WHITE 10-year-old girls are more at risk from child abductors than any other youngsters, Home Office research suggests today.

A report was commissioned after figures showed the number of abductions in England and Wales rocketed 45% in 2002-03, compared with the previous year.

It found the average victim in the 59 child abductions during the period was 10 years old, while 54% were female and 74% were white.

Of 361 attempted abductions in the year, the average victim was also 10 years old, while 61% were girls and more than 90% were white.

Home Office researchers said police guidelines on how to record offences with a sexual dimension should be re-examined, because such crimes appeared to be under-recorded.

A fifth of successful child abductions - 12 out of 59 - were sexually motivated.

In two cases analysed by researchers, the young victims were subjected to serious sexual assault.

Among incidents involving a stranger, police figures said just 4% were driven by a sexual motive.

But today's report said, "It seems reasonable to assume that many of the attempted child abductions by strangers, where the motive was not known, would have actually been sexually motivated.

"The most common scenario in these cases was a male offender attempting to entice a child into a car or physically attempting to drag a victim from a public place," it said.

There were 846 abductions and attempted abductions reported in the year, up from 584.

The largest increase was in attempted abductions by strangers, which rose 200% in a sample of five police forces.

Across the UK, 56% of all child abductions recorded by police involved a stranger.

But successful stranger child abductions made up just 9% of all recorded offences in the year, with a total of 68 victims.

Parental abductions - defined as removing a child from the UK "without appropriate consent" - were up nearly two-thirds from 56 offences to 92 in 2002-03.

Victims of parental child abduction were "much more likely" to come from ethnic minority groups, compared to other types of child abduction, making up nearly half of cases.

Statisticians suggested that the increase in attempted stranger abductions was partly due to a change in the way police record crimes under the National Crime Recording Standard, introduced in April 2002.

"It is feasible that reports of attempted child abductions, where no contact was made with the victim, may have gone unrecorded as crimesprior to the introduction of the NCRS," said the report.

Authors Geoff Newiss and Lauren Fairbrother suggested the Home Office should closely monitor the data, particularly if the number of offences continued to increase.

Guidelines on how to record parental abductions should also be reviewed to "ensure that only appropriate offences are recorded by the police," they added.