Police are to be praised for their direct approach to any abductor of missing 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, but the chances of the tactic succeeding are slight, according to an expert on paedophilia last night.
"They've been doing the textbook thing throughout, trying to build a bridge to any abductor," said Prof David Wilson, professor of criminology at the University of Central England in Birmingham. "This is another good move, but I would say the chances of an abductor responding are slight." Prof Wilson said the case appeared more likely from what was known to be an abduction rather than a kidnapping.
He thought the most likely scenario was that the girls had gone to meet someone to whom they had been "chatting" on the Internet. "For me the fact they were wearing the identical David Beckham shirts looks like some kind of signal," he said.
"In these situations the children tend to make themselves out to be older than they are and they would have expected to meet a teenager. An older man could still have succeeded in persuading them to get into a car to discuss the situation."
Prof Wilson said that only six children a year on average had been abducted by total strangers with whom there had been no contact, since the 1970s; he did not think this was likely to be such a case.