So basically they acknowledge something is afoot but won't take it seriously until someone's child is physically taken and gone.
Where does it say that? It looks to me like they say they investigated and found nowt untoward and also worked out that rather than one group being accused regularly it was totally different people with the only similarity being that they were foreign (but from different countries) which seems to suggest what I said earlier that it is more likely simply people being paranoid about foreigners after the Rotherham thing and then these allegations gathering momentum. You should have seen the we are Barnsley Facebook page earlier. It was full of ignorant comments from people talking about foreigners as if they are all the same person.
You wanted to know why ? http://www.pulse2.co.uk/news/local/shipley-abduction-claim-proved-to-be-unfounded/
Happens all the time every where. I heard the "kidnapped child taken into bogs - hair cut, clothes changed and mother only identified child by shoes as gypsy/ asian / albanian couple tried to escape story" loads of times, about meadowhall, morrisons at brampton, asda in Barnsley - well anywhere. Natural phenomenon appararantely.... http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/kidnap.asp