I agree. A few thoughts...
I don't, however, understand why the seeming lack of stories of abductions from bed in continental Europe is an issue, beyond contributing to a perception of rarity.
- Newborns do get abducted from hospitals by strangers, apparently generally by women desperate for a child. Therefore, the issue isn't just about a "bed", but an older child taken from a bed.
- Why the criterion of a bed, specifically? Would it have made a difference if she'd got up to go to the loo and was actually standing and about to holler?
- Kate mentioned several cases of strangers in children's bedrooms in Portugal and Redwood mentioned a case (whether that was one of the cases or a different one). None of those children appear to have been abducted, but circumstances may have prevented that happening.
Those harrowing stories weren't reported by the press. Which police force would have been responsible for investigating? If it wasn't the PJ, it would have been the GNR or PSP, dealing with minor crimes. Were the cases thoroughly investigated at the time? Without a criminal investigation, would there have been any forensic sweep to attempt to identify the perpetrators? If a child had "simply" been traumatised by a stranger, would that be sufficient to bring in the PJ? Or would it have been a strange detail in the break-in category? If some of the children had suffered a sexual assault, I can't imagine that the families would launch a publicity campaign, for privacy reasons and the fact that their children - at the end of the day - weren't missing or killed. Unless the police launched a public appeal, or leaked to the press, how would the mainstream press even know about them? Did any of these cases come to trial?
- There is the case of Caroline Dickinson who was raped and murdered in her bed in a youth hostel dorm. She wasn't abducted, and what happened to the poor girl is a thankfully rare occurrence, but it nonetheless did take place. That creep took a huge risk. If she'd been younger (and lighter), who knows if he might have disposed of the body? (As it happens, I disagree that a dog's alert represents a reliable indicator that Madeleine died in that apartment, if indeed she is dead.)
Yes, there seem to be a lot of grey areas here and many crimes of this nature that go unnoticed or unrecorded.
It seems that we don't have a true measure of what really goes on.
As a matter of interest, do you know if we have more information on the strangers entering bedrooms that Kate McCann and Redwood speak of? It would be interesting to see sources. Knowing more about this kind of thing could give us a truer picture.
As for the narrow 'from bed' category, we'll have to check with Anne on this one, but I would imagine that that is really a figuritive way of saying 'from a bedroom' or 'from inside a home' .
