ONE of York's leading police officers today backed The Press in calling for a change in the law over child kidnap.

Detective Inspector Jon Reed, of York CID, endorsed our calls for strangers who snatch children to be placed on the Sex Offenders Register, or be banned from working with or having contact with youngsters.

He said: "The problem is that the Government doesn't recognise this one offence under the rules for making orders against defendants.

"For sex offenders, there are fantastic restrictions which can be imposed, but there is an anomaly in the law regarding the abduction of children. Certainly it would a good thing to have a change in the law so judges have the opportunity to impose any orders they feel appropriate.

"It would be an important step towards child protection and allow judges to decide whether they should go on the Sex Offenders' Register or have other restrictions imposed."

The Press has teamed up with Sara Payne, mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne, and Shy Keenan, chief advocate for the charity Phoenix Survivors, and is petitioning new Home Secretary John Reid to bring in a law of stranger abduction.

We are urging people to back our campaign, launched after 52-year-old Terry Delaney was jailed for four years for trying to snatch 13-year-old Natalie Hick at a bus stop in Acomb last October, but could not be put on the Sex Offenders' Register.

Natalie bravely gave up her right to anonymity to describe her ordeal in The Press, after we applied for reporting restrictions to be lifted.

Det Insp Reed said: "At the time of the incident, we did look at crimes of a similar nature, to see whether Delaney may have been responsible.

"We also looked into his past to see what access he had to children and discreetly carried out inquiries of people he came into contact with.

"But of all the cases we could find of child abduction and attempted child abduction, nothing so far has been traced to him."