There’s not a mom in the metro area who heard the news about 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera this week and didn’t develop an ache in her heart.
It’s a parent’s worst nightmare. The little girl, who weighed 80 pounds and was three feet tall, was abducted while playing outside her Canton, Ga., apartment complex. She was beaten, sexually assaulted and stabbed. The autopsy revealed that the first-grader died of blunt force trauma to the head.
Then she was dumped in a trash bin.
We’re all holding our little ones tighter right now, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has given a refresher course on stranger danger and the importance of being aware and cautious around unknown people.
According to preliminary reports, Jorelys was playing with a few other children at her apartment complex’s playground. A teenage babysitter was supposed to be watching Jorelys, but Canton Police Lt. Jeff Hall said the babysitter “went to another location for a period of time.”
This scares me to death. I’ve been keeping up with the story on the Canton-Sixes Patch, and according to comments from readers on that site, the apartment complex where the little girl was abducted has a rough reputation.
She was left alone outside, unsupervised, and evil found her.
This doesn’t happen only in bad neighborhoods. It can happen to any one of us at any time. So what do we do to keep our kids safer?
It’s been an ongoing discussion at my house for years. Do we let the kids play outside without us? At what point can they walk down the street to a friend’s house? Ride their bike around the neighborhood?
It’s easy to think this couldn’t happen to your children because you are super vigilant and would never let your kids play alone on a playground in a public area-- but have you ever taken your eyes off your child for one minute and looked up to find them gone?
The seconds or minutes you spend with your heart in your throat screaming and hyperventilating until you find them are those of a living nightmare. It’s happened to me before, and I can think of at least a handful of friends who have related a similar experience to me.
Little Jorelys’s story is one that makes you want to wrap your babies up in bubble wrap and lock them in their rooms, but that’s not realistic.
So what do you do?
What are your rules for playing outside? Are your kids allowed out without your supervision? Do they have to stay in the backyard? Can they walk to a friend’s house?
Please share your stories and any tips you have for keeping kids safe in today’s frightening world. In the meantime, our friends at Sandy Springs Patch asked Sandy Springs Police Lt. Steve Rose for advice on keeping children safe. Check out his View from a Cop column.
