Suffer the Missing Children?

Taxpayer dollars continue to disappear while children don't.

Tadd Wilson from the November 1995 issue

On April 18, 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno approved the ill-fated federal raid in Waco, Texas, apparently because an unidentified FBI agent told her that "the Branch Davidians were beating babies," Reno said. More than 80 people, including 22 children, were killed during the raid.

Two years later, Reno wants to help the children again, this time by forming a new federal task force to "coordinate the delivery of federal services to missing children and their families." Those services include a national hotline, FBI investigations, searches conducted by U.S. Marshals and Customs officers, and parcel inspection by the U.S. Postal Service. The task force is composed of administrators from the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service, the Customs Service, Health and Human Services, and the Defense Department, as well as several Justice Department offices. The vice president of National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), co-host of the attorney general's announcement, will also sit on the task force.

While any effort on the part of government to improve performance and allocate resources more efficiently must be applauded, the figures used to justify the extension of the federal government's reach in law enforcement are questionable at best. The Department of Justice estimates that "440,000 children are lost or otherwise missing each year, including children abducted by a stranger or acquaintance; children abducted by a parent or family member; and children who are abandonedthrown awayor told to leave home." It also says that "450,000 children and young people run away from home every year." However, the attorney general's figures describe an epi demic that doesn't exist.

The history of missing children as a public issue is marked by inflated figures, often promul gated by organizations with an interest in scaring the public. Ten years ago, at the height of the missing children scare, The Denver Post ran an article detailing how "the inflated numbers them selves are damaging the lives of millions of parents, affecting how they feel about their children's safety and what they should teach their children about the society they live in." The Post also quoted family relations psychologist John McInvoy explaining how artificially
inflated numbers are "making children paranoid, too." McInvoy continued, "[T]here's a difference between healthy respect and caution and what's going on now. It's not healthy anymore." In the decade since the Post article, healthy respect and reasonable caution have still not emerged.

The Justice Department's quotation of questionable numbers is not an isolated incident. Every day, agencies and advocacy groups seeking political leverage or financial rewards present exagger ated evidence in stating their cases. The organizations concerned with locating and returning missing children to their families are no exception, and provide an excellent microcosmic view of the phe nomenon.

A Justice Department study conducted by David Finkelhor of the University of New Hamp shire shows that the attorney general's tally of 440,000 missing includes children missing for a "few minutes to overnight." According to an analysis of the Justice Department figures by the Statistical Assessment Service, an independent organization that examines research findings, 19 percent of the "lost" children misunderstood parental instructions; another 12 percent forgot the time. In all, 73 percent of those lost were home within 24 hours. Among runaways, STATS reports, half returned home within two days, and 73 percent of parents were aware of their child's location.

Those most closely associated with missing children also dispute the attorney general's claims. Once a supporter of inflated figures, Louis McCagg, director of Childfind, the nation's oldest missing children organization, estimates that 600 children annually are the victims of stranger abduction, not 4,600 as the Justice Department maintains. Even if 440,000 children were missing each year, only a fraction of these cases would fall under federal jurisdiction. "It's sad to say," says John Gill, director of Children's Rights of New York, "but some organizations are exaggerating the figures to make their cause seem more urgent."

Indeed, certain groups represented on the federal task force stand to gain from spreading the perception that child abductions continue to be a national epidemic deserving federal attention. The NCMEC, a prominent task force member, was founded in 1984 amid the hysteria created by a series of highly publicized child abductions, including the Adam Walsh case. The NCMEC offers a na tional computer network, access to the FBI's "missing person" and "wanted person" files, public service announcements, photos, posters, and training for law enforcement officers. The center also provides referrals to 50 nonprofit organizations that fulfill certain national standards. And, working in conjunction with private corporations such as Kmart and Polaroid, the NCMEC has provided parents with Kidcare passports that include a child's photo, descriptive information, and safety tips.

Ernie Allen, president of the NCMEC, notes that of the 800,000 cases of missing children occurring each year, 99 percent are resolved successfully by state and local police. Allen says that while child abductions are a serious problem, parents and children "don't need to be paralyzed by fear."

Nonetheless, the NCMEC itself has a history of inflating its figures on child abductions. A 1985 center brochure, for example, reports that at least 3,000 people are buried unidentified each year, and that "hundreds of these unfortunates are children." However, the College of American Pathologists reports that 200 unidentified children, dead from all causes including accident and disease, are buried annually.

The same brochure claims that one in four female children and one in 10 male children will be raped or sexually assaulted by the time they reach adulthood. The FBI's annual "Population-at-Risk Rates and Selected Crime Indicators" shows that in 1985, the rate of forcible rapes and rape attempts was 72.3 per 100,000 women of all ages. Without correcting for same-victim incidents and age, the FBI numbers yield a maximum rate of 1,300 per 100,000 women for the first 18 years of life (1.3 in 1,000 by adulthood), with male numbers considerably lower. A public affairs spokesperson for the NCMEC said that the center does not collect such information, nor has it ever been responsible for collecting national statistics.

Nor did the center's use of misleading statistics end a decade ago. In conjunction with its affiliate, the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, the NCMEC has claimed that as many as 50,000 stranger abductions occur each year, more than 10 times the Justice Department's own questionable estimates. Incredibly, this figure would yield a rate of three disappearances per state per day. The center currently offers a broad scope of estimates, ranging from 4,600 to 114,600.

The disparity among the estimates is due to controversy over the definition of "abduction." In the Justice Department's 1990 study, counting all attempted stranger abductions as "abducted chil dren" yields a total of 114,600, while using the legal definition of abduction yields 4,600. Though children ages 4­11 are the most common targets of attempted abductions, 50 percent of all actual victims are age 12 or older.

Also, since 1986, the NCMEC has sought to have old crimes reclassified as stranger abduc tions, including classifying "voluntarily missing" teenage runaways as "missing children." In 1986, 75 percent of the center's "successful recoveries" were runaway teens. At the same time, the center hired lawyers to sue other missing-children organizations such as Children's Rights of New York for contesting their figures, though the center now says it has a "terrific working relationship with the runaway community."

Since the beginning of 1990, the NCMEC has handled 16,644 cases. Of these, runaways accounted for 10,280, while family abductions made up another 5,271. In all, these cases account for 93.4 percent of the center's activities in this decade. Only 515 (100 per year) stranger abduction cases have been handled by the NCMEC since 1990, 3.1 percent of its caseload. Ninety-four percent of the NCMEC's successful recoveries are runaways and family abductions; 3 percent are stranger abductions. Of all the cases NCMEC has handled since 1984, 5,337
remain open. Of these currently active cases, runaways and family abductions account for 84.8 percent, while stranger abductions currently account for 6.7 percent of the NCMEC's active caseload.