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Saturday, September 13, 2008
‘Safety zone’ doesn’t feel very safe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The girls were playing on a hill. Their mother was near the batting cages, waiting for softball practice to start. Her two daughters were in plain sight, near the edge of a clump of trees.
Apparently, that’s where the stranger was hiding and waiting.
Robert Davis didn’t know what to think when his 10-year-old daughter approached him. Softball practice was about to begin at Collins Hill Park in Lawrenceville. Davis coaches the team that his daughters, ages 8 and 10, play on. Maybe she’d forgotten her glove, he reasoned.
No. She told him a man had jumped out from the stand of trees and tried to grab her. She’d screamed. Her 8-year-old sister had raced to her aid, and the man darted away.
Ask practically any father what he’d do if someone commits a horrific act against his child. The first thing many will say, often without hesitation, is that they’d flat-out kill the suspect. Davis has said as much. Yet when tragedy came close, he reacted differently.
“Your only reaction is, ‘My kid is safe. My kid is OK,’ ” he told me. “You don’t even think about chasing after the guy. When I talked to a police sergeant, he said everybody has that same reaction. He said he’s seen burly dads almost in tears because they didn’t even think about going after the suspect.”
The Davises reported the Aug. 19 incident to authorities. Gwinnett police recently released a sketch of the “person of interest.” No one has been apprehended in connection with the attempted kidnapping.
The family is trying to return to normal. Scars remain. Their 10-year-old daughter used to be the one willing to accompany younger kids to the restroom when they dined with friends in restaurants. No more.
“She’s getting better,” said her mom, Kimberly. “I hate this. It happened so fast, and they were within my sight.”
Call it a sign of times. A sad reality.
Davis almost sounds apologetic when he talks about what it was like in his own childhood, as if the words are cliche. But the fruit his tale bears needs savoring. It puts current society in context. It makes all of us, but most of all parents, wonder what kind of world their kids will inherit.
“On Saturday mornings, I got up, fixed a bowl of cereal and was gone — off in the woods; down in the creek at the blackberry patch; riding my bike; at this friend’s house or that friend’s house,” he said. “And I thought nothing of it. Now it’s completely different.”
So different that parents stand guard as best they can, even though they can’t offer 24-7 protection. A few minutes is opportunity aplenty for someone up to no good. Just look at what happened to this Lawrenceville family. On that day in the park, walkers and joggers were passing by on the trail. People were everywhere.
“She could have thrown a baseball and hit a dozen different parents,” Davis said. “We have always been careful, but there were certain places we thought were OK. We always thought of the park as a safety zone. There is no way I could let my kids live the childhood I lived. And that’s what’s sad.”
Innocence lost.
Never a jaded topic.
