Missing Children

To prevent abductions, a parent or caregiver should

• Know where the child is;
• Never leave a small child alone at home or in the car;
• Know the child's friends, their parents, and where they live; and
• Be alert to people paying special attention to the child.

If a child is abducted, it is important for the parent to give the best description of the child, clothes, jewelry, along with any pictures of the same, to law enforcement officials. Nothing should be touched or removed from the child's room or from the home that might have the child's fingerprints, DNA, or scent on it. (Fairview Heights Police Department 2002).

The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) website is helpful here. It receives more than 2.8 million hits per day. The network, made up of numerous websites sharing multilingual search databases, serves as an international resource for families and for law enforcement. It connects to websites in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These websites allow the filing of missing child descriptions within each of the above-listed countries and for searches in those countries.

If each nation and the international community work out cooperative agreements to track, find and retrieve missing children, work to strengthen families that protect women and children, alleviate abuse and teach precautions, fewer children will appear in the missing categories, and many of those who do will remain there for a shorter period of time.