The other side of missing children

One of the most troubling things that occurs in our society is how rumor and innuendo becomes "truth" and "fact" just because someone says it is. This column is a response to the editorial in the Wednesday, Feb. 23 edition of the McCook Daily Gazette. I'm particularly referring to the following quote: "According to the National Crime Information Center and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, "on average in the United States, a child is reported missing every 41 seconds." The rest of the editorial strongly advocates every child being enrolled in a child identification program, in case they are abducted.

Next Fall semester, I will be teaching a class at MCC called "The Mythology of Crime and Criminal Justice" and I will be using a college textbook by the same name. The text was written by Victor E. Kappeler and Gary W. Potter and is published by Waveland Press, Inc. This is the fourth edition of the text (2005). Chapter Three is titled, "The Myth and Fear of Missing Children." The following are quotes from that chapter:

"In national surveys, three out of four parents say they fear their child will be kidnapped by a stranger. They harbor this anxiety no doubt, because they keep hearing frightening statistics and stories about perverts snatching children off the street.

"For more than two decades the media, government, and corporations have created and capitalized on the fear of children being abducted.

"In its annual report for 2002, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children clearly states: "Like so many other public-policy initiatives, our attack on this problem began not because of research or analysis, but because of real children and their stories.

"Policies based on stories instead of research and analysis exaggerates one aspect of a problem while ignoring others.

"In NCMEC's featured publication 'Is this YOUR child?' If not-It may be the NEXT TIME (2003) the second page asks, 'Do you know how many children are missing each year? The answer is nearly 800,000 children, more than 20,000 per day.'

"The media can transform a few stories into a theme, giving a false impression of the magnitude of a problem. As Leonard Pitts (2002) states: "There's been an unintended byproduct of the all-the-news-all-the-time culture, an unexpected result of the news cycle that never ends.

Namely, that an industry whose chief product used to be information has begun manufacturing a new product: hysteria. (p.17)"

"Beginning in 1983, the public was deluged with statistics on missing children published by sources varying from newspaper articles and private organizations to governmental reports. These reports generally indicated that between 1.5 and 2.5 million children were missing from their homes each year (Congressional Record-Senate, 1983). Of those reported missing, it was predicted that as many as 50,000 children would never be heard from again (Schoenberger and Thomas, 1985). It was also estimated that as many as 5,000 of these missing children would be found dead (Congressional Record-Senate, 1983). These are truly alarming statistics. If correct, the United States would be experiencing a missing child epidemic on a scale that is unthinkable. In 1990, there were about 53.5 million children under the age of 15 in the United States.(U.S. Census, 2003). If the 2.5 million numbers were accurate, that would mean that 1 in every 21 children in the United States were missing. Of those 1 in 50 would never be heard from again, and 1 in 500 would be found dead. Of course, those numbers are completely inaccurate."

So, let's get the numbers correct.

"Bill Treanor, director of the American Youth Center (now Youth Today) presents the following numbers: Up to 98 percent of missing children are in fact runaway teenagers. Of the remaining 2 to 3 percent, virtually all are wrongfully abducted by a parent who has lost custody. That leaves fewer that two to three hundred children abducted by strangers annually, while the merchants of fear would have you believe that five thousand unidentified bodies of children are buried each year."

The National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrown-Away Children (NISMART) released the following information: Runaways account for approximately 86.5 percent of all missing children (some of these runaways are "thrownaway children"-children whose parents force them out of their homes or refuse to allow their return). An additional 10.5 percent of missing children were abducted by a family member, not a stranger. The remaining 3 percent were the victims of non-family member abduction, but not necessarily a stranger. Only 115 children or about .00006 percent of the missing children population were missing in circumstances that at all resembled the media depiction of stranger abductions. It is even possible that some of those children were abducted by family members or acquaintances."

Child abduction is a terrible tragic thing, but to claim it is an epidemic when nothing could be further from the truth, is just plain wrong.