How safe are Utah County kids?

The attempted abduction this week of a 9-year-old Provo girl marks the sixth time in the past 12 months that children were approached on public streets in Utah County in an attempt to kidnap or molest them.

Those incidents followed the October 2003 kidnapping and assault of 5-year-old Benjamin Bladh of Mapleton. Bladh was abducted while walking home from school and driven to Diamond Fork Canyon, where he was bound with electric tape and cut on the arms and legs. In September, Robert Allen Kartchner was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in the Utah State Prison for that incident, as well as two other abduction attempts.

Utah Valley has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the safest metropolitan areas in the country, but the recent spate of attempted abductions and sexual assaults of children in broad daylight raises two questions:

• How dangerous is Utah County?

• What can parents do to keep their children safe?

"They say nothing ever bad happens in Utah County, and yet in the 24 years I've been here we've had homicides, rapes, kidnappings, about every bad thing that can happen," said Springville Police Lt. Dave Caron. "We don't want to create an atmosphere of panic or make people paranoid for their safety, but you have to be careful.

"While Utah County is a great place to live, there are bad people here, and some of them come from other places to be here."

Caron said his department was lucky to foil two attempted abduction attempts in the span of a few weeks this summer. It was lucky because the parents and children did exactly what they were supposed to do, Caron said.

"In all these cases, the parents or the neighbors were on the ball," he said. He advises children to walk home in groups, if possible. And he said neighbors who are at home should call the police if they spot a suspicious vehicle prowling the neighborhood.

"We would rather go out on 100 calls when everything is fine, when someone is just lost and looking for an address than go out on one case where a child is abducted or a victim of abuse," he said.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, of an estimated 797,500 children reported missing in 1999, the majority were runaways or abducted by family members. Only 58,200 of those children were kidnapped by strangers, and just 115 were victims of the most serious, long-term abductions, often called "stereotypical kidnappings."