The Effectiveness of Victim Resistance Strategies against Stranger Child Abduction: An Analysis of Attempted and Completed Cases

Abstract

Existing research, policy information, and materials intended to teach child safety assumes that certain behaviours will protect children in the event that a stranger tries to abduct them. However, there is little empirical basis for these assumptions. This paper examines the effectiveness of strategies thought to increase the likelihood that a child will be able to resist an attempted stranger child abduction event. Seventy‐eight cases of stranger child abduction that occurred in the UK between 1988 and 2014, including 25 attempted cases and 53 completed cases, were examined in order to ascertain the relative prevalence of various resistance types and to assess their effectiveness of six key resistance strategies based on whether the presence or absence affected the outcome of the abduction. Results show that direct, unequivocal verbal resistance, running away, and a composite approach where the victim runs away, calls for help, and reports the offence were highly effective means of resisting an offender, whereas physical resistance, indirect verbal resistance, and non‐resistance were not effective. Female victims were almost twice as likely to employ any kind of resistance strategy against an offender as male victims were. The implications of these findings for augmenting ways in which children are taught about safety are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Examining modus operandi in stranger child abduction: A comparison of attempted and completed cases

“…This was confirmed by the results, which produced varying profiles between attempted and completed cases. This indicates that future studies of SCA should continue examining attempted and completed cases of SCA separately, as suggested by Newiss and Fairbrother (2004) and by Collie & Shalev Greene, 2017, 2016a, 2016b. At the simplest level, this approach has been useful as it goes beyond highlighting which individual strategies are used by offenders in SCA, but it also highlights which particular single strategies result in the poorest outcomes for victims.…”

“…The bulk of this literature is aimed at evaluating training programs aimed at equipping children with skills to recognise, understand, and defend themselves against a variety of offences, including SCA (see, e.g., Moran et al, 1997;Johnson et al, 2006). This research ascertains how well children will actually utilise acquired skills when faced with abduction, with other research (e.g., Collie & Greene, 2017, 2016a finding that resistance by victims can significantly impact on case outcome. It is not suggested that training children can eliminate the risk of SCA nor that onus should be placed on victims; however, this has been shown to be a potential area where resilience can be built.…”