Two little girls . .
It's happening too often now.
Two little girls are missing.
I know it's more than two. I also know statistics show the abducted children in our midst are usually with a non-custodial parent. I know the national statistic is we have cut the number of missing children by one-third in the past two decades; but the number is still 100 in a universe where one is too many.
But I also know it's happening too often that little ones go missing.
Maybe it's always been with us. I have this theory that the connectivity of the Internet age has made stories flash across everyone�s screen with an immediacy Ben Franklin, Jacob Pulitzer and even William Randolph Hearst could only dream about
Being in the business of relaying stories myself, it might seem strange to say a national paranoia is fed by the better ways we can deliver messages.
Still, it is saddening, frightening and maddening that predators can see a gathering of our most precious citizens and think of a killing field more than a wisftfully delightful time of life. It is all of the above that parents worry more about a child in the backyard alone than about bee stings and sand in their shoes.
I am the parent of a 3 year-old and of a 17-year-old and I worry about each equally.
Today comes the news that a neighbor of those two Oregon girls is under deep suspicion. Human remains have been found ion his property, During the weekend, FBI put up a chain link fence around his home, then covered that, then put up tents over the places they intend to dig.
A cement slab poured in his backyard the day the second of the girls went missing, the fact the neighbor is a convicted rapist, the fact he knew both of the missing girls, the fact one had even slept over at his house while her own dad was in jail for abusing her, the fact they disappeared from the same neighborhood within months of each other . . . all of it is circumstantial. Before the lynch mob gathers, I say the name of Richard Jewell and say wait for the wheels of justice to grind the predator into dust.
This is not an American problem. In Great Britain, a nation has been captivated by the story of two little girls also missing, friends vanished on the same day. There, two suspects have been charged, both of whom knew the girls because both were former workers in the girls' school. One is a woman, one is a man. The victims ' bodies have been found.
There, the coroner made clear his opinion that the search for the abducted girls had been hampered by a flood of calls from the public seeking a financial reward. The Express newspaper group offered 1 million pounds and The Sun and News of the World 150,000 pounds each.
The continual harping by the media there hampered police work; the offering of rewards brought interlopers tramping into investigation sites.
There, the politicians say they will review it all at the conclusion of the legal case.
Here, a political season is upon us. Maybe it never ends anymore. The current Bush in the White House is stumping for cash and candidates.
The current leaders of the loyal opposition are planning to take over the legislative branch to better stymie the executive one.
The judicial branch is mad at the executive branch for overstepping human rights when it comes to arresting suspects in the 911 probe and is mad at the legislative branch for not submitting to the same lie detector tests the legislators demanded of its own employees.
No one seems mad that little ones are missing.
I'm mad.
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