Children abducting children - How young children are pushing the boundaries in crime!

ID: The image above is of a young boy sitting in a police cell with his head down staring at the floor. Photo courtesy of Charles Sturt University, 2023. All copyright is owned by them.

Many of us are uncle's, brother's, sister's, mum's, dad's or cousin's of a child or children. With this in mind, imagine you are out for a family meal or on a shopping trip. You are chatting as a group as you walk down the street when all of a sudden you seem to notice it is quieter than it was. You look round to notice that your little cousin is missing. You quickly get the attention of your sister, their mum. Their no where to be seen or heard! How would you feel? In 2014/15, overall child kidnappings and abductions rose by 47 per cent. Shockingly, United Kingdom (UK) police records indicate that nearly half of these types of abductions were perpetrated by children (Newiss, 2016. & Newiss & Collie, 2017.)! 2021, 15,800 children sentenced in the criminal courts of England and Wales (Youth Justice Board, 2022). Over half of these children we first time offenders and if we add in those who were found not guilty or had cases dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), this figure raises drastically. With the age of criminal responsibility debated within the media, can we safely increase this? In 2014/15 the Office of National Statistics (ONS) published that the main perpetrators in abducting children were children themselves with some even as young as 11 committing this crime (Newiss, 2016). The UK has seen some of the most horrifying crimes, including torture and murder committed by very young children. We only need to think of one famous occasion in 1993 and the case of little James Bulger. On 13th April 2016 a 2 year old child was abducted by two 11 year olds in a large department store in Newcastle upon Tyne (BBC, 2016).

An ordinary day, a mother and daughter shopping after school, picking up a few essential school uniform items before going home for the day. After turning her head the other way to put some clothes back on the rack that the little one did not like, less than 30 seconds, the toddler was gone - vanished into thin air! This left a frantic and very distraught mother begging security to help. This happened in Newcastle upon Tyne in the busy city centre in one of Primark's largest UK stores. Although security responded quickly and put the store into lockdown, the abductors had removed the little girl from the store and were already heading to train station. Back in Liverpool in 1993, Mrs Bulger was ostracised as a mother by the press for supposedly "letting" her son be abducted. In 2016 Newcastle upon Tyne the same rhetoric again from the press against the little girls mother. This showed how quickly and hollow accusations are made by the British Media against mothers.

Reason's for research paper

The reasons a child commits a serious or any crime for that matter, is so complex. We have only scratched the surface in our understanding. Some scientists put it down to poor behavioural controls, bad parenting, a damaged brain, trauma, abuse etc (Bailey et. al., 2001. & McMillian et. al., 2023.). The truth is we do not completely know why. By looking at cases in the past we can see certain situations arise again and again. For example, child abuse or repeated head trauma, especially if it occurs in the very early years can damage or stop certain brain areas from growing or forming correctly (McMillian et. al. 2023). Also, the child's interactions with their main caregivers, or lack of them, can also lead to attachment issues and a lack of what we call "pro-social attitudes" (Bowlby, 2005). By looking at MRI, fMRI and EEG's scan imaging of children's and adult brains as well as examining genetic and DNA material in both those who have committed violent crimes and those who have not we see distinct differences in the brains and genetic information of offenders. Thus although a person may be born with these errors in their DNA make-up, it takes a poor environmental affect to switch these errors on (Boschi, 2020).

Imagine if Thompson and Venables, who abducted and tortured the toddler James Bulger, were not old enough to be held accountable for their crimes as they were underage? How horrific that would of been for James' family. One particular case in Norway demonstrates this point - October 1994 and the abduction and murder of little Silje in Trondheim (The Guardian, 2010). The press and law enforcement said that in many ways the two cases were very similar. The one big difference was that the identity of the murderer was never released and they were not prosecuted and nor were the parents. The only thing that the judiciary allowed to be known was that the alleged aggressor was a was a young boy under the age of criminal responsibility - which in Norway is 15. If you were the parents of Silje, how would you feel? Obviously they were devastated and will probably feel a huge whole in the life and hearts but they revealed that they did not blame the parents of the aggressor and only wanted the child to be rehabilitated so that they never commit the same offence and hurt others again. What self-sacrificing people!

Our 2019 paper

In 2019 my colleague and I published a paper based upon the effects that child abduction can have on the mother of the victim. Even in the 21st century, it is still considered the mothers role to care and nurture her children rather than the father or as a join initiative and this was born out with all the press coverage decrying what parents, particularly mothers, were doing to protect their children (Thompson & Harrison, 2019). We found the same phenomenon with this case as with all previous abductions of children, that somehow it was the mothers fault. It also highlighted an important fact, maybe we as a society are rushing to increase the age of criminal responsibility for children when the age of serious criminal activity is becoming younger and younger . For a person to held criminally accountable for the actions n England and Wales the age is 10 and for Scotland it is 12 although the Scottish parliament is considering making it 14 years of age (gov.uk, 2024). In the US, more child abductions sadly end up in the murder or rape (or both) of the child victim. In the UK, we tend to see that the child gets returned to their main care giver alive. Furthermore, the US sees most of these crimes committed by a parent than a stranger and that the stranger is usually an adult whereas in the UK the fastest growing type of abduction is that of children committing the offence. So this lead us to look at why mothers are constantly blamed by the news media a society as a whole.

The results

This research paper utilised a form of qualitative research that investigates the language used and its context called critical discursive psychology (Wetherell & Potter, 1988). This data looked at through the eyes of both the reader and the person who wrote it in the context of when it was written. We found the following 3 main themes that ran throughout the British newspapers examined:

Distress - This was a common theme. All the paper's discussed the distress that was felt by the mother of the abducted child. However, the papers quantified this by constantly expressing blame and contempt for the abductees mother.
Trauma - BBC Interviewer: Mum speaking - ...."I knew she [the toddler] was a bit shaky (not having
to see her mom, she was quite clingy, and everything, she was ok (0.6) ‹› she’s ok ((Deep sigh)).(A4:928-934).
Deviance - Every article highlighted the deviant nature of the children who committed the abduction.

Conclusion

Our paper discussed in depth the nature of child abduction and the effect that ripple out. These ripples cause emotional and physical pain from the police officers to the family of the little girl. With child abduction perpetrated by children on the increase, what can we do as a society?

References (APA 7th Edition):

Bailey, S., Smith, C., & Dolan, M. (2001). The social background and nature of “children” who perpetrate violent crimes: A UK perspective. Journal of Community Psychology, 29(3), 305–317. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.1019

BBC News (2016). Newcastle Primark kidnap teenagers sentenced. BBC News. [online] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36829391#:~:text=Two%20girls%20who%20kidnapped%20a%20toddler%20from%20a,about%20three%20miles%20away%20from%20the%20Newcastle%20shop. (Accessed: December 2024).

Boschi, H. (2020). Why we do what we do : understanding our brain to get the best out of ourselves and others. Chapter One - The Brain. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Bowlby, J. (2005). Violence in the family. Bowlby - a secure base. p. 86-110. Routledge. London. UK.

Gov.uk. (2024). Age of criminal responsibility. Young people and the law. [online] https://www.gov.uk/age-of-criminal-responsibility (Accessed: January 2025).

James, E. & McDougall, I. (2010). The Norway town that forgave and forgot its child killers. The Guardian Newspaper [online]. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/mar/20/norway-town-forgave-child-killers (Accessed: December 2024).

McMillan, T M; McVean, Julia; Aslam, Hira; Barry, Sarah J E. (2023). Associations between significant head injury in male juveniles in prison in Scotland UK and cognitive function, disability and crime: A cross sectional study. Plos One. Vol. 18(7). e0287312. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0287312

Newiss G. (2016). Police - Recorded child abduction and kidnapping in2014/15. Collie, C. (ed) Action Against Abduction [PDF] (Accessed: January 2016).

Newiss, G. & Collie, G. (2017). Police - recorded child abduction and kidnapping in 2015/16. England, Wales and Northern Ireland”. In unknown. Action Against Abduction. PDF. (Accessed: January 2016).

Thompson, B. & Harris, S. (2019). “My world stopped” - analysis of media talk regarding mothers

of abducted children. EC Psychology & Psychiatry Research Article. Ecronicon. Vol.8(7). p.596-605. DOI: ECPP-08-00442.

Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1988). Discourse analysis and the identification of interruptive repertoires. In Antaki, C. (ed) Analysing everyday explanation - A casebook of methods, Sage publications, London (1988).