A New Awareness
Michelle Clark
September 13, 2002
A very current dilemma in our society has been the abduction of children. Many think this has always been a problem but it just happens to be more obvious now. I think something should be done. If it’s always been an issue, then why is it just now being solved? I do believe, though, that because many more people are becoming aware of this concern, solutions are being made. When an event begins to instill fear in people's minds, such as parents in this case, you normally see a decrease in the given crisis. Many foundations, associations, and even web-sites are working their hardest to recover these missing children and I hope their efforts aren’t going unnoticed.
One of the most interesting, but common, fact of child abduction is that the abductor is usually a relative. Nearly half of abducted children are taken by family members. According to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), only a quarter of abductions are actually strangers. So, most of these heart-breaking stories were created by angry family members that are closest to the child. The majority of the time, abductions are the result of unhappy outcomes of custody cases. There are, however, the other half of child abduction cases, some from strangers and acquaintances. Though these statistics may be scary, it is comforting to know people are working on this problem.
