Nowhere Child podcast: Come with me: did this happen to William Tyrrell?
“Come with me,” said Sterling Free to the little girl he later abused. Did William Tyrrell go with a stranger?
A seven-year-old girl walks out of a suburban Kmart in Brisbane with a man she’s never met before, and nobody says anything because, why would they?
It looks like the normal situation in the world.
It happened in Brisbane last December, and the case has attracted the attention of police worldwide, for it proves — just as the James Bulger case in the UK proved — that children will go with strangers, who intend to do them harm.
NSW police believe this may have happened to William Tyrrell, a three year old foster child, who disappeared from outside a house in Kendall, on the NSW mid-north-coast, in 2014.
William’s disappearance is the subject of The Australian’s new podcast, Nowhere Child.
In the Brisbane case, a local man, Sterling Free, who is a father of twins, stalked the toy aisle at Kmart for several minutes, before choosing his victim.
With her mother briefly out of sight, he said: Come with me.
She followed, and nobody stopped them, as he led her into the car park. He took her to bushland 30 minutes away, and sexually assaulted her, before returning her to the shopping centre.
Free last week pleaded guilty in a Brisbane Court yesterday to taking a child for immoral purposes, deprivation of liberty and indecent treatment.
CCTV footage from the Westfield North Lakes shopping centre was shown to the court.
Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston told The Australian: “Children are trusting, they are curious and they are taught to listen to adults. Predators know that. Stories like this remind us of how important it is to talk with our children about how to respond to approaches from people they don’t know.”
Johnston’s foundation, which provides kits for parents to use to teach their kids, urges children to be wary.
“Even though children are more likely to be harmed by someone they know and trust, stranger danger is real and something we need to teach our kids about. But importantly, we need to do that without frightening them.”
Nowhere Child: Missing William Tyrrell, the first episode of The Australian’s new podcast series about a three-year-old child who vanished while in State care is out now. Search on your podcast app for Nowhere Child.
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