The mythic threat of “stranger danger” became tragically real for two families in Co Westmeath one September afternoon last year.
The raping of the six- and nine-year-old girls, after being lured to a flat in Athlone, is too horrendous to contemplate.
It is a scenario straight out of an upsetting TV crime drama. Yet the unthinkable has happened here.
Two children attending a birthday party at a relative’s home go off trustingly with a man who pretends he has a six-year-old girl too shy to come out to play. As soon as they step into his home, they are subjected to sexual assaults, while being told that their parents’ throats would be cut if they didn’t comply.
The girls were soon missed – but it was too late to save them from the attack. They escaped as the frantic 999 call was being made and one can only imagine how their accounts of what happened seared their parents’ hearts.
Survey results, juxtaposed against statistics, illustrate time after time that parents overestimate the threat of “stranger danger”. Most abuse of children is committed by somebody known to them. But try telling that to these parents.
The father of the younger victim talked in court yesterday of his family being touched by evil. And the mother of the older girl said she was living a nightmare she could not wake up from.
The parents have to hope that for their daughters, this nightmare becomes a distant memory, with which they will learn to cope.
Just hearing about this case is enough to make any parent more fearful for their children. But we have to try to keep the threat in perspective.
That is a message we have to get across to our children too. The chances are they will glean something about the case, through the media or from friends. However, children may be more curious rather than distressed by the news, says parenting expert and Irish Times columnist John Sharry. It is more of an issue for parents who are imagining it happening to their own child, he says.
“Give them the facts without too much information,” he says. A man took these children off and hurt them but now he’s in jail and the girls are being looked after.
While reassuring children that this kind of “bad man” is very rare, you also have to acknowledge that this sort of danger is out there, says the chief executive of Parentline, Rita O’Reilly. She suggests taking the opportunity to remind them that they should not engage in conversation with a person they don’t know and never go off with somebody without their parent’s permission.
Parents also have to convince themselves about the unlikelihood of something so awful happening to their child. "If the parents are too fearful about this, it will rub off on the child," she says.
Sheila Wayman writes on parenting matters in Health+Family