Case Management

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Most children who are not where parents expect them to be, are "missing" for a very short period of time and reappear on their own, with no evidence of foul play. However, some children are missing against their will. The great majority of those children, even though they have undergone a traumatic experience, are not harmed seriously and are returned home alive. Many of them are taken by estranged parents or other family members. A small group is victimized by more predatory abductors, who want to make money by ransoming the child, to sexually molest the victim, andlor to kill the child. The list of children who are abducted and killed each year by someone who is not a family member is relatively small, compared to the number of missing children or to other types of child murder. Because of their rarity among criminal homicides their complexity, emotion and high...