Hi, I am Elle, and this is Quid Pro Quo, your friendly neighborhood forensics-like podcast. The Quid Pro Quo podcast deals with crime, psychology, and related themes. Listener discretion is advised. This episode in specific will address violence against children and in-domestic relationships, but not in a graphic manner.
I will also touch on the Netflix series, The Keepers, but I'm sticking primarily to the broad stroke details given in the trailer, so there will be no spoilers. I don't really watch TV. Don't get me wrong, I had it on often enough, but I'm terrible at following fictional series with plot threads, so I'm perpetually behind on even my favorite shows. As I've mentioned before, when I'm not doing work on Quid Pro Quo, I like to multitask with crafts, and I find by far the best thing for that is true crime television.
My husband gives a ry laugh whenever he finds me watching my murder shows, and often rips me sarcastically for keeping things so light and positive, but the reality of it is that it doesn't often bother me. I will admit, I occasionally wonder whether that makes me some kind of emotionally stunted creeper, but I think it's more a matter of compartmentalizing certain things so that I can learn more about them in the hopes of fixing them. A doctor cannot begin to fix a broken leg if they can't get over their emotion at how badly the patient is hurt, and I think I approach crime stories much the same way. Well, most of the time.
I will admit, there are things even I find difficult to face, but contrary to some rumors I've heard, I am only human. People sometimes ask me how I can stomach much less seek out the staggering amount of harmfulness that comes with being into true crime, but when it comes down to it, I have very few illusions about the world I live in. As long as what I'm watching, listening to, or reading isn't glorifying or sensationalizing crime, I'd rather face up to the reality of this world, take it in as it is, and move forward using that knowledge as a tool, than to try to ignore harsh truths and hide my head in the sand to protect my feelings. As a result, I find myself walking a very strange line talking to people about the subject of crime.
On the one hand, because I know how horrible the world can be, my first inclination is to try to inform people of the dangers around them, because there are a lot. The weird thing is, though, that I simultaneously want to inform them that as frightening as it all may seem, this is one of the safest times there has ever been to be alive. Certainly, there are places where this is not the case right now, but for the most part, these are issues of literal war, not of normal, expected, interpersonal interactions. They depend on others for safety, and therefore are generally the most vulnerable population, and so rightly I think they are one of the main focuses of these broad state-of-the-world discussions.
It's been very hard for me to properly express the hows and whys of the fact that overall, children right now are simultaneously in an astounding amount of danger, and also the least amount of danger anyone's children have ever been in. These are understandably hard things to reconcile, even for me, knowing these things is fact, and I always knew there was some other critical piece of info at work, but could never put my finger on it. But this week, in the process of a completely off-handed discussion, I think I finally found one of the linchpin connections, keeping these two pieces of information, working together simultaneously in my head. I think most people do actually know these things, but don't really understand the full scope or mechanism of either.
We're told these pieces of information, as if they should just naturally fit into our worldview, but we're not given any context or really much in the way of evidence. Instead, unless you are actively and constantly seeking unbiased information on crime, what you are presented with is a sensationalized view of the world by media which understandably presents us with exciting and unusual stories. These stories are not representative of everyday life. The vast majority of life is barely distinguishable from this moment right now.
If your podcast listening experience is anything like mine, you're on your way to work or picking up around the house or making a cup of your pick-me-up beverage of choice. Take stock of what is going on right now and how often it goes on in your life. News slash material is what we think of first when we take stock of what this world is coming to. But when we do this, we are ignoring all of the millions of boring daily crime moments making up our unprecedentedly safe modern lives.
So as a result, it's no wonder that we as a society have responded by developing some weird, sort of worst of both worlds coping mechanisms. Here is the part where I must point out that I am speaking as an American and as a suburban metro area New Yorker at that. So my experience is far from universal. Is what I'm saying applicable to every situation, in every place, of course not.
But hopefully you will be able to see how the things I discuss reflect through history and through different societies and quite possibly your own life. The other day I was joking with a friend of mine about good strip club names for a gay men's strip club which got us talking about the international mail catalog. That led to how the internet changed pornography, the apparently extinct phenomena of wood's porn, and how helicopter parenting and access to the world from your own bedroom means suburban kids are no longer living the same. Get out of the house and come home in the streetlights are on, teenage reprobate life which we both enjoyed.
Our teens in the late 90s for me and early thousands for him were wild, free and miraculously non-lethal, though not for lack of trying. Chants Encounters with Ripley Page, Girly magazines stuffed into dead trees and all. All of a sudden a whole slew of current true crime issues hit me like a gut punch and I knew the answer to my perennial true crime discussion problem. How do you functionally reconcile the world being simultaneously incredibly dangerous and incredibly safe?
You do it by rejecting the idea that the danger is going to be a sudden, blind-siding experience sweeping in out of nowhere. Reject the idea that what we have to worry about most is stranger danger. We as a society teach children to trust and obey familiar faces, but broadly dismiss the known fact that these are the people most likely to hurt them. The situation is sadly little better for adults.
There are innumerable studies backing this up, but just to pick a few handy sets of statistics. The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, or RAINN.org, derives statistics from U.S. Department of Justice sources. According to them, 70% of reported rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.
And when you focus in on children and teens, that number becomes a staggering 93%. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, in a 2011 report from the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, every year more than 200,000 children are abducted by family members. However, only 115 reported abductions represent cases in which strangers, abducting kill children, holding for ransom, or take them with the intention to keep. An additional 58,000 are taken by non-relatives with primarily sexual motives.
These non-family and stranger abductions add up to about a quarter of the number of family abductions, and yet this is the narrative we expect. The Bulletin later points out that in their words, registered sex offenders contribute to a miniscule part of the child abduction problem. In contrast to media reporting, the number of cases involving a registered sex offender is decreasing. They go on to say, the FBI assesses with high confidence that despite media reporting, the majority of child abductors involved in FBI child abduction cases, FBI child abduction rapid deployment team deployments, and AMBER alerts have a relationship with a child victim.
Percentages for AMBER alerts involving registered sex offenders in the years discussed in the Bulletin range from 2% to 0 reported cases in one year. I highly recommend reading both that Bulletin and the Washington Post article linked in notes. According to the 2015 FBI Crime in the United States report, more than 29% of homicide victims were killed by someone they knew other than family members, acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc. 12.8% were slain by family members, and 10.2% were killed by strangers.
The relationship of victim to offender is unknown in the other 47% of offenses. All sources indicate that though men are typically killed by strangers or bear acquaintances, when the victim is a woman it is exceedingly likely that the perpetrator will be at least an acquaintance but more likely a romantic partner. We are sending exactly the wrong messages. We have now multiple generations of children who have been taught to avoid public spaces watch out for any strangers and put their trust only in family and friends.
Combine that with a societal tendency to dismiss or actively suppress reports of wrongdoings by trusted figures and what we have is the literal worst case scenario for protecting people and preparing people to protect themselves, which brings me to the keepers. If you're not familiar, this is a recent Netflix series and I have linked the trailer in notes. According to their summary, this docuseries examines the decades old murder of sister Catherine Ceznick and its suspected link to a priest accused of abuse. I'm only about two and a half episodes into it, so aside from a few of the sort of nitty-gritty details I don't tend to go into in quid pro quo anyway, it can't exactly spoil anything.
But if you've seen even the trailer, it should be pretty clear why watching it would get these questions rattling around in the back of my head. I won't say anything more about it except that it started a little slow and frustrating, but then it very rapidly got not slow and differently frustrating for a whole slew of other reasons. What I have seen so far was very good and very hard to watch, which I suppose is nice confirmation once again that I am not an emotionally snotted creeper. I highly recommend at least the two and a half episodes I saw before I had to put it aside to write this episode.
And then when you're done and can stomach more on the subject, check out case file podcast episode 34 on the Catholic Mafia, which straight up made me cry. These are two breathtaking, staggering, heartbreaking examples of why the focus on stranger danger is so misguided and dangerous. Made all the words for the fact that when you start paying attention, there are a thousand stories which are almost indistinguishable. I guess if there's any recommendation I have for this world in light of these questions, it would be that it's time to start thinking and teaching and assuming less about who in specific is dangerous or trustworthy, but what makes someone dangerous or trustworthy?
Technically and sexually abusive relationships often start in recognizable ways, and these warning signs need to be taught divorced of expectations about where they are coming from. The FBI specifically notes that teaching children to obey elders without question makes them vulnerable to predatory crime. Children should distrust people who attempt to take them places without parental consent, but most especially those who the child knows. Children and adults alike should be taught to demand and respect body autonomy from all people.
And while I recognize we're far from this goal, society needs to start stepping up for vulnerable people who step up for themselves regardless of who they're stepping to. As a connected aside, one of the things which strikes me most when I watch shows about missing and endangered teens is how quickly I myself would have been dismissed by law enforcement if something had happened to me. Every time I see a show about a weird troubled smart girl hanging out with the wrong crowd who was dismissed as a runaway, but shows up two weeks, years or decades later as remains, I see myself. Thankfully, the response to missing or dead children and teens is improving significantly, but I can say with complete confidence that where I abducted or killed as a teen, I would have been exactly the kind of kid who would have been neatly labeled or run away or a suicide.
I was a D&D playing, black metal listening, rebellious weird kid who got into rather a lot of trouble with my weird kid friends. And I think one of the saddest implications to dwell on is that I was not a good pretty white girl. Thankfully, I never required that level of advocacy, but there are so many who do. The main takeaway here is that when you reject what everybody knows about what a victim and perpetrator look like and focus on the facts, you can live in the world without hiding away from danger and still protect real, live, vulnerable people.
If you want to weigh in on the danger of stranger danger or if you have other questions about true crime and forensics psych, seek me out at quidproquocast on Twitter, Facebook, Patreon, Instagram, Gmail, Adthe.com, and wherever fine, internet are sold. I am, as always, the most active on Twitter. On a couple of more administrative notes, I will be away for the first two weeks of August, so while I will do my best to keep connected, I will be several states away from my Wi-Fi, and a cellular data plan is a harsh mistress. I'd like to thank my newest Patreon supporters, Lainey from the True Crime Fan Club podcast, and Tom Cull.
I'd also like to thank my newest 5-star iTunes reviewer, Nasked Fladibus. August's Murder of the Month book pick is not yet decided at the time of recording, but I will announce it on my Twitter as usual. Feel free to join us at the Murder of the Month page on Facebook for more information. QuidProquo is produced from Stemfistern by me, Elstewart, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.
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