The investigation into Aisling's disappearance has brought back painful memories - but also memories of reuniting children with their relieved parents.
There are classifications of kidnappings of little kids. There are kids who wander off and are picked up by a do-gooder who decides they can look after them better than their parents, or there's the accidental abduction where someone hits a child with a car and panics. There's kidnapping for ransom, where wealthy people are targeted, or there's conflict between two parents.
I think we can rule these out. Police would usually impose a media blackout in a ransom case, and Aisling has two loving parents who are desperately looking for her. So there are two remaining scenarios: sexual violence, or a nutty woman.
I am very wary of putting terror and fear and loathing out there in the community, especially for the parents who will already be beside themselves with fear. But the police will be very concerned about a sexual offender.
They will be checking prison releases and mental institution discharge records. They'll be checking their intelligence records for paedophiles and strange oddballs, even down to people losing underwear off clothes lines.
Most of us worry about the prevalence of perverts in society, but there's actually not that many of them, on a per capita basis.
Who knows? The fact that this child was seen in the company of a young woman, in my view, mitigates against a sexual offence. I say that very hopefully, and I would hate to be wrong.
That one little piece of information - an Asian woman in her 30s - is the source of the parents' hope. If that is right, it would augur well for the child being looked after, because that raises the possibility of a nutty woman pining for a child.
The police will be looking for people who have had miscarriages, or suggestions of infanticide, or busted relationships - anything like that. They will be doing what they can to engage with medical and psychiatric professionals.
There are tremendous privacy issues to wrestle with there, but they really need informal information from professionals who have concerns about a man or woman or couple acting oddly.
I urge any medical professional, who is balancing up confidentiality, to err on the side of the child's welfare.
We appear to have a foreign national involved. The fact she hasn't come forward, despite widespread publicity in Asian media, makes her a suspect.
What stuck in my mind is that she was wearing socks and sandals, which in our society is regarded as a little bit eccentric. It could suggest she's a recent immigrant - it's an odd way to dress in Auckland's climate.
There are two types of inquiry police officers hate doing: one is the murder of a police officer, and the second is the disappearance of a very young child. Those kids are not at the age of reason - they are co-operative with anyone. They think that all adults are nice people.
* Detective Inspector Graham Bell retired after 33 years in the force and now hosts television's Police Ten 7.
