(AP) --From San Diego; California; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Stanton, California, the grim news reports suggest an epidemic of child abductions. Yet experts say kidnapping by strangers -- the crime so dreaded by so many parents -- has always been rare and is probably on the downswing.
"Any child that's missing is one too many," FBI spokeswoman Angela Bell said Thursday. "But the media publicity that these cases are getting is making it seem like a big jump, and that's just not the case."
The FBI has offered its help to local authorities working on the case of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion, who was seized outside her Stanton apartment building Monday, then sexually assaulted and murdered within 24 hours.
Her slaying follows the high-profile abductions of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in Salt Lake City and 7-year-old Danielle van Dam in San Diego. Danielle's body was found and a neighbor is on trial; Elizabeth is still missing.
Most abductions are carried out by relatives of the child as part of a family dispute. In other cases, the perpetrators are acquaintances of the child, acting out of various motives.
Statistics indicate abductions of children by strangers are declining.
Bell said the FBI opened investigations in 93 such cases last year, compared with 134 in 1999. Some abductions by strangers do not result in FBI involvement, but the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates the total number of cases annually at 100 now, down from 200 to 300 in the 1980s.
"It's still a terrible problem," said Ernest Allen, the center's president. "But the good news is, these cases have been coming down. Cases like Samantha Runnion's, as outrageous as they are, are pretty rare."
Experts in the field say precise statistics on child abductions are elusive, in part because different jurisdictions define the crime differently.
"For a crime that gets as much public attention as it does, its pretty appalling that there are not better statistics," said David Finkelhor, a sociology professor who heads the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Center and has worked with the Justice Department to discern patterns in child abductions.
However, he agreed that the number of worst-case abductions, like the Samantha Runnion case, is probably declining.
"From the context of things -- including a decline in sexual assault and abuse -- I can't imagine there's been any increase," he said. "But you get a couple of these cases in proximity, which can happen at random, and all of a sudden it seems like an epidemic."
Finkelhor's research has found that the risk of abduction by a stranger is relatively low for preschoolers, and increases through elementary school to peak at age 15. Teen-age girls are considered most vulnerable.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has been trying to call attention to some missing children whose cases have not attracted as much publicity as the Van Dam, Smart and Runnion cases.
In those three cases, the victimized family is white. Allen said the news media may sometimes be less interested in missing minority children, especially if they are from urban areas where crime is assumed, rightly or wrongly, to be a constant problem.
As an example, Allen cited the case of Laura Ayala, a 13-year-old Hispanic girl from Houston who disappeared in March after buying a newspaper at a convenience store near her home. "Her shoes and the newspaper were found on sidewalk -- that screams of foul play," Allen said.
But Allen also said the Van Dam and Smart cases generated intense coverage in part because the girls were seized from their bedrooms.
"If your child isn't safe in her own bed in her own home, where is she safe?" he said. "It sends a message of powerlessness and fear and 'Oh my God, they're everywhere. They're coming for my child."'
The Runnion case had similar elements, Allen noted: Samantha was playing with a friend outside her apartment building and was dragged away by a man in a car.
"It's an outrageous case, and there's no question it's going to generate fear," Allen said. "What we're trying to do is send a message that you don't have to be paralyzed by fear, you don't need to lock your child in a room, but you do have to be cautious, you do need to know where your children are."
