In other words, 73 percent of abducted children suffered that fate due in part to lifestyle choices their parents made: the choice to divorce, or to befriend sleazy characters. When the media, by ignoring these data, give the impression that child kidnapping could happen to any family, the wholesome no less than the unwholesome, we are once again being grievously misled.
Rabbi Lapin has greiviously misunderstood the use of the term "aquaintance" which does not mean friend or frequent associate. It has absolutely nothing to do with closeness or frequency of contact, but simply that the perpetrator in some way (however tenuous) was known to the victim or had some type of prior contact. Traveling salemen and the washer repair guy or the UPS delivery person would all be "acquaintences".
Rabbi Lapin assumes that victims of "acquaintance" kidnapings are victims of their parent's unsavory socializing, but that is not the case, because the category is extremely broad and is made up of all kidnaps that are neither familial or by complete strangers, and so includes all kidnaps by persons with very tenuous "acquaintance" and the level of actual social interaction with the family can be very minor. Of course, statistics on "wholesomeness" of victim's families are not kept, but his assumption that wholesome families are safe from kidnap is misleading. They certainly are no more or less safe from the stranger abductions (24%), and a far larger portion of the "acquaintance" abductions (27%) than he realizes
Acquaintance kidnap is also the one most likley to result in injury or death for one of two reasons; the liklihood of being identified, and (in cases with real social acquaintanceship) the high levels of anger and revenge motivations from broken relationships.
That being said, I think that if DW is indeed the perpetrator, one of his motivations was revenge for being excluded from swing set he seemed (to my perception) to be trying to get into and he does fit the profile of the situational offender.
And I still find it hard to demonize the parents for the acts of a man they were excluding from their circle. If DW is found guilty, what will his defender's say then? That it is still BVD's fault because if she had only "done" DW, then he wouldn't have "done" Dani?
aaack! That's a line we won't forget.