Missing And Exploited Children

Beginning in the late 1970s, highly publicized cases of children abducted, sexually abused, and sometimes murdered prompted policy makers and child advocates to declare a missing children problem. At that time, about 1.5 million children were reported missing annually. Though dated, survey data from 1999 provide the most recent and comprehensive information on missing children. The data show that approximately 1.3 million children went missing from their caretakers that year due to a family or nonfamily abduction, running away or being forced to leave home, becoming lost or injured, or for benign reasons, such as a miscommunication about schedules. Nearly half of all missing children ran away or were forced to leave home, and nearly all missing children were returned to their homes. The number of children who are sexually exploited is unknown because of the secrecy surrounding exploitation; however, in the 1999 study, researchers found that over 300,000 children were victims of rape; unwanted sexual contact; forceful actions taken as part of a sex-related crime; and other sex-related crimes that do not involve physical contact with the child, including those committed on the Internet. Recognizing the need for greater federal coordination of local and state efforts to recover missing and exploited children, Congress created the Missing and Exploited Children's (MEC) program in 1984 under the Missing Children's Assistance Act (P.L. 98-473, Title IV of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974). The act directed the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to establish a toll-free number to report missing children and a national resource center for missing and exploited children; coordinate public and private programs to assist missing and exploited children; and provide training and technical assistance to recover missing children. Since 1984, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has served as the national resource center and has carried out many of the objectives of the act in collaboration with OJJDP. In addition to NCMEC, the MEC program supports (1) the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force program to assist state and local enforcement cyber units in investigating online child sexual exploitation; (2) training and technical assistance for state AMBER (America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert systems, which publicly broadcast bulletins in the most serious child abduction cases; and (3) other initiatives, including a membership-based nonprofit missing and exploited children's organization that assists families of missing children and efforts to respond to child sexual exploitation through training. The Missing Children's Assistance Act has been amended multiple times, most recently by the Protecting Our Children Comes First Act (P.L. 110-240). This authorization, which expires at the end of FY2013, outlines the duties of OJJDP and NCMEC in carrying out activities intended to assist missing and exploited children. The ICAC Task Force program is authorized separately under the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-401), as amended, through FY2018. The AMBER Alert program is authorized under the PROTECT Act (P.L. 108-21). P.L. 108-21 authorized funding for the program in FY2004. Congress has continued to provide funding in each year since then. Missing and exploited children's activities are collectively funded under a single appropriation for the MEC program. For FY2012, Congress appropriated $65 million to the program.

Child abduction is the most widespread form of child victimization studied. In 1992 alone, a total of 27,553 cases of missing children were reported in New York State through the Missing Children Register. The majority of missing children cases involved suspected runaways. Abduction cases accounted for one percent of the total report; those committed by family members comprised the most frequent form of abduction (as opposed to abduction by strangers). In addition, 88 percent of the children reported missing were age 13 or older, 60 percent were girls, and 58 percent were white. Child abduction is a serious socio-economic problem. Until now there has been no text that addresses the incidence, psychological dimensions, and explanatory models of child abductions. This book fills a need by focusing on variables that assist in confronting and preventing child abductions, including teacher training, public education and awareness, psychotherapeutic techniques for families and friends of abducted children as well as the children themselves.

Concern about missing and exploited children gained national prominence in 1981 when Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old son of John and Reve Walsh was abducted and subsequently found murdered. A year later, with the help of other parents of abducted children, the Walshes worked for the passage of the Missing Children's Act of 1982 and later for the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1984, to assist in recovering such children and bringing perpetrators to justice. The Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children Protection Act that was instituted in 1999 reauthorised and amended the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1984. This book presents an overview of the issues that face the legislation pertaining to missing and exploited children. In addition, the book discusses the various efforts that are being taken to enhance the ability to locate the missing children. Contents: Preface; Missing and Exploited Children: Overview and Policy Concerns; The Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children Protection Act (MERCPA): Appropriations and Reauthorisation; Bibliography; Index.

The book comprises country reports of the 10 new EU Member States. Each country report provides essential definitional information regarding the various forms of sexual exploitation of children and types of missing children, outlines the way data collection on sexual exploited and missing children by various governmental (police, judicial, other) and nongovernmental actors is organised, and delivers available data on the phenomena concerned. A final, comparative report bridges the country report information into a first epidemiological state of the art for the 10 new Member States and for the entire enlarged EU, comparing the newly gathered information with information collected in the initial 15 Member States during a previous study, the report of which has been published in January 2004 as the first book in the Childoscope series.