Like many parents, I was compelled by recent stories of little girls being snatched from their homes or neighborhoods, so I dusted off the familiar warnings. She has heard them before, not just from her parents but also from school teachers and DARE officers — all reinforcing a paranoid but necessary education.

        But the stories of little girls — one dying at the hands of her captor in California and another just barely escaping in Philadelphia — prodded me again to grimly give her this pop quiz:

        “What do you do if a man you don't know asks you to come look at his puppy?”

        When she doesn't answer immediately, her brother helps: “Run away and yell, "No! You're a stranger.' ”

        I figure that's a good answer, but I don't stop there. I wrack my brain for other possible strategies pedophiles might use.

        “What if someone comes to school and says Mommy or Daddy is sick or hurt? What if a stranger asks you to come and help them?”

        My daughter's typically merry face takes on uncharacteristic seriousness as she struggles with the answers. They're not natural for her.

Is it enough?

        I'm telling her to not trust people and to not give them the benefit of the doubt — and to be graceless and unhelpful in some circumstances.

        Finally, we go over a list of people she's allowed to trust, in the absence of her parents: police officers in uniform, parents of friends we know, teachers at her school.

        Here I ignore an internal voice reminding me that even this might not be enough.

        Just Wednesday, a third teacher at Amelia High School in Clermont County was indicted on charges of having sex with a student.

        Robert Cann Jr., a former assistant principal and gym teacher, is accused of having sex with a 17-year-old girl in his Amelia home in 1996.

        That follows the May indictments of Gregory Payne and Jeffrey C. Sears. Mr. Payne, a math teacher, is facing two counts of sexual battery for allegedly having sex with a female student in 1997 and 1998. Mr. Sears, a former English teacher and baseball and wrestling coach, faces four counts of sexual battery involving three female students in 1997 and 1998.

        The three have pleaded not guilty, according to Clermont County Prosecutor Don White.

Mixed messages

        Mr. White answers questions about how this could happen, but he's limited in what he can say. The teachers were longtime educators, role models. Their victims were 16 or 17. There might be other victims, he said, but some girls investigators interviewed don't realize it's a crime.

        “Some are under the mistaken impression that because they didn't resist their teacher that it couldn't be a crime,” he said.

        State law considers it sexual battery regardless of consent, he said, because teachers are in a position of high trust — the legal designation is in loco parentis, in the place of a parent. In similar cases he's prosecuted, students have had sex with teachers because they feared bad grades or lost chances at college. Others thought they were beginning romantic relationships and realized the ramifications only after they became adults.

        Then there's the mixed message our society gives: Men are encouraged to pursue much younger women, and girls are encouraged to be sexy at too young an age.

        As a parent, I'll make sure my message isn't mixed.

        I'm revising that personal safety lecture; my kids will get a different quiz when they're older.

        E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395.

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