in front of stores while shopping. There was a lot of "in our neighborhood, this is fine" attitude, which I found surprising (I mean, these areas are in New York City).

I also HATE the attitude that somehow, bad people are always strangers and family are always trustworthy. I hate it because it causes otherwise caring and intelligent people to leave children in harm's way. You have this mindset that daycare workers must be a bunch of abusive molesters, so if you have to work, find a grandparent. Well, daycare workers actually undergo background checks and training and have supervision. Someone close to me was abused after her over-protective parents, who would never trust outside babysitters, used her grandparents instead. The mother had basically blocked out an old memory of her father being accused of raping her aunt, and couldn't see that her mother was a highly toxic individual. The result was 3 years of repeated sexual abuse. Even worse, there's an inquest in my city now looking into how a little boy was starved and abused to death after child protection officials placed him and his siblings with their grandparents. Nobody did a background check on those grandparents - although after the death, the child protection agency found that there was an old file on them, since they previous had a baby die in their care from abuse, and the grandfather had previous convictions for assaulting children.

[Lainey]

This is just so horrifying to me. I can't imagine going along with it if I were in the manager's position. Did she not stop to wonder WHY this "police officer" was demanding such strange things? And what about her fiance? I like to think I'm not that stupid. I hope I'm right.

That said, I was duped when I was much younger into doing a supposed "survey" that got disturbing really quick. I'm still mad at myself for falling for it!