In a column from early July, Cecil seemed to jump to the conclusion that the letter-writer had jumped to a conclusion.
All the guy did was point out that not all missing children were abducted by total strangers. I don’t see where he said it was “somehow OK”.
Cecil, or Ed, or whoever is writing these answers, seems to be reading too much into innocuous questions, and decrying opinions that weren’t expressed. Is he perhaps bitter that so few questions are addressed to him rather than posted on the boards?
That seems to be saying more than some abductions weren’t by total strangers. It seems to me to be saying that unless it’s a total stranger, it’s not an abduction.
That’s not how the law views it, at least not in my jurisdiction. A parent who takes their own child, contrary to existing custody laws, is committing a kidnapping offence. It’s just as much an offence as kidnapping by a total stranger. I think Cecil correctly called the questioner on this point.
In “custody” abductions, the people who are looking for the child can provide a photo of the abductor, and a description of them, and of the car they might be driving, and other relevant info. The impression I got was that the questioner was asking how likely it is for a missing child to be found after vanishing into apparent thin air. IOW, “How likely is it for a missing child to be found when all you can give is a photo and description, but no other leads?”
Perhaps the use of the word “true” was ill-advised. But the fact that he put it in quote marks seems, to me, to indicate that he did not want to give the impression that a custody abduction is “somehow okay”; just that it was different from a stranger abduction.
What would you have Cecil do? Answer only the question at hand? “How many children are recovered? 42. How many are non-domestic abductions? 12.” Unca Cece has a 600 word column to fill, and mere figures ain’t gonna do it. He needs to answer questions that weren’t asked, questions that are merely implied, and questions that are corollary to the original question. In short, he needs to put words in people’s mouths.
Besides, he can’t go back and send a letter asking for clarification–he needs to answer the question as received, and perceived, in the original letter, email, or brick through his window.
That the writer was suggesting just what Angilion said. The writer probably didn’t mean to suggest that kids abducted by a parent or surrogate of the parent weren’t abductions, rather that the inclusion of those kind of abductions, as opposed to a random abduction by a total stranger, would skew the statistics.