Her prayer is echoed in suburban neighborhoods around the country, where the crime rate is far below what it is in big cities. These are quiet towns where people have been used to casually leaving their doors unlocked and sending their children out to play alone. This fall there are fewer of those simple acts of faith in community safety. Angie Housman was kidnapped as she got off her school bus; Cassidy Senter was grabbed on her way to a friend’s house. In one of the most highly publicized cases, 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma, Calif., was kidnapped from her bedroom during a slumber party on Oct. 1. Last week a 39-year-old career criminal was charged with her murder after he led police to her body. Hundreds of miles south, in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, a voracious child molester has attacked 32 children since February. Many of the victims, some as young as 5, were assaulted as they walked to school.
Of course, violence in the suburbs is not new. Many of the St. Louis-area parents now sheltering their children were kept indoors themselves during the 1957-58 Great Plains killing spree of Charles Starkweather. But the sense of suburb as sanctuary endures, and news of the vicious killings and attacks on young children, blasted across front pages and on the evening Dews, came as a shock. “It’s very creepy to walk these streets,” says Chris Waddell, who has lived in Hazlewood, Cassidy Senter’s hometown, for 25 years. “It feels like we’ve been scarred.” Normally, as she takes her daily hike around the neighborhood, Waddell can hear the shouts and laughter of children playing in their yards. But now the streets are silent. The flag flies at half-mast at Cassidy’s school, Garrett Elementary. There are pink ribbons on mailboxes, front doors, signposts, churches and fire stations. Pink was Cassidy’s favorite color; she was wearing a pink sweater when she died. St. Ann Police Chief Robert Schrader keeps remembering how Angie’s two Barbie dolls were buried with her in her casket. “In New York City or Los Angeles, this may happen all the time,” he says, “but it does not happen here. it just makes us mad as hell.”
In Petaluma last Thursday, thousands of people attended a memorial service for Polly Klaas. Joan Baez and Linda Ronstadt sang; President Clinton sent condolences. Polly’s father, Marc, sat with his head bowed as other members of the congregation held red roses or lighted candles. At about the same time that Baez was singing “Amazing Grace,” members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Rebekahs in Pasadena decided to dedicate their float in the Rose Bowl parade to Polly and other victims of childhood violence. It will be in the shape of a yellow bow, made of chrysanthemums and strawflowers.
Symbolic action isn’t enough in the San Fernando Valley. More and more mothers and fathers are driving their kids to and from school. In Canoga Park, parents plan to designate “safe houses” where kids can go if they feel threatened. At Van Nuys Elementary School, where a man fitting the molester’s description attacked two girls this month, children get daily instruction in what to do if a stranger approaches them: run and tell someone what happened as soon as possible. “We try not to get them to the point of being panicked,” says principal Sally Shane, “but we do want them to be alert.”
These efforts seem to be effective. Two weeks ago a man driving a burgundy van like the one the molester sometimes uses called out to a seventh grader a block from Robert A. Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks. She ran to some friends and reported the incident when she got to school. Principal David Almada called police and within three minutes the area was crawling with cops. They didn’t find anyone.
If police do arrest suspects in California and Missouri, some of the fear may fade for a while. But the people who live in St. Ann, Hazelwood, Sherman Oaks and Petaluma may never recapture their former sense of security. Cassidy Senter’s mother tried to protect her daughter; she even gave her a personal alarm to carry when the little girl went places by herself. Some neighbors heard its car piercing wail on the day she was abducted. They picked up the yellow, pager-size device where it had been dropped on the ground. They didn’t see Cassidy, didn’t know anything was wrong. When they couldn’t turn the alarm off, they buried it. For a little while, they enjoyed peace and silence. Then the police knocked on their door.
