Explaining Child Abduction & Murder

On death and innocence and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (from the Los Angeles Times)

“Frankenstein” (1931). Directed by James Whale. Starring Boris Karloff.

Danielle van Dam. Samantha Runnion. Nicole Timmons. Jahi Turner. Alexis Patterson. Jennifer Short. Elizabeth Smart. The list seems endless. In 2002, child-snatching seemed like a national epidemic taking on the biblical proportions of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.

Still, as abhorrent as these crimes are, child abductions by non-family members are extremely rare; for example, in 2001, less than 100 cases were reported among a national population of 59 million children. So, what is at work in the American psyche that makes this rarity of child abduction into our fascinating crime du jour?

Pedophilia–the love of children — is an unfortunate term to describe aberrant and criminal behavior, but the word’s generality also suggests our wider cultural context of child-loving. Children have been made objects of desire and attached to consumer products to make those objects desirable; so, for example, fashion advertisements feature junior ingenues in various leering states of undress. At even younger ages, irresistibly cute children are celebrated in beauty contests — certainly one of the most haunting pictures of recent years must be that of 6-year-old Jonbenet Ramsey strutting her stuff as a…