Protecting your children

Protecting your child is extremely important because there is danger all around them whether you have noticed or not. The risks for children stretch far beyond most parents reach. That is why these basic key descriptions for personal safety may help your family.

Approximately 203,900 children were abducted in 1999 in "family abductions" in which a family member was trying to deprive a caretaker of custodial rights. Furthermore, 98% of these children do not return home even though none of them were killed. There were approximately 58,200 "non-family abductions" in 1999. Abductions in this category involved forcibly moving or detaining the child for a relatively short period of time, usually in connection with another crime. Furthermore, 99% of these children were returned home, and only 115 of these were the most serious and dangerous types of abductions—those perpetrated by strangers where the child was kept overnight, held for ransom, or killed. Almost 60% of the children were returned safely. When the abductor is unrelated to the child, the abductor is just as likely to be someone known to the child or family as to be a stranger. Most of the children that are abducted are between the ages 15-17 and most of them are girls.

I hope that this information will be useful to you and possibly even help you. However, still children of every age, gender, and race are vulnerable to child abduction.