OK. I looked all over the MN BCA website, and it appears that the writer of today's letter to the editor (Pioneer Press) criticizing the coverage of the Dru Sjodin case (and he does make a qualifying statement at the beginning, I'll give him that, saying he just wants more attention on the rest, TOO, not any taken away from her, etc, or something like that) chose his facts very carefully from those listed on the site.
Yes, 3,000 to 5,000 non-family abductions occur in MN every year. HOWEVER, the website clearly states that these are "short-term" abductions... only 200-300 of these are abductions in which the abductee is "gone overnight, killed, or transported a distance of 50 miles or more...The largest percentage of victims in non-family abductions are adolescent girls between the ages 11 and 14 and boys between 6 and 9 years old." So Dru already doesn't fit the statistics, making her a unique case. I looked over pages of "missing" flyers and descriptions and found that of many of the people NOT assumed abducted by family members, they were known to have mental disorders. This does not mean that their disappearance is less sad for the family, but it can mean that it is more likely that the person wandered off of their own accord. Still need to be found? Yes. A cause for a massive hunt because we think we know who the abductor/killer is and he perhaps shouldn't have been out in the public in the first place? No, obviously.
Even if Dru were found alive, just because she is blond-haired and blue-eyed (oh, oops, she was born in Minnesota) doesn't lessen the need for media coverage for her (although at this point I don't think it can do very much for her, unless someone finds her and recognizes her, we all know her face now. At the beginning I think it was more than appropriate.) It was a unique, scary case in that HER BOYFRIEND FUCKING HEARD HER GET KIDNAPPED!! AND SHE TRIED TO CALL HIM BACK!! JC, what is wrong here?! (As I said to Paul, you better make sure I have a damn good amount of media coverage if I ever get kidnapped!!) Second, the coverage she is getting now is just the occasional blurb of "search started back up" or "search shut down because of cold or snow," nothing huge...and THIRD, her kidnapping started an important dialogue in Minnesota about the rules of punishment and release of sexual offenders (and haha made our governor look really stupid when he suggested the death penalty for them, which has already been deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court). I realize it doesn't hurt the public's interest in her case that she was a cute college student, but it doesn't mean that that should backfire against her twice because some sick sexual predator is thus attracted to her.
Elizabeth Smart, everyone was complaining about her media coverage too...she was kidnapped right before I went into the hospital last summer so I got to watch on TV every day about her, but you know what? It majorly dropped off when she vanished without any more leads. I tried to find more on her months later, and I couldn't find a single word, cause there wasn't any. People make this up in their own minds. Hers was a rather fascinating story too, though, and thus worthy of media coverage.
JC people. JC.
k I'm done ranting, and then none of you have to hear it in person later.
