It's not for publicity. I think the child told her parents a fanciful story and it got out of hand. It might be grounded in truth - maybe someone really broke into their home, maybe the child saw him, but the rest of it just doesn't hold any water to me. As for the Police taking it seriously - are they? It's easy (and politically necessary) to say they are, but are they really taking it seriously as an attempted child abduction?
I hope you understand that I neither believe it to be true, nor discount it as false. I won't take secondary or tertiary sources at face value. So this story is no more than a range of probabilities to me.