UK kidnap family lured by 'safe' NZ

By LOUISA CLEAVE


A family who became household names in Britain when their newborn baby was abducted from hospital are moving to New Zealand because they feel it is safer.

Ten years ago, Roger and Karen Humphries' daughter Abbie was taken by a woman impersonating a hospital staff member.

Abbie's kidnapping from Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre sparked frenzied media coverage until she was found unharmed two weeks later.

The Humphries told a British newspaper they wanted to bring up their family - Abbie, now aged 10, Alice, 7, and Charlie, 14 - in a place where people were not afraid to leave their back doors open. A visit to a New Zealand beach on a recent holiday had been the clincher.

"What persuaded me was when, in the height of the New Zealand summer, we went to the beach and found a line of gas barbecues ready-installed by the council," Mr Humphries told the Daily Mirror.

"A polite notice requested users to clean them up and remove their rubbish after use. In this country [England], the equipment would have been wrecked, rubbish would have been strewn everywhere and the gas bottles stolen."

The family told the Mirror that Nottinghamshire was not the safest place in the world and the local paper was full of stories about shootings, drugs and muggings.

They described New Zealand as a place "where people aren't afraid to leave their back doors open".

Mrs Humphries said she had been offered a job by a former midwife colleague who lives in New Zealand.

Her husband would work as a builder, the paper said.

They said the decade-old kidnapping drama also played a part.

"People still recognise the name Abbie Humphries. We will never completely escape it, but it will be nice to live somewhere where to most people the name means nothing."

The Mirror highlighted New Zealand's recent crime statistics which showed recorded crime at a 20-year low.