Preventing the Possibility

How school districts can protect their students from solicitation and abduction to and from school

By Stephane Babcock

Numbers can be helpful and frightening all at once. Six hundred and three thousand. That figure represents the number of sexual offenders registered in the U.S. One hundred thousand. That number represents convicted offenders who are not registered; some of them are literally missing.

In an effort to keep children safe from possible attacks or even abduction, school districts have a number of safeguards, from legislation to routing software to vigilant drivers.

The Adam Walsh Legacy
On July 27, 1981, Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears department store and later found brutally murdered. Since his death, his father, John Walsh, has made the protection of the nation’s children his top priority. Many of his efforts were validated when the U.S. Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act on July 25, 2006. The bill strengthened both national and state sex offender registries, which makes it more difficult for offenders to evade detection by moving to a different area.

In an effort to further protect children from being abducted, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was established in 1984 under a U.S. government mandate. Co-founded by Walsh and his wife Revè, the organization acts as a resource center for information to help locate children that have either been kidnapped or are missing.

Two years ago, the NCMEC created the Attempted Abduction Program within its Special Analysis Unit to analyze information from 450 cases of attempted abductions to extract common trends and patterns. The department's on-going study has shown that in the majority of the cases — 56 percent — the child either yelled or fought back to get away from the abductor, while 32 percent walked or ran away and 12 percent were assisted by an adult in the area.

"This certainly is not a trend, but out of 450 cases we can learn some things," said Nancy McBride, national safety director of the NCMEC. "Going to and from school is a potentially vulnerable time for kids and we know predators look for access and opportunity."

According to McBride, children sometimes freeze up because they are taught to be polite and responsive to adults.

"What we have to help our kids understand is that this is one time where you don’t have to be polite because your safety is more important. Once a child is in the car, everything changes," said McBride.

Technology's Role
Most routing software gives users the ability to add overlays that can pinpoint certain types of hazards in an area, which can be helpful when setting up school bus stops. By tying into each individual state's sex offender registry, school bus operators can map out where each offender lives in relation to where students reside and where they will be catching the bus to school.

"Sexual predators had been a subject on everybody’s mind, so the question came up, 'Is there something we can do with the software when were placing bus stops so that we can be aware of where they’re at?'" said Bill Bench, routing foreman for Killeen, Texas, Independent School District, located north of Austin. "We use a symbol to show where they live and if there’s a symbol within a block or two blocks of a stop, we can make a rational decision if we are going to have to put a stop there or not."

Sometimes the number of offenders in an area can make it difficult to choose which is better, putting a stop near their residence or moving it to include another potential hazard.

"Sometimes we have to weigh out which is worse, putting a stop in a neighborhood where a sex offender lives or moving it to where the students have to cross a very busy intersection," said Albuquerque, N.M., Public Schools Transportation Director Dr. J. Patrick Garcia, whose district transports 38,000 students daily. "It's not an easy decision to make, but we will do what ever we can to accommodate these types of situations."

For James Cantrell, director of pupil transportation for Barrow County School District in Winder, Ga., an ongoing battle over sex offender legislation has complicated the issue. Last November, the state supreme court struck down a law passed in 2006 that prohibited sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches and the more than 150,000 school bus stops in the state.

"It can be an issue if there are several offenders in one neighborhood. When transportation provides service in the neighborhoods that offenders live in, students are not let off at a general stop but are delivered to their driveway," said Cantrell, whose district sits about 40 miles northeast of Atlanta.

State Representatives Jerry Keen and David Ralston have reworked the bill and reintroduced it in January. Although the distance of 1,000 feet has stayed the same, the bill includes exemptions for certain residency and employment restrictions. As of this writing, HB 908 had passed the House and was in the Senate judiciary committee.

The First Line of Defense
Drivers navigate the same routes every day. They see the same streets, the same houses and, at times, the same strangers. Although legislation and software can help protect children to a degree, bus drivers are at ground zero — they can act to deter instances of children being solicited and, worse, abducted.

Dr. Duane Dobbert has worked in the criminal justice profession for close to four decades. In that time, he has created a training program that profiles sex offenders and teaches members of law enforcement to spot predators before they attack. Most recently, Dobbert restructured his program for bus drivers — School Bus Drivers: The 1st Line of Defense Against Sexual Predators. The program came from a discussion with Collier County Public Schools Transportation Director Jeff Stauring.

"Jeff is the one who asked me if I could train school bus drivers and I had a moment where I thought, 'Why didn't I think about this? There are more aggregate eyes than there are with all the detectives I could put on the streets,'" said Dobbert.
Dobbert begins his training by teaching drivers about the nature of sexual predators and talks about the myth that sexual predators are opportunistic, when in fact they are very pre-meditated.

"I teach them the understanding of why they are who they are," said Dobbert. "Then I walk them through the process and pathology of a pedophile, how they identify their (victim) and the stalking process that brings them eventually to the point of contact."
Currently, Dobbert is working with one of his graduate students to contact the districts he has trained to see how well the training has helped and if they have found success in catching sexual predators.

Editors Note: In the May 2008 issue of STN, we will speak in detail with John Walsh in an exclusive interview.

For a copy of the NCMEC’s “Know the Rules ... For Going To and From School More Safely” visit www.stnonline.com/go/43.