Skeptical Saturday: Lost Children as Lure For Rape?

I saw this breathless warning about a "new 'gang' way of rape" (using a lost child as bait) pop up on my Facebook feed. Maybe you've seen it, too.

First of all, the awkward scare quotes around "gang" make it sound like your elderly aunt inquiring what these "gang bangs" are that she keeps hearing about.

Second of all, this isn't happening. Snopes confirms.

We scoured recent news stories in the U.S. looking for articles about such an assault and were unable to find any. If such a method of luring rape victims to their attackers had been used in one instance (and we've little reason to believe that it has), there has certainly not been a rash of small children pretending to be lost as part of a scheme to place women in jeopardy. 

 But are you ready for some fun facts? I knew you were.

I think it's fascinating how long we've been recycling some urban myths. Snopes pins this one to the 80s, in a story set immediately after WWII:

The tip-off about rapists using small children to ensnare women in their traps very closely fits an urban legend set in World War II that we know to have been around since at least 1985, the venerable Letter of Intent, wherein young women are impelled through their sense of compassion to hand-deliver a letter on behalf of a blind man and by so doing deliver themselves up for butchery.

Which in turn might well be connected to good ol' fashioned blood libel, some of the oldest anti-Semitic propaganda around.

The world is not full of psychopaths waiting to punish you for your good intent, so sleep easy.