SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Roselia Tamayo and her family moved from the rough side of town to a tidy block of two-car garages, bougainvillea and rose bushes just two months before her 9-year-old daughter was abducted from their new home.

Like many heads of first-generation families who immigrate to Silicon Valley, Tamayo sought a new neighborhood with superior schools, fewer gangs, safer streets.

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Assistant District Attorney Matt Braker

Instead, tragedy found the family.

It has only been a week since a man forced his way into their home, beat Tamayo's 15-year-old son, bashed the mother with a metal pan and kidnapped her daughter for two days. Now, Tamayo says she must move again.

"We want to start a new life in another place," Tamayo, 31, said this week in front of the manicured ranch home she began renting in April. "We thought this neighborhood was more safe, less ugly. But she could not have a normal life if we stayed here."

Some experts on child violence say moving on -- despite working so hard to get there -- might offer the family the best chance at rebuilding their lives.

"Recovering is more complicated when the crime involves familiar aspects -- like when someone is held hostage in her own home," said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

"They'll associate home with terror. The house itself and the neighborhood will have some reminders for her."

Paula S. Fass, a University of California, Berkeley professor and author of "Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America," said children are surprisingly resilient and often recover from horrendous crimes -- the girl was allegedly raped repeatedly -- if they have full family support.

She said maintaining family unity is more important than abandoning the crime scene, and the family shouldn't necessarily leave the house, which is close to the girl's father, who is divorced from her remarried mother.

Still, Fass said, she can understand the urge to leave.

"If they had been here for a long time, moving would be a terribly wrenching situation, taking her from her friendships and other relationships," Fass said. "But they've only been here for a short time, so maybe moving could work."

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San Jose is the safest big city in America, according to an analysis of FBI statistics released in March by Morgan Quinto Press. It bested 30 cities with populations over 500,000 for its low rates of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft.

Crime is relatively rare throughout more than 170 square miles of San Jose sprawl, but the east side where the Tamayos moved from had significantly more child molestations and narcotics-related crimes in the fourth quarter of 2002 than their new area, according to the city's most recent Official Annual Uniform Crime Report.

The city's east is generally less affluent than the Tamayos' new neighborhood in the south, which boasts newly constructed $400,000 townhouses, technology office parks and six-lane boulevards.

Many immigrants land in the working-class east -- home to garden centers and tire distributors, Vietnamese nail salons and Mexican butcher shops -- and try to save money and get better jobs in hopes of moving south.

"They're two very different neighborhoods," San Jose Police Sgt. Steve Dixon said. "A lot of people move there for a newer home and less crime, but unfortunately, this is a good lesson: Very serious crime sometimes happens in very good neighborhoods."

Police say their suspect, 23-year-old Enrique Sosa Alvarez, met the victim when she played with the twin 11-year-old daughters at his girlfriend's house less than a mile from the Tamayo's new home.

They emphasize that the girl may have been victimized wherever they had moved -- even a tony suburb.

"If this family had moved to Palo Alto or Menlo Park or Hayward, this still could have happened," Dixon said. "There were a number of motivations here, but clearly one was his motivation for this girl."

For years, Tamayo has impressed on her daughter the importance of keeping an eye out for strangers and calling 911. The mom said Wednesday she doesn't fault the neighborhood.

"Locking the doors," she said, "wouldn't have helped in this case."