The risk of any child being abducted is minuscule. The risk of a child chocking/ being electrocuted/ dying in a fire/suffocating is certainty increased if they are left alone though. This isn't the message people have received from this case though.
I read a book a couple of years ago (which I can't find right now, so can't quote correctly) about risk. It was estimated that in the year following the 9/11 bombings more people were killed in extra car crashes than in the original event because they were afraid to fly.
Increasing fear of abduction isn't helpful. Peoples fear of stranger danger is just irrational.
Yes, it is true, Cariad - and welcome to the forum, by the way - that the risk of a child being abducted is minuscule, and that the rate of accidents in the home and elsewhere is sadly very high.
The fear that parents have of losing their children to a stranger is an irrational one, totally out of proportion to the actual risk of abduction. But it is a deeply-held fear nonetheless, one which the Madeleine case taps into. I believe that many parents will have exercised a much greater degree of caution with their children, in general terms, because of this and other abduction cases, one of the results being that children will have been much less likely to have been left on their own and vulnerable to all kinds of accidents. So in that sense I think there is a connection.
My mind turns to a serious case that occurred two years ago in the community in America in which I am currently living. A child a few hundred metres away from my home went missing, and, due to the detective work and diligence of community members, was found approximately 36 hours later, unfortunately dead and dismembered, some of his remains stored in the freezer of his abductor and killer, and other remains in rubbish bins nearby.
It was a horrific case that shocked the whole community, if not the whole of New York, and immediately had the effect of parents being more diligent with their children in all sorts of ways: volunteer organisations were formed in the neghbourhood to escort children walking home from school; stricter laws on CCTV across the state were passed in the courts (the boy had been found thanks to the CCTV footage of various local business owners); local shops and organisations joined a 'safe haven' scheme, placing notices in their windows for children indicating a safe place of refuge and help should they become detached from their parents; schools instituted new safety rules and were more diligent in criminal background checking for teachers; community organisations staged events where police and other community officials spoke to parents to give advice on child safety- not just outside the home but inside too... and so on.
Some of these things were directly related to the abduction/murder case; others not. The point is that the sorry case as a whole sent out ripples that changed parental awareness; not only awareness of danger itself, but a heightened sense of how fortunate we are to have our children safe and well - helping to promote better parenting in general.
I was at home looking after my two month old baby at the time, and remember being even more caring with him than usual , feeling even more grateful than before to have a healthy baby. Many local parents spoke about being so affected; many responded very emotionally. Counselling was organised by the city for both parents and children who had been traumatised or affected by the event.
All of the above being strictly speaking irrational, because the likelihood of such an event happening again in the same place is obviously tiny. The killer was a loner who is now serving a life sentence and will not be able to strike again. But at the same time, the abduction prompted us all to be kinder and more appreciative, and more diligent in general terms.
