Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
A HOAX emailer struck fear into the hearts of parents in the kingdom with claims that a child had been abducted, drugged and assaulted in a hypermarket.
The message urged people to pass on the news to friends about what 'happened today while shopping at Carrefour'.
It claims a mother was leaning over looking for meat and turned around to find her four-year-old daughter missing.
"I was standing there right beside her and she was calling her daughter with no luck," it states.
Within minutes of the doors being locked after an announcement was made the child was said to have been discovered in a drugged state in a bathroom, her head half shaved and dressed in her underwear with a bag of clothes, a razor and wig sitting on the floor beside her to make her look different.
Baffled Carrefour bosses confirmed the email was a hoax. It plays on and exploits the very worst of parents' fears, particularly coming in the wake of an incident just a few weeks ago in which a small child in Bahrain was dragged into a pick-up truck and only released when a family maid stepped in to help.
But it is an urban myth.
Nothing of the sort has occurred anywhere on the island. Philippe Leroy, general manager Carrefour Bahrain, said: "No such incident has taken place in the Carrefour at Bahrain City Centre - I am a hundred per cent fully aware of what happens in the supermarket.
"This is a very serious issue and if it happened at our store, as the general manager I would be fully aware of it, but it hasn't happened here.
"As for anywhere else in the world, I haven't heard of any such incident either."
In fact, the same story circulated in the UK in July last year and spread across the land. In Lincolnshire last October police issued an official denial to calm parents' fears.
Similar tales have also surfaced in other parts of the world from Malaysia to Australia - also untrue - and the report has been circulating for so long that it features on various urban myth websites with references dating back 10 years.
But one mum believes it has given parents a necessary wake-up call. Vikki Lord, of Saar, said: "I must admit when I first saw it I was very frightened, particularly since my six-year-old daughter runs off all the time. I was glad to find it wasn't true but it did give me, and lots of other mums, a wake-up call over how we act with our children when we are out."
