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Your comments about Mr. Rollins' essay are exactly the way I felt. How can he be so arrogant as to pass judgement on a family when he's never been in that situation? Parents cannot watch their children 24 hours a day and it's ridiculous for him to make some of the statements he did; i.e. the children who suffocated in the family car in their own driveway, and Ed Smart didn't lock the house and set the alarm. Mr. Rollins acts as if accidents and kidnappings of children only happen in Utah and nowhere else because people elseware are not as trusting as people in Utah. He probably would never admit that maybe the reason Elizabeth's disappearance made all the headlines is that this type of thing is not the norm for Utah because of the exact opposite of what he is claiming. Maybe the reason there are so many more child abductons and murders in other states is because people in Utah tend to take the responsibility of parenting very seriously. To say that these parents and the people of Utah are somehow to blame because they have too much faith and are too trusting is beyond silly, it's just plain stupid. Accidents, sexual attacks, murders and abductions are happening everywhere, and yes, people need to be made more aware of precautions and safety measures for prevention, but Mr. Rollins is not the one to be passing out judgements.

You are so right. Especially when you point out: "maybe the reason Elizabeth's disappearance made all the headlines is that this type of thing is not the norm for Utah."

But it can surely happen anywhere, even in the safest of communities. As long as people remember that, perhaps they can take the proper precautions. I live in a community that has an average of less than one murder per year, yet I wouldn't think of leaving the doors unlocked at night, or when everyone is gone.

Especially for a New Yorker to preach to people in almost any other place, about being rife with crime, is the height of hypocrisy. I suppose we could fill up cyberspace with examples of atrocious crimes, accidents, child neglect, that happened in every state of the union.

And if Ricci made a habit of walking around in the rooms of young women at night, there are some parts of the country where he'd have been very, very dead long before he actually did die--and I don't mean New York, since they are so overly strict about citizens owning guns. (Isn't that the place that prosecuted the subway guy, Goetz, for a firearms violation--after he'd been repeatedly victimized?)

Also, people on here go on and on about The Big Bad Mormon Church. Whatever power the Mormon church might have, it could never begin to compare with the Mob--which is certainly a huge force in New York and New Jersey. Talk about getting away with murder!