Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1013924
5 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 AUGUST 2018 KARL AZZOPARDI IT is possibly one of the com- monest fears for parents to have their child kidnapped right in full view, such as on a popular beach: the hallmarks of a nightmarish Hollywood thriller. All these elements appeared frightfully in place when a mother told police her child was about to be abducted by a foreigner at Għadira Bay, only to be stopped in the nick of time by the boy's parents… or so the story was supposed to go. When the story hit the head- lines last week, parents were struck with a dreadful real- ity that the once safe Maltese streets were no longer fit for their children. However… it simply was not true. The incident, fanned by the boy's family, turned out to be one big lie, invented by the parents because a foreign cou- ple had taken up their usual spot on the beach. Statistically, your child is unlikely to be kidnapped. Ex- cluding the prospect of chil- dren taken by relatives, crimi- nologist Saviour Formosa told MaltaToday that no one has ever been found guilty of child abduction in Malta. Since 1998, the police only received one formal report from a private citizen alleging child abduction. The report in 2016, eventually turned out to be untrue, Formosa said. The Għadira case mir- rors another that erupted in Birżebbuġa last year and which had many people outraged. A mother had claimed on Facebook that while she was shopping, a migrant had tried to abduct her child, who was in a pushchair. She even claimed to have resisted the abductor by hitting him with a bottle. However, CCTV footage re- leased by the shop owner in the wake of the outrage ex- pressed on social media de- bunked the mother's claim. Nobody had ever approached the child's pushchair while the mother was in the shop. The incident turned out to be a hoax. A pure invention. And yet another unresolved claim was made sometime in 2015, when The Times pub- lished a front-page story of an unnamed woman alleging that a foreign national – ostensibly of Arabic nationality – would have asked her to sell him her child, an indecent offer made on the serene Sliema prom- enade. While abductions are a hor- rific prospect, the manner in which these allegations have gone viral in Malta suggests that some parents are devot- ing energy to a rare, if not unlikely phenomenon, in re- action to the rapid pace of change in Malta. And with this comes a high- er affinity to risk and danger: what German sociologist Ul- rich Beck dubbed the "risk so- ciety", where people become more conscious of the dangers and opportunities in their lives, or Zygmunt Bauman's "liquid society" where every- thing seems to be always in flux, less secure or stable. It is not just the sensational stories of child abductions or parental abuse in the media that ultimately contribute to parents' risk assessments. The Maltese media is awash with reports from the law courts of crimes committed by foreign nationals living here. Ulrich Beck says such threats dissolve "active trust" between citizens in 'strangers' – and Malta's foreign influx of la- bour has grown exponentially in the last four years. Frank Furedi, in his 2001 book Paranoid Parenting, calls it "the erosion of adult soli- darity" – the low level of trust parents have for other adults when it comes to child safety, breeding the culture of 'stran- ger danger'. In a way these reactions are redolent of anti-semitism in the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of killing Chris- tian children for their blood to use in the Passover, or depic- tions of Roma gypsies as child- snatchers. Saviour Formosa told Malta- Today that cases of child ab- duction have never occurred on the island, by both Maltese and foreigners. The only cases of child kidnapping arose from family issues, which means the abductor was an estranged parent or known to the victim. "The only cases of child ab- duction in Malta are parental abductions, where parents who are not entitled to the custody of the children, pro- ceed to kidnap them." Police historian Eddie Attard confirmed Formosa's findings, stating that no court has ever found anyone guilty of child kidnapping. "The only cases of children being taken away are those of parents breaking con- ditions of custody. No one has ever stolen children for the sake of stealing them." The police this week told MaltaToday that investiga- tions into the Għadira inci- dent are ongoing, after initial media reports suggested they had let the mother off with a warning. While such an incident finds fertile ground in a society rev- elling in the fear of the foreign bogeyman, the real victims of these ordeals are left dealing with the trauma of being sin- gled out for this kind of 'pun- ishment'. A false alarm: Maltese parents are scared of the foreign child-snatcher Some people are devoting energy to a rare phenomenon, in reaction to the rapid pace of change in Malta. It's called 'stranger danger' Since 1998, the police only received one formal report from a private citizen alleging child abduction. The report in 2016, eventually turned out to be untrue