Perhaps you’re wondering why someone would make up such a preposterous story. I have an idea.
For the last few years, there has been a string of moms going on Facebook, breathlessly claiming that they were out at the mall (or Ikea, or Target), when suddenly they realized that they were being stalked by a kidnapper clearly planning to snatch their kids and sex-traffic them.
The evidence is usually something like, “I saw a guy staring at my baby.” Or, “I saw the couple in one aisle and then I went down a different aisle and there they were again,” or, “I looked outside and there was a van with its door open!”
Inevitably, the mom congratulates herself on having had the wherewithal to figure out what was going on just in time, and bravely thwart the heinous crime by, uh, staring the guys down. Then the mom usually says something like, “if it happened to me it could happen to you,” without reminding readers that in fact, nothing happened. No one grabbed a kid. No one was sex-trafficked. (The head of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, David Finkelhor, says he knows of zero cases of a child kidnapped from a parent in public and sex trafficked.) It’s all in the moms’ heads.
Yet they get thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of approving shares and comments on social media.
Here’s one story. Here’s another, and another, and another. Here’s one that went mega-viral a few years back. You get the idea. It’s a panic, with a twist: adulation.
The mom ends up the hero of the non-event, basking in comments like thank you for sharing this, and so glad you are safe and, you are such a strong, conscientious mama.
If only this hoax story could go as viral as the my-kid-was-almost-sex-trafficked posts.
Lenore Skenazy, “Mom Charged With Falsely Accusing a Man of Trying to Kidnap Her 5-Year-Old at the Mall”, Reason, 2019-07-04.
May 8, 2019
QotD: Those “my-kid-was-almost-sex-trafficked” hoaxes
Filed under: Law, Media, Quotations, Technology, USA — Tags: CrimeAndPunishment, Facebook, Hoaxes, Hysteria, SocialMedia, Women — Nicholas @ 01:00
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