Missing Children

by **FourthBase** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:39 pm

#1 - Is there a complete online database of photos of missing children, and if not why? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=fourthbase>FourthBase</A> at: 7/22/05 3:36 am

by **jenz** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:44 am

No. Lets start with the USA. I am told the FBI know how many missing (stolen) cars there are, but have no figures for children. U.K.? Fairly recently a senior policeman who works in the 'people trafficking' field asked for help from customs and excise in logging the children who enter the uk un-accompanied . no dice - not enough man power. this was in response to the 'discovery' that children who passed through the care system fairly frequently disappeared. then see recent Met report on ritual sacrifice concerns for worries about African children entering the UK and disappearing. Many countries still do not take action immediately a child is reported missing - in spite of fact that it is known that the first 24 hours are the most crucial if the child is to be found alive. Basically, rather than devote manpower to searches which might turn out to be unnecessary, police forces hang about in case the child just took off under his or her own steam. See Dutroux case, Belgium, for the difference it can make if action is taken immediately. The only way a child's photo gets published widely is usually if there is a parent who does the necessary. As for the ra cases which I know of - it has been usual for police to assume that accounts of murders of children are fantasies (no evidence) and the phrase "no child has gone missing in xtown" , is a common put down. So, a lot of children disappear, and some people say that they have witnessed murders, but as long as little bodies don't get found by dog walkers, no-one does anything. sorry - this reply is a bit less structured than I'd planned but the question hits a nerve.

by **FourthBase** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:14 am

So say I observe a child under duress that I believe could have been kidnapped and abused...there's nowhere online for me to look to match up faces? That just stuns me. It would be relatively easy to create an online database. But I guess you're right, the missing children have to be reported first, the reports have to be taken seriously by the authorities, and the authorities have to be truly interested in saving children. Reading RI has made me doubt the earnestness of the child protection industry. Are there any law enforcement agencies that have proven to be sincere and useful in the fight against child exploitation? It makes me sick to think of the possibility that the same agencies sworn to protect children are infiltrated or even designed by people who serve the exploiters.

by **Asta** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:40 am

and I found some websites that list missing children. My initial impression is that these sites are not government sponsored. I agree that it is outrageous that there isn't a central database. <a href="http://www.missingkids.com/">www.missingkids.com/</a> <a href="http://www.findthekids.org/">www.findthekids.org/</a> <a href="http://www.childcybersearch.org/">www.childcybersearch.org/</a> <a href="http://www.childsearch.org/">www.childsearch.org/</a> <a href="http://www.pollyklaas.org/">www.pollyklaas.org/</a> and so on. I don't know yet if these sites overlap, that is, are duplicative, but it's making my heart hurt to contemplate how many missing children there are.

by **jenz** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 11:03 am

Yes, obviously if you see a child under duress, stick your neck out and make a scene. Another useful database which does not exist might be a searchable series of files on seized pornographic material, giving key words so that when r.a. and similar testimony is given, there might be some chance of crime scenes being matched to the material which these groups tend to produce to finance their agrandissement. (many survivors can give very specific detail). police unit in UK mentioned previously, only got face recognition software to use on this kind of material fairly recently, (I think after it was available to traffic police, but don't quote me on that). As for infiltration into child protection agencies - yes its happening, but still make that scene, still report and keep going. Another question which keeps popping into my head is why it is that the USA listening station which we were told could intercept communications in the penultimate gulf war and de-code them in between 2 and 20 minutes, can't be homed in on the communications networks of aforementioned criminals. I think that the answer to that question might encompass the 'why not' bit of yours.

by **FourthBase** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 11:23 am

How about another hypothetical: You're surfing the net and a unsolicited pop-up window with underage pornography appears. How do you report this to the authorities without implicating yourself? Furthermore, if there are police task forces sweeping the net, how could something like that ever elude them if they're actually doing their job? I have a feeling that if one had access to just the faces of children victimized in child porn and compared them to the faces of children featured in a missing children database, there would be a lot of hits. Unfortunately, I also have a feeling that the law enforcement agencies with the exclusive authority to research something like that are not serving the interests of the children.

by **RebelYell** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 1:03 pm

The number of children that go missing in the US on an annual basis is an outrageous number, in the hundreds of thousands. Where are all these missing children? 1. Kidnapped by the other parent, relatives or acquaintance. 2. Runaways. 3. ? Let's say 25% of those children can't be explained away. Where are they? It's not like we're finding thousands of dead bodies of children every year. They're somewhere, alive. This is from Klass Kids website: According the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) 85% to 90% of the 876,213 persons reported missing to America’s law enforcement agencies in 2000 were juveniles (persons under 18 years of age). That means that 2,100 times per day parents or primary care givers felt the disappearance was serious enough to call law enforcement. 152,265 of the persons reported missing in 2000 were categorized as either endangered or involuntary. The number of missing persons reported to law enforcement has increased from 154, 341 in 1982 to 876,213 in 2000. That is an increase of 468%. According to the United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Juvenile Justice Bulletin, June 2000 Kidnapping makes up less than 2 percent of all violent crimes against juveniles reported to police. (!) Based on the identity of the perpetrator, there are three distinct types of kidnapping: kidnapping by a relative of the victim or "family kidnapping" (49 percent), kidnapping by an acquaintance of the victim or "acquaintance kidnapping" (27 percent), and kidnapping by a stranger to the victim or "stranger kidnapping" (24 percent). Family kidnapping is committed primarily by parents, involves a larger percentage of female perpetrators (43 percent) than other types of kidnapping offenses, occurs more frequently to children under 6, equally victimizes juveniles of both sexes, and most often originates in the home. Acquaintance kidnapping has features that suggest it should not be lumped with stranger kidnapping into the single category of non-family kidnapping, as has been done in the past. Acquaintance kidnapping involves a comparatively high percentage of juvenile perpetrators, has the largest percentage of female and teenage victims, is more often associated with other crimes (especially sexual and physical assault), occurs at homes and residences, and has the highest percentage of injured victims. Stranger kidnapping victimizes more females than males, occurs primarily at outdoor locations, victimizes both teenagers and school-age children, is associated with sexual assaults in the case of girl victims and robberies in the case of boy victims (although not exclusively so), and is the type of kidnapping most likely to involve the use of a firearm. If any other segment of our population were so impacted, we would declare an epidemic: the center for disease control would fund a cure; we would pass and enforce legislation and we would increase private and public security. But, since it is only our children many in our society accept these appalling numbers as status quo. Although there are no quick fixes to the problems of child safety, there are many things that we can do as adults to address and positively impact the issue. <a href="http://www.klaaskids.org/pg-mc-mcstatistics.htm" target="top">Klass Kids</a>

by **Dreams End** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 1:21 pm

There are times you find information that, though perhaps peripheral to the "conspiracies" we worry about, make those conspiracies a bit firmer and move them further into the realm of the plausible. I'm going to post the whole story, as well as the link because I don't know how long Scripps-Howard keeps their stories. The reporter has other stories on this topic. Basically, the FBI is required by law to report how many children are missing in the country. They have never complied with this law since it was passed in 1990. It is not just that they aren't reporting that haunts me. It's that the excuse is so thin that they clearly aren't even trying to justify it. You see, local law enforcement on missing children is "confidential." Echoes of Abu Ghraib. Here's the story, followed by the link. There's also an ftp site linked on this page with a national database of "unreported" missing children. Oh, in the last 5 years, the FBI has received 4.2 MILLION missing person reports, "most of whom are children." <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Number of missing children treated like state secret By THOMAS HARGROVE Scripps Howard News Service 20-JUL-05 WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department for years has violated an act of Congress by refusing to reveal how many lost, runaway and kidnapped children have been reported to the FBI, a policy that has turned America's missing youth into a state secret. The FBI says such information is confidential. Advocates for missing children complain that the government's refusal to report the number of cases has allowed many police departments to escape public notice when they violate the reporting standards set by Congress in its landmark National Child Search Assistance Act of 1990. Advocates urge swift reporting because young kidnapping victims often are slain in the first hours of their abduction. But several major law-enforcement agencies, including the New York City Police Department, typically wait four or five days before reporting missing children to federal and state authorities, and delays of two weeks are common. Many other police departments, as a matter of policy, do not report missing children if they are runaways. The 1990 law ordered that all children _ regardless of the reason they are missing _ must be "entered immediately" into state and federal police computer networks. These databases have been credited for the recovery of hundreds of children in recent years. Congress also ordered the Justice Department to "publish an annual statistical summary" of missing-children cases received at the FBI's National Crime Information Center to ensure that provisions of its law are followed. But the FBI considered these crime files to be the property of local law-enforcement agencies, and the Justice Department has never published the required accounting. "Why didn't they issue these reports? I've been asking that question for nearly 15 years and never got an answer," said David Thelen, founder of the Committee for Missing Children, a Georgia-based advocacy group. "We can't have the Justice Department, the top law-enforcement agency in the nation, ignoring a law like this. They should be held accountable." Thelen said that an annual federal accounting of missing-children reports would have forced many local police departments to do a better job. "That would have opened up a lot of scrutiny of the system," he said. Members of Congress say they are alarmed by the failure. "This is critical. We are finding far too many cases that are going unreported," said Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. "Obviously, this is something the Department of Justice needs to work on. Congress wanted the information in order to assemble a comprehensive database of missing children," Foley said. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said he's "deeply concerned to hear the Justice Department is evidently not fulfilling its duty to gather this information." Dodd, hoping to improve the reporting rate for missing-children cases, for three years has proposed a bill requiring local police to alert federal and state authorities "within two hours" of receiving a missing-child report. "We need to do everything within our power to protect our children," he said. Justice Department officials refused to comment for this story. Telephone calls and e-mails from Scripps Howard News Service to more than a dozen Justice Department policymakers or their spokesmen went unanswered during the last three months. Letters to President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales mailed in mid-May also have gone unanswered, although an FBI spokesman confirmed they were received. But a recently retired top Justice Department official said she didn't know the law requires the report. "I'm sorry I did not become aware there was a report that we weren't filing that we were supposed to be filing," said former Assistant Attorney General Deborah J. Daniels, whom Bush designated as America's first federal Amber Alert coordinator in 2002 to help locate missing children. "I tried to identify all the reports we were supposed to be making, whether on a one-time basis or on a continual basis. You wouldn't believe how many there were. I don't recall finding any that we just simply had never filed," Daniels said. She said the Justice Department is aware that some police departments are in violation of the 1990 law. "There was an old, traditional belief that if any person was missing, police were supposed to wait 24 hours. And some state laws required 24 hours," Daniels said. "We are still in the process to convince (police) departments that, in these cases, they can't afford to wait 24 hours. Because a child is vulnerable, 24 hours could mean the difference between life and death." Scripps Howard, to study the problem, in February asked the FBI for an accounting of how many missing-children reports it received from each state and from every county. The bureau refused, claiming the data was the property of local law-enforcement groups and not of the federal government. "It is inappropriate for the FBI to divulge information to the media about state and local law-enforcement records that reside in a law-enforcement-only database," said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. Bresson later said he was unaware of the reporting requirements under the National Child Search Assistance Act. "I'm not sure what, if anything, the act specifically directs the FBI to do," he said. The bureau prepares monthly summaries of missing-person cases, including the number of missing children. These records are confidentially maintained by the Justice Department, even though the 1990 law instructs the attorney general to publish annual summaries of missing-children reports. "The FBI does provide an annual report on missing persons to the Department of Justice. You would have to speak with DOJ on whether or not the numbers are released publicly," Bresson said. Further attempts to obtain missing-children data from Justice Department officials were unsuccessful. Scripps Howard was able to make a limited study of child-reporting rates by some police departments by using 37,665 missing-children cases received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children from Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2004. Most of these reports were given to the center by parents of the missing children. That study was based on a small sampling of missing-children cases. The FBI received nearly 4.2 million missing-person reports during the same five years, most of whom were children. Because Congress gave the National Center the authority to review FBI files, its investigators could check whether cases they received had been properly reported to federal authorities. About 12 percent of all of those missing-children cases did not appear to have been reported to the FBI. The New York City Police Department had one of the worst reporting rates in the study because detectives keep missing-children cases at the city's 85 precincts for days or weeks before passing them on to the central Missing Persons Unit, which alone has authority to report missing children to the FBI. Many other police departments were found to have low reporting rates, often because police have a policy of not reporting runaways. The Honolulu Police Department, for example, reported only about 10 missing children last year even though it arrested more than 2,700 runaway children. Daniels said that "most departments do an admirable job" in promptly reporting missing children, "but there's still some work to be done." She agreed with the FBI's claim that specific details contained in case files recorded in the National Crime Information Center database belong to local police departments. But she said she does not know why previous Justice officials did not begin reporting summary information when directed by Congress 15 years ago. "I have no idea what they thought in 1990," Daniels said. "I would have thought we would have been doing this on a regular basis." (Contact Thomas Hargrove at hargrovet(at)shns.com) <hr></blockquote> This story appeared here: <a href="http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=MISSING-FAIL-07-20-05">www.shns.com/shns/g_index...L-07-20-05</a>

Missing Children

Missing Children

children

Disheartening, to say the least

I did a quick search

children

Re: children

Re: children

missing children

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