Local leaders suggest ways to keep children safe.
By Rachelle Kuchta/Special to The Malibu Times
The recent events involving the abductions of Southern California children and teens are giving Malibu parents chills for a lifetime. Many area parents feel they need to step up their awareness and heavily guard their children from society’s predators.
Rabbi Levi Cunin of Chabad of Malibu said the critical factor in this regard is vigilance.
“The thing that is most important is not necessarily security, it is people being aware,” he said.
He said he encourages parents to spend more time with their children and to find a balance between securing their safety and living normal lives.
“It’s important to teach children that just because someone is nice, it doesn’t mean they’re a nice person,” Cunin said.
Scott Robinson, director of the Boys & Girls Club of Malibu Teen Center, said the center encourages caution to its younger latchkey kids through discussion groups and leadership training sessions. Robinson said the center instructs these children to exercise caution by practicing several safety measures (see box, page A13).
Cunin said he thinks the most important message to convey to people regarding child safety is to question when suspicious adults are spending a lot of time with a young child and paying a lot of attention to them.
“When in doubt, check them out” is the motto of the online service WhoisHe.Com and WhoisShe.Com. The service, which is the brainchild of Southern California attorney Linda Alexander, charges between $39 to $75 to conduct confidential background checks and criminal record searches designed to verify if people have something to hide.
According to Alexander, the abduction of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in Utah has brought much concern to parents, when it was revealed the handyman, who worked in the Smart home, was a career criminal. A comprehensive background and criminal record check would have provided this information to the Smart family and could have alerted them to potential dangers of bringing this man into their home.
With a service like this Web site, families could find out if a person they allow access to their family, such as a sports coach, nanny or daycare provider, in-home health care worker, even a gardener, painter, contractor, or house cleaner, is a convicted pedophile or has any type of criminal record.
Malibu Presbyterian Nursery School Director Cindy Ludwig stressed, “It’s the parents’ job to prepare their children and the schools’ job to support the parents.”
Although Ludwig said she feels the school has adequate security and she employs one staff member for every five children for the school’s three- to five-year-olds, she said parents shouldn’t feel at ease just because they reside in such an upscale neighborhood as Malibu.
“I don’t think we should have an unrealistic sense of security just because we live here,” Ludwig said. “Malibu is not a safer place than anywhere else.”
Kay Gabbard, director of Malibu Methodist Nursery School and Infant Center, suggests that parents talk to other parents to see what other families are doing to safeguard their children.
“It’s helpful when parents communicate, whether it’s between kids and parents, or parents and parents.”
State lawmakers recently unveiled five bills designed to assist law enforcement and the public in preventing child abductions. The bills support child safety by proposing such measures as helping local law enforcement agencies monitor habitual sex offenders and enforce registration requirements, prohibiting any contact or communication on the Internet with minors for the purpose of engaging in sexual conduct or abuse, requiring DNA samples from child predators convicted of specific misdemeanor sexual offenses, and creating a one-strike punishment for specified sex offenses against minors.