Child Abduction Never Again Can You Say I Did Not Know
Five myths almost missing children
David Finkelhor is the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Eye at the Academy of New Hampshire and a researcher for the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children.
The news, at the same fourth dimension shocking and hopeful, about the discovery of iii young women who went missing in Cleveland almost a decade ago has riveted the land. The notion of a stranger grabbing a child off the street occupies a prominent identify in popular fears. But the missing-children cases that rise to the level of news tend to misconstrue perceptions of how often children go missing and why. It'southward of import to sort out the myth and reality about missing kids.
1. Most missing children accept been abducted by strangers.
Stranger abductions, such equally the case of the three immature women in Cleveland, are fearsome because they appear random and then frequently involve rape or homicide. Merely children taken past strangers or slight acquaintances represent only one-hundredth of 1 percent of all missing children. The final comprehensive study estimated that the number was 115 in a twelvemonth.
Far more common are children who have run away, take gotten lost or injured, have been taken by a family fellow member (usually in a custody dispute) or just aren't where they're expected to be considering of a miscommunication. The but scenario more unusual than stereotypical kidnapping is when families falsely written report a child as missing to disguise murderous deeds.
While abduction and homicide are truly horrible, the costs of more mutual missing-children cases shouldn't be underestimated. Those cases, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, occupy vast amounts of police fourth dimension and leave lasting scars on their victims too.
2. More and more children are going missing.
The Cleveland instance has prompted a spate of missing-children manufactures and news reports: "Missing Children in America: Unsolved Cases," "Search for missing children never ends in Las Vegas," "LA Missing Children'due south Families May Feel Renewed Promise." It may seem similar we're in the midst of an epidemic. In reality, though, all signs bespeak that the problem has been improving. Many land missing-children agencies show declining numbers of cases. That trend is supported past FBI statistics showing fewer missing persons of all ages — down 31 percent between 1997 and 2011. The numbers of homicides, sexual assaults and almost all other crimes against children have been dropping, also.
Why fewer missing kids? Cellphones are almost certainly part of the explanation. When a friend of my son'south skiied off a trail and into the Maine wilderness near nightfall final winter, a cellphone phone call got the ski patrol to the correct spot and brusque-circuited what could take been a lengthy search and a possible fatality. Cellphones allow children to summon help and leave of threatening situations. They enable parents to figure out where their kids are when they don't come up abode. They afford teens a somewhat longer ternion than in the past and thus help counteract i of import motive — a quest for autonomy — for children who disappear on their own.
Other factors are probably involved in the refuse, also. Over the past three decades, nosotros have get more aggressive about finding, prosecuting, incarcerating, supervising, treating and deterring sex offenders. And we have implemented prevention programs and response systems, such every bit Bister Alert, that both discourage crime and resolve disappearances rapidly.
three. The Internet has made kidnapping easier.
Many parents worry nigh their kids coming together unsavory characters online. Just in low-cal of the falling rates of crimes against children, the idea that the Cyberspace amplifies danger is suspect. In fact, it may have contributed to the decline in missing children. For one thing, the Web has inverse the mode young people take risks: They do it more frequently at dwelling house. Instead of going to the unchaperoned open firm or the keg party at the quarry, immature people these days socialize and experiment online. Although they can meet people with bad intentions, the physical distance means that more fourth dimension and thinking elapse between an encounter and a crime.
Moreover, electronic tracks mean that schemes go discovered and foiled. Later on a mother in 1 of my studies establish due east-mails between her 13-year-old daughter and an out-of-state adult, planning a getaway, the man found himself having a tryst with law.
four. Prevention lies in teaching children to avert strangers.
Many schools and parents use the mantra "Never talk to strangers." It's hundred-to-one that this really helps. Everyone is a stranger at commencement; it's all about the context of the meeting, and that'south hard to convey. But nosotros practice know that children are vastly more likely to come to harm and fifty-fifty be abducted past people they know than by people they don't. We'd do much better to teach them the signs of people (strangers or not) who are behaving badly: touching them inappropriately, being overly personal, trying to become them alone, acting drunkard, provoking others or recklessly wielding weapons. We need to assistance children practice refusal skills, detachment skills and how to summon help. Nosotros need some new prevention mantras.
5. The main goal should be to reunite children with their families.
The professionals who deal with missing-children cases are primarily police force officers who are trained to locate immature people and bring them back. Sadly, the bulk of missing children are suffering from severe and protracted conflict in their families. They run abroad or are pushed out because they are at odds with their parents and siblings or because they are victims of abuse and neglect. They are taken or held by parents contesting fruitlessly over custody rights. Bringing these children dwelling house generally does naught most the conflict and corruption that consume away at their mental health and well-being.
So our response to missing children has to be about much more than than bringing them home. Information technology has to include resources — such as family unit therapy, mediation and child protection — that help to resolve conflicts. Better yet, information technology should include parenting education and other support programs that aid build strong families and forestall bug in the first identify.
outlook@washpost.com
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-missing-children/2013/05/10/efee398c-b8b4-11e2-aa9e-a02b765ff0ea_story.html
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