Is it alright to drop children off at the mall or the movies by themselves?

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Nancy McBride
National Safety Director, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
www.missingkids.com  
1-800-THE-LOST

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) mission is to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them.

NCMEC was established in 1984 as a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization to provide services nationwide for families and professionals in the prevention of abducted, endangered, and sexually exploited children. Pursuant to its mission and its congressional mandates (see 42 U.S.C. §§ 5771 et seq.; 42 U.S.C. § 11606; 22 C.F.R. § 94.6),

The NCMEC serves as a clearinghouse of information about missing and exploited children, operates a CyberTipline that the public may use to report Internet-related child sexual exploitation, provides technical assistance to individuals and law-enforcement agencies in the prevention, investigation, prosecution, and treatment of cases involving missing and exploited children, assists the U.S. Department of State in certain cases of international child abduction in accordance with the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, offers training programs to law-enforcement and social-service professionals, distributes photographs and descriptions of missing children worldwide, coordinates child-protection efforts with the private sector, networks with nonprofit service providers and state clearinghouses about missing-persons cases and provides information about effective state legislation to help ensure the protection of children.

Is it alright to drop children off at the mall or the movies by themselves?

In this video series, Nancy McBride, the National Safety Director for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children answers questions regarding personal child safety on topics ranging from the Internet, School safety, Holiday safety, and information about child identification. The Q&A provides helpful tips and tools for parents and guardians to help keep their children safer.

This expert: 90,416 views

This series: 22,546 views

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Transcripts

Host: Is it alright to drop children off at the mall or at the movies by themselves?

Nancy McBride: Parents and guardians really should understand that public venues like malls or movies are not safe places for kids to be alone because one of the things we do know about perpetrators is they look for access and opportunity, they look for places where kids are going to be and then they look for an opportunity to make that overture to the child and try to get the child to do something. So, a child who is alone in a public place is potentially more vulnerable to that than a child who is with other kids certainly with adults who are supervising them. So, do not think just because it is a movie or it is a mall and it is enclosed that it is a safe place because those are really not good places for kids to be alone.

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