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I, for one, continue to speculate that maybe Elizabeth left the house willingly.

As for her being sheltered, maybe. I just know that I have never lived anywhere near SLC, and I have children, and with my hobby of reading about "true crime," I have a great awareness of the atrocities that can happen anywhere. Often I would broach the subject of, "how can we keep our little children safe, when there's this great big world out there, with all sorts of people in it?" Invariably, people--everyone from friends, to relatives, to people on a street corner, to...just anyone, would tell me, "oh, you shouldn't be so paranoid! You shouldn't SCARE your children and stifle their curiosity by telling them all sorts of tales of what a stranger could do, or warning them away from certain things, or worrying about letting them out of your sight..." I mean, it seems just about everyone has this attitude that "we shouldn't tell children too much" about the bad things in the world, we should "just let them enjoy their years of innocence."

Of course, I told them what I thought they ought to know, anyway!

Since people are talking about the sheltered atmosphere that supposedly exists in SLC, there's another irony they should be aware of.

Some of the most gullible, naive, easily-fooled people I have EVER met were juveniles who were in trouble with the law. I mean, these people are ignorant. You can tell them anything, and they'll believe it. Seems odd, considering that we always think of criminals as wily and cunning.

If Elizabeth was ever let loose in a library--and I'll bet she was--she found some things that made her do a double-take. You can't have a library, even a clean library, that doesn't contain some things in the books that will be strange to a young person poking around in the various books. I know, b/c I was such a young person, and our library certainly wouldn't have allowed anything "dirty" in it. Maybe that's why juvenile delinquents are so naive--I doubt very many of them browse around in libraries (since they invariably are flunking in school, or have dropped out.)