<p>It would also make perfect sense for the rabbis to tell parents not to let young children wander the streets unaccompanied and to tell camps and schools that they must insist that young children be dismissed to parents or older siblings. We can only hope that common sense will prevail over the naive notion that “this is a safe community, bad things don’t happen here”.</p>
<p>How about parents walking their 8 year olds to & from the camp? That’s what I would have done. I don’t consider Brooklyn streets safe enough for 8 year olds to walk to & from school alone, and I don’t consider Iowa farm fields safe enough for this either. There are mentally ill screwballs in yarmulkes, and in bluejeans, and you cannot tell a bad apple from a good one by looking. And an 8 year old sure can’t. There have been too many kidnappings of children who were walking home from the bus stop, riding their bikes from a friend’s, etc etc to leave them out of your sight when they are that young. </p>
<p>And when they are older, buddy system only.</p>
<p>paying3, I immediately thought of the chip possibility, too. All of the dogs I’ve had for the past 25 years have been ‘chipped’.</p>
<p>The sad thing is that horrible things happen, regardless of all the precautions that parents take. We want to live in a world where all children are protected from any eventuality and that’s impossible to do. A 15 month old precious little girl was run over and killed by a family member in her driveway here a few days ago. An only child, her parents had been trying to have a baby for 11 years and finally after many expensive in-vitro treatments, were ecstatic to have her. Such a tragedy for all concerned. I lost three premature babies shortly after birth and it was devastation that still grips my heart when I think about it but I don’t know that I could go on if something like this terrible accident or something evil like this murder of the little boy in Brooklyn happened to my family.</p>
<p>As for the safe house idea, it existed here when my Ds were young, not sure though that I’ve seen a sign recently. It was called Block Parents. The participants were screened by police before being accepted into the program.</p>
<p>has anything official happened in this case in the last few days? I actually had a nightmare about this the other night.</p>
<p>This mother will live with the nighmare of knowing that if she had done things differently that day her son would still be here today. The fact that she did not walk her son home from camp that day speaks to the naive nature of this community. They really trust anyone who looks like they do. It needs to change. They need to talk to their children and they also need to start trusting the police.</p>
<p>One of the challenges that mothers face in this community is that most families have many children. So, if the oldest is 8 it wouldn’t be unusual for there to be 4 or 5 siblings that are younger. One tends to think of the oldest one as more savvy than the younger kids. AND to get 4 kids in strollers to pick up the oldest (especially in the heat) can be a daunting task. So the path of least resistance is to let the child walk home alone.</p>
<p>I believe that the schools and camps should step forward and make a buddy system for these children. Be it through one mother who is responsible on Monday to walk a group of children home, with another mother another day and so on. Or the community group Shomrin (?) helping out. </p>
<p>I’m operating under the It Takes a Village system because this should never happen again.</p>
<p>And can any of us claim that we never made a mistake with our children that could have, but for the intervention of luck or God or whatever, ended in harm or even death to our child? </p>
<p>That is why I never say never…</p>
<p>The autopsy results show that Leiby was heavily drugged before he was smothered. I hope that means he didn’t suffer.</p>
<p>Well, my guess is that there is a lot more to the story of this guy than what we have heard so far.</p>
<p>Our society doesn’t do enough to identify and treat people with serious or worsening mental illness. Family members are unaware, in denial, or actually enabling people with serious issues, and even when they do try to get help, there is little to be found. No one wants to pay for treatment! So who ends up paying? An 8 year old boy in Brooklyn, a nine year old girl shot in Tucson, their families, and all of us end up paying for lawyers and jail cells when it’s too late. I understand that a significant fraction of the prison population is there because they are mentally ill and didn’t control their behavior. Prevention/treatment would have been better for them, their families and the unfortunate victims and their families.</p>
<p>If it your kid is too young to go places by himself/herself, they can still wander off as many posts describe. My son was very independent even as a toddler and would sometimes manage to go off on his own, at the zoo, science museum, airport, etc. So some well-known common sense tricks:</p>
<p>Have the kid carry a card (if very young, even scotch tape it to him!) with his name, parent’s names, cell phone numbers, etc, so that someone can help him.</p>
<p>Dress him/her in a bright colored shirt (orange or red) so s/he is easy to spot in a crowd.</p>
<p>Carry several recent photos of each kid with you - then you can quickly pass them out to people/police etc who are helping you look - much better and faster than a description.</p>
<p>Don’t be embarrassed to immediately start shouting for help - let people around you know a young child is missing (did this in an airport baggage area once, very embarrassing, but it just seemed like the perfect situation for someone to abduct the kid and it only took about 30-40 seconds for someone to point out where he’d gone)</p>
<p>If you ever need help keeping an eye on kids, ask TWO trustworthy people/parties (women with children?) - they can keep an eye on the kid(s) and on each other in case you guessed wrong.</p>
<p>Make sure you have a set of fingerprints and recent photo in your records - many police departments have special days/events where you can have this done. The prints don’t go into any database, they are for you to keep.</p>
<p>Now, I just have to figure out the best tricks for keeping teenagers and very young adults as safe as possible!</p>
<p>Ellebud, that is an excellent idea. We do this with our kids who go into the city for high school. I still tell my young adult kids that they should use a “buddy” system and do the same myself.</p>
<p>When I lived in the midwest, more of us stuck together when we went places. When are kids were in events, it was not unusual for two moms and sons to share a hotel room and stay with a couple of other parents from the same area. Here in NY, it’s more each to his/her own. But I’ve always offered rides and asked for them every chance I’ve had, and done the same with my kids. After nearly 12 years here, I feel like I’ve gotten somewhere because those who know me know I want to ride share and be with someone and more of us are doing this now. </p>
<p>With many of us living away from family and from where we knew folks for years, it’s important to foster a sense of community. Not just for our children’s safety but for ours as well.</p>
<p>I would add one suggestion to the great list by CAorBUST. The second you know a child is missing, if it applies, insist that all exits to the mall, Disneyland, whatever be shut down by security until the child is found. This can help if a predator has not yet had time to leave the premises, every second counts in this scenario and it’s better to err on the side of caution.</p>
<p>While I don’t know the specifics of this family, I do know this community very well. You need to understand that for Hasidic women, they are extremely young mothers. The girls for the most part are not sent to college, they are married off at 18 and pregnant with their first child within the first year. Many have 8 -10 children. Arranged marriages and matchmakers are commonplace within this extreme insular community and these girls and boys certainly have zero street smarts or life experiences dealing with the secular world. This camp is not a camp with green playing fields, ball fields, pools. It is just a day program at their specific local yeshiva, many of which look like firetraps to begin with. While this case is beyond tragic, it has served as a wake-up call. I live in a community in Nassau County that has become extremely Orthodox over the past ten years and I had voice mail messages of programs in several synagogues in the area to educate parents about “stranger danger”.</p>
<p>I see your point of view. Still, I’d look towards untreated mental illness of the perpetrator rather than focus on the age, birth control beliefs and matchmaking history of Hasidic mothers. </p>
<p>Since you know this community, wouldn’t you at least agree to this: In perhaps 99.9999999999999% of situations where a little 8 year old lost Hassidic boy were to approach a lone man on the street wearing ritual prayer fringes (at pocket level) and a yarlmuke, as were evident in the arrest photo, the child WOULD experience something more like this: a rapid-fire cellphone call to a parent and welcoming hand to walk him a few blocks safely home. </p>
<p>This was SUCH an aberration. </p>
<p>You say “zero street smarts” but after all, what is the definition of street smart? To teach children realistically what are the MOST likely situations to avoid and who USUALLY can be counted upon for help in their own neighborhood.</p>
<p>Yes, these girls tend to marry young. (Although it seems that the Chasidim in our area marry in their early 20s). But these girls have mothers and mothers in law, otherwise known as (overburden) grandparents. Grandparents should help. It would seem to me that they (the whole community) have to adapt somewhat to the realities of a horrible new world.</p>
<p>Please note: I am not blaming the parents. Never. They did what millions of parents have done: trust. </p>
<p>And I second Cpofthehouse: Get to know your neighbors. Look out for each other. The “obnoxious” children who run and scream might need any of us…as the old widow across the street. </p>
<p>ON THE OTHER HAND: The poor child was sedated before he was murdered. To me that shows intent and knowledge about what he was doing was wrong and heinous. The defense would never want me on the jury.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the laws in New York, but here in Alaska my principal has made it clear that it is outside of the law for the school to set up arrangements for students to get home. We can have parent meetings where we might suggest that parents talk amongst themselves and make arrangements, but the meetings cannot be for that purpose and we cannot facilitate the “buddy systems” or carpools since that would then make the school responsible beyond school hours and off of school grounds. </p>
<p>Parents advise the school of the arrangements, whether it is a carpool or after school care, and then the school carries out the wishes of the parents. The responsibility of the school is to be certain that the instructions of the parents are followed, or that a responsible person is called from the emergency contact list in case there is a snafu. </p>
<p>I am surprised, since this is reportedly a very insular community, that there was not already such an arrangement between parents, as we see this all of the time on our Air Force Base.</p>
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<p>As a rabbi’s wife, are you naive too?
Do prisons have Jewish residents?</p>
<p>Hasidic Sleuth’s Beat: Mean Streets of Brooklyn</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/nyregion/hasidic-private-eyes-beat-is-the-mean-streets-of-brooklyn.html?pagewanted=all[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/nyregion/hasidic-private-eyes-beat-is-the-mean-streets-of-brooklyn.html?pagewanted=all</a></p>
<p>Yes and I taught college inside the general population of the world’s largest maximum security prison for several years, with a machine-gun armed guard outside my classroom. I did this through my 9th month of pregnancy. I stared down men who weighed 3x myself and told them they couldn’t go out for pee breaks because I said so. And they backed down.</p>
<p>My husband was chaplain to Jewish prisoners in the same prison. It was maximum security, so not white-collar crime. Murderers, drug dealers guilty of armed robbery and so forth. We like to say he served 7 years.</p>
<p>What else do you want to know about my “naivete”?</p>
<p>You have situational naivete then, much like the community in question. 99.999999999999%? Seriously.</p>