MY CHILD IS MISSING - Each year in the United States over 850,000 children are reported missing. With the help of Local and State law enforcement, as well as the fifty plus non-profit organizations, ninety eight percent of these children will be recovered. However 17,000 of these children will not be recovered. These are the children we look for.
- What if?
It's Thursday afternoon, about 3:45. It's been a great day so far, you just closed a big deal and you canít wait to tell your husband. Maybe tonight the whole family can go out for a small celebration. You stop to look at the clock. Kelly should be calling. She usually calls between 3:20 and 3:30 to tell you she is home from school and to tell you about her day. Sometimes you would have to laugh at how excited she got over the littlest of things. She was so full of life, so happy. 3:45 is a little late but you tell yourself she probably stopped along the way to talk to her friends. At 4:00 you call home, no answer. 4:10, 4:15, still no answer. This is not like Kelly, for an eleven year old she is very responsible, you know, eleven going on twenty five. You call again at 4:30, still no answer. You call the neighbors, has anyone seen Kelly? You ask them to check the house, nothing. You try not to react, you know there is a good explanation. At 4:45 you tell your boss you have to go home. Itís now 5:45 you have been to the neighbors and called all Kelly's friends. The last time anyone saw Kelly she was walking toward home. She had told Ginger she had to hurry home; she wanted to call her mom to see if she had closed the bid deal she had been working on. If she did, her mom told her they would go shopping this weekend.- You call the police, your mad at your self for not calling sooner. They will send someone right over. You call Kelly's dad; he tells everything is going to be all right. He will be right home. Fear takes over and at this moment as you sit alone, you pray.
- The police arrive, the policeman tells you everything that can be done is being done. He tells you he has three children of his own. Kellyís dad arrives soon after the police. The look of fear on his face is something you will never forget. Itís now 8:00; Kelly has been missing for four and a half-hours. Friends and neighbors are organizing searches, talking on the phone, making plans. There is noise and commotion all around you but you feel and hear none of it. The police are back tracking Kelly's route home. You feel numb. People are pulling you and Kellyís dad in every direction. A policeman sits you both down, and wants to know where you both were when Kelly disappeared. What, you think that we took Kelly, that we would hurt her. You feel rage and hurt. The police tell you that they know these are hard questions, but its just part of their job. Thinking becomes impossible; others have to think for you. 10:00, where is she, what have they done with my baby?
- Eleven months have gone by, the phone rings; you pause for a second, than you pick it up, "Friends of Kelly Search Center, may I help you".
- The above story of a missing child is a composite of stories told to me by parents who have had their children go missing. The fear, the confusion, the feelings of total helplessness are all real. One parent told me that when she first learned her little girl was missing it was as if someone reached inside her body and ripped out her heart. She said she could not breath, she could not think, she could not function. She said everything in her life came to a stand still.
- If your child went missing, what would you do? Who would you call?
If this were you, what would you do? Who would you call? Who will help you find your child? What happens if your spouse takes your child? What happens if you child is still missing after several month? several years? Will there still be people around to help you? Will the police have resources available for you i.e., the names of child advocacy organizations that can help? Will the police direct you to the State Clearinghouse for Missing Children? Do the police know about the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children?- Very little congressional money goes to help parents of missing children
What we have found after eleven years is not encouraging. Of the approximately fifteen to twenty million dollars allocated for missing childrenís issues each year (the National Center gets approximately ten million of this) only about $125,000 goes directly to assist parents of missing children at the time of the abduction. This money is given to "Project Hope" which is a group of parents of missing and abducted children assisting parents who have just had their child go missing. There is no money allocated to help disseminate information about who can actually help in those first critical hours that a child goes missing. There is no money allocated to any of the fifty plus non-profit child-find organizations in the United States. There is not one single national program that disseminates information to parents on what to do if their child should go missing. What is desperately needed is a public service effort through television and radio to inform all parents on how to keep their children safe and what to do, and who to call if their child is missing or abducted.- Parents speak out
Over the years I have spoken to many parents about that first day, those first few days. How they felt, who helped? How they coped. Almost to the parent they have told me that after the police report, they are lost. There is nothing. No listing in the phone book or list of organizations who can offer assistance. If their child is a runaway or taken by a spouse they often feel that the police donít care. The police treat this as a domestic dispute and do not want to get involved. Police agencies do not allocate the money necessary to allow any kind of search for a missing child, especially if they are runaways or family abducted. In most cases a parent is left to run the search for their own child.- Judy Gifford and her daughter Kali
Judy Gifford's little girl was four and a half years old when she was killed by a twenty one year old neighbor, put in a trash bag and dumped in a water tower. For two and a half years Judy led the search for her little girl. For two and a half years Judy lived on hope.- I was blessed with the birth of an angelic baby girl on September 20, 1989. My precious little one suddenly became the main focus of my life and she was everything. On May 23, 1994 my little angle disappeared without a trace while riding her big wheel on the sidewalk out side our townhouse.
- Within a six-minute time frame, from the last time I saw my daughter until I called her name, she had disappeared. I was sure she had ridden her big wheel outside of her boundaries. I suddenly felt something dies inside of me as I searched for her and saw no sign of her, I was frantic and paralyzed.
- The hours turned to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years before we had an answer about Kali. The one question I am asked often is how I survived everyday without my daughter. I will have to admit that the ìnot knowingî was what ate me virtually alive on a daily basis. However, the one thing that I survived on during the duration of ìnot knowingî was the love I had for my daughter and HOPE.
- I never gave up hope that I would bring my little one home, however the day came when someone took that hope from me. I do believe that Kali knew that I did everything possible to find her and she is very proud of all us who never gave up.
- One day I was talking to Judy and she told me about the day that she and several volunteers were at one of the rest stops along the interstate handing out flyers of Kali. She was surprised at the number of people who did not want to take a flyer of her little girl. She said many of the people who took the poster, looked at it, than crumbled it up and through it in the trashcan further on down the sidewalk.
- PICTURE OF JUDY AND KALI
I never gave up hope that I would bring my little one home, however the day came when someone took that hope from me.- Miriam Hernandez and her daughter Yasmeen (Drea)
On August 7, 1997 Miriam Hernandez found out that her Saudi husband was not going to return her daughter Yasmeen from Saudi Arabia. The first thing Miriam did was call the police. The police told her it was a custody problem between her former husband and herself, that it was not abduction or kidnapping. According to Miriam, they did not even put me in contact with the missing children's unit. The police told Miriam that your daughter is with her father, what's the big deal?- Miriam contacted the FBI office in Florida. The support of the FBI was no better than the local police. Miriam had to return to the FBI office with information about international parental kidnapping Miriam had to prove to the FBI that under the 1993 Parental Kidnapping Crime Act, her husband was in fact a parental kidnapper.
- What many police and even prosecutors don't realize, or want to except, is that custody is a shared process. Each parent has a "right of custody" and when one parent takes a child away from the other without permission they are denying the left behind parent their "right of custody" There does not have to be a order of the court in order for there to be a breach of a parents custodial rights. When Miriam's former husband refused to return Yasmeen to her mother he denied her mother her share of custody of Yasmeen. Under The Hague Treaty, one of the first things a judge will determine is if there has been a wrongful removal of the child. It would be a wrongful removal of the child if the left behind parent were at the time of the removal exercising their "rights of custody".
- Therefore, when the police, prosecutors, or the FBI tell a parent that there has not been a kidnapping they are in error. When the child is removed from the United States, without the permission of the other parent, and with out a court judgment allowing the removal, the parent removing the child is in violation of the 1993 Parental Kidnapping Crime Act which is a federal offense. At this point law enforcement has the right to charge the parent who has taken the child with parental abduction.
- In 1999, Yasmeen, who now uses her chosen name Dria, was able to escape from Saudi Arabia and be reunited with her mother. It cost Miriam and her family everything they had in order to buy Yasmeenís way out of a country that does not recognize parental kidnapping as a serious offense. In Saudi Arabia, the mothers have no rights in decisions deciding custody. When you consider the trouble a parent has here in the United States and than add to that the frustration of dealing with a foreign legal system you can see why getting a child back once they leave the country is almost impossible. This entire process is further complicated when a country, such as Saudi Arabia, has not signed the Hague Treaty. Without government intervention, the chances of recovering American children from a Muslim country is almost impossible.
- PICTURE OF YASMEEN AND HER MOTHER
"Your daughter is with her Father, what's the big deal"- Barbara Kurth
In 1979, when Barbara's former husband took her two little girls, there was no National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. There was no toll free number for her to report her girls missing. There was no clearinghouse for missing children in Massachusetts. There was no National Clearinghouse for law enforcement. There were no congressional hearings on child abduction. There were not any non-profit organizations to assist Barbara and give her support. Parental abduction was looked on by law enforcement as a domestic dispute between two parents who can not get along. Barbara told me that when she went to the police to report the abduction of the girls they "looked at me like some pitiful creature"- Barbara was forced to do the only thing she could, she went to the lawyer who had handled her divorce and he was able to get a contempt of court ruling against her former husband for violation of an existing custody order, as well as a warrant for the arrest of her former husband for kidnapping. However, law enforcement refused to act on the contempt of court or the warrant. According to Barbara these two court documents "just set there"
- Barbara's case is unique in the fact that what she did she did on her own or with the help of her lawyer. I find it sad, that twenty years later, law enforcement, for the most part, still looks at parental abduction as "domestic disputes" and they would rather not get involved.
- PICTURE OF BARBARA
When Barbara went to the police to report the abduction of her children, they "looked at me like some pitiful creature"- Tommy and Melanie Addison and their son Brent
Brent was reported missing July 12, 1994. His body was discovered April of 1995 by mushroom hunters. Brent was seventeen years old. Brent had had problems, like so many young kids his age, and was living away from home when he disappeared. However, his mother had keep contact with him and knew where he was living. Tommy, his dad, had told me that he came across his son one day while he was stooped at a traffic light. He told me Brent seemed in good spirits and it was one of the best conversations he had had with Brent in a long time. It was also the last time he would see his son alive.- When Melanie went to the police she was told that her son had had troubles and that "she was just going to have to wait it out" Melanie was told that in Missouri her son was considered an adult and that there was nothing they could do. If he wanted to be missing it was his choice. The police never considered that any kind of foul play was involved.
- Melanie contacted the National Center and they told her to get the NCIC number (National Crime Information Center). The police told her she could not have it, "only the Chief of Police could have the NCIC number" Melanie contacted the NCMEC again and they told her she had a right to have the NCIC number. Melanie told me that the NCMEC was very helpful to her family.
- When Brent went missing his family turned to the people they thought would care, the police. Melanie said "They let me fill out the missing children's report, but I knew they wouldn't going to do anything with it" "We were left to do everything ourselves"
- Brent's murder was caught and is serving time in jail. To this day it still bothers Melanie when she thinks about the man who murdered Brent. He lived in the same town and day after day he saw the posters of Brent that Brents family had put up all over town.
- PICTURE OF MELANIE AND TOMMMY AND BRENT
"They (The police) let me fill out the missing children's report, but I knew they wouldn't do anything with it"- There is no doubt that the technology exists that can send information and pictures of missing children throughout the world is seconds. The technology exists to instantly send a picture of a missing child to all fifty-state clearinghouses. Law enforcement can send and receive information through NCIC. But what happens when this information reaches the state clearinghouses? What happens to this information when it reaches the police departments? What happens when the information about a missing or abducted child is entered into NCIC? I am afraid the answer, many times, is it dies, it sits there. We have no guarantee that the missing child's picture and information is redistributed throughout the States and police departments. As I said above, What is desperately needed is a public service effort through television and radio to inform all parents on how to keep their children safe and what to do, and who to call if their child is missing or abducted.
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