Lisa Frye remembers her childhood in the 1970s. She and her friends would take off on their bikes and be gone half the day and no one worried.

“It was a wonderful time,” she says. “I had a wonderful childhood.”

By 1988, those carefree times were beginning to change. In Fort Wayne, the abduction and murder of April Tinsley sent a shock through the city. Later, the abduction and murder of another girl on the north side of the city reinforced that fear.

Frye, though, was living in Texas at the time and never heard of those cases.

Six years ago, when her daughter was only 5, Frye became part of another generation of parents thrown into fear when Alejandra Gutierrez, 10, was abducted while walking to a school bus stop and murdered.

Now, her generation’s fear is again reinforced by the slaying of Aliahna Lemmon last month.

She isn’t alone, she says. She has friends and other family members, some of a much higher economic status than her – “They live in fear,” she says.

It’s wrong, she says. Her daughter, who is now 11, has essentially been robbed of her childhood, she says. Frye has never been able to let her daughter out of her sight. She’s never been able to walk by herself more than a block to her grandparents’ house or a block to her father’s house. She’s never been permitted to do sleepovers at friends’ homes.

She’s had conversations with other parents who have similar rules, she says.

“Everyone’s like a deer caught in the headlights,” she says. “They’re keeping their kids a little closer.”

Frye has taught her daughter not to talk to strangers, something parents have been doing for ages. The problem today is that many of the molesters and abductors aren’t strangers. They’re people that families know.

It’s as though there is no safe haven anywhere.

One wonders why.

In part, Frye blames the Internet. It’s a place where molesters and abductors can congregate. It’s a new tool for molesters to prowl for victims.

Frye’s fear, though, has turned to anger.

So she wants to start a petition, a nationwide petition, and form an organization, some kind of organization, to address the issue of children being molested and abducted.

Children have no rights, she said. There should be a federal law concerning crimes against children with stricter enforcement, stronger penalties for first-time offenders and so on.

Other angry mothers have called attention to problems and turned them into national campaigns. All it takes is one mother who is able to be an anchor for like-minded individuals.

“I am a single parent and a two-time cancer survivor and because of this I know what it is to fight,” Frye says. She has limited energy, she says, “But I do have a voice and a burning desire to motivate and inspire people that together we can make a difference.”

Frye isn’t kidding anyone. She doesn’t know how to form an organization like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She isn’t sure how to start a nationwide petition. But she hopes that people, given a common cause, will come together.

There’s strength in numbers, and the more voices there are the better chance they will be heard.

“I’m refusing to live this way any more, as a potential victim,” she says. “There’s no freedom in that.”