This Is Why You Don't Help Lost Children

The Deseret News from Salt Lake City, Utah, reports on a teacher being charged with kidnapping after the teacher tried to help a crying, autistic, non-American girl find her way home after school. The article relates:

      The incident began at the end of the school day. Martz said she was outside her classroom when she saw that the girl very upset and “sobbing uncontrollably.”

      There had been a water main break at the school that day, affecting the school’s water supply. Martz said the girl seemed to be upset that she could not fill up her water bottle before walking home.

      That’s when Martz took the girl by the hand and attempted to help her find her way home. She said she passed the bus stop and the parent pick-up location and both times asked the girl if this is where she was supposed to go, but the girl shook her head.

      They then crossed the crosswalk and continued walking.

     “At each fork in the road I stopped and said, ‘Which way home?’ She would point confidently and said, ‘This way home,” Martz said.

      But after awhile, Martz said “I finally realized this cute girl did not know where she was going.”

      Because Martz said she had only intended to be gone for a few minutes, she left her purse and cellphone in her classroom, and even left her own child in the classroom to wait for her.

     Martz said she went to a house and asked to borrow the resident’s phone to call the school and let them know what was happening. Eventually, another teacher driving through the neighborhoods looking for them picked them up and returned Martz and the girl to the school where her worried parents were waiting.

     Martz said she tried to explain what had happened to the girl’s father, but she believes there was a language barrier.

It's not the first time this has happened. In June 2017, the Washington Post reported that "A man trying to help a lost toddler find her parents was misidentified as a kidnapper on social media over the weekend, according to police in Lakeland, Fla., prompting him to leave town in fear for his safety and the safety of his family." According to the article, "The man was also punched by the child’s father who told local media that he 'thought he was trying to take my daughter' and 'wanted to kill him.'"

      A 2014 poll of Australian fathers found that 23% would not assist a child in need because of the fear of their actions being misinterpreted, and that another 45% for the same reason would only assist a child if that child was in great distress. A study out of Britain in 2014 similarly showed that "[a]lmost two out of three British adults would hesitate to help a lost child because they fear being falsely accused of something sinister, a new study reveals."

     However, an actual experiment showed that the reluctance was much greater: "Walk on by Britain: Two little girls pretend to be lost in a busy shopping centre. So how many people stop to help? One. How many ignore their plight? More than SIX HUNDRED." 616 to be precise. The author continues:

      It is impossible to believe that in a civilised, compassionate society there weren't many passers-by who wanted to help – yet too great was their fear of being thought to be a 'kiddie-fiddler', either by other passers-by or indeed by the little girl herself.

      Pernicious as this fear is, it is growing apace. I have a friend who organises large festivals where, inevitably, children get lost.

      Yet instructions to staff have become super-stern in recent years: if you see such a child, no matter how great their distress, you may not approach – and you certainly may not touch, so the instinctive  cuddle you ache to offer is a no-no.

      Instead, they have to radio the location of the child to a central control, who will dispatch an 'accredited' member of staff to the scene. And if that means the child screams and panics for another 20 minutes? So be it.

      Perhaps there are some among us who feel proud that we take 'such good care' of our children. I think the kindest word for that pride is misguided; in harsher moments, like when looking at these pictures, I wonder if we aren't sacrificing our children for our own excitement.

Contrary to what the aforementioned author may think, the cause of this lack of caring is because we live in a civilized, compassionate society with teeming cities full of strangers, made worse because of ethnic diversity destroying social capital as explained by Harvard researcher, Robert Putnam.

     What’s counterintuitive in Putnam’s results is that in diverse cultural settings, not only do individuals begin to mistrust those who are different, they also begin to mistrust those who are like themselves.

     This means the overall dissolution of trust is deeper and more widespread than one might have predicted. Putnam said his research suggested that “in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tended to ‘hunker down.’”