Senate helps drive to find missing children

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 21

Senate helps drive to find missing children

By

TOM BRIDGMAN,

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

The faces of missing children stare out from grocery bags, milk cartons and posters. Now adding to the publicity, the United States Senate has agreed to have photographs of children printed on congressional envelopes as part of the drive to find missing children.

The first was of an Oklahoma City girl and was printed on envelopes used by Senators to answer constituent mail. “I hope that in some way our efforts in connection with this young girl may help bring her back to her family,” said Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who co-sponsored the legislation.

Each week the photograph on the envelopes will be changed, the information and picture being provided by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

Fear of children being kidnapped or going missing is prevalent in the United States, pictures of missing children being well advertised on grocery bags, milk cartons, and in television public service spots. Saturday morning television cartoons and comic books feature warnings on not talking to strangers, while television documentaries study the issue.

School groups offer to

fingerprint and photograph children so that a record is available should your child disappear. Recently in West Virginia a grief-stricken young mother, Ms Kathleen Householder, claimed to national television that her two-week-old baby had been abducted from her utility truck while she went into a supermarket for cigarettes. Tears streaming down her face, she appealed for those who stole her baby to return the child unharmed. Throughout her neighbourhood parents kept a closer watch on their own children or locked them indoors. However, a week later Ms Householder changed her story and admitted to the police that she had killed the baby herself, stuffing the body into a plastic bag and throwing it into the Shenandoah River. But the fear and horror that her initial story caused brought out the latent concern parents have when their children go out of sight, be it down the street to play or wandering through a museum.

In New Zealand, parents warn their children not to get lost — in the United States they fear the children will be stolen.

Now questions are being raised as to whether the extensive publicity is doing more damage than the ill it is trying to prevent. “I’m a father and I’m

angry. This nation is downright hysterical about missing children, and that is causing much more harm to the kids who aren’t missing than it is helping those who are,” wrote one parent. A Washington area primary school counsellor said she spends time calming the fears of children worried about strangers following them home. “A lot of children are starting to panic. They are scared and I feel like they are not having fun anymore,” she said.

Dr Benjamin Spock and another prominent United States pediatrician, Dr Berry Brazelton, have argued that the onslaught of photographs and publicity has produced new anxiety among children. “We are putting a lot of responsibility on kids to worry about something that adults should be worried about,” said Dr Brazelton. “I really don’t think it’s appropriate to make them afraid of everybody.”

But Mr H. R. Wilkinson, president of the National Child Safety Council, argued in a recent newspaper article that it was better children “be warned than mourned.”

“Experts have stated as many as 40 stranger-ab-ducted children and thousands of parent-abducted children have been found as a result of programmes showing pictures of missing children nationwide,” he said. “We also have docu-

mented cases of abductors turning themselves and the abducted children into law enforcement after seeing the attention the issue is getting. “We cannot count the number of children who have been saved as a result of the awareness factor, but we know it has saved many lives.” That children are found as a result of the publicity cannot be disputed. Recently, a nine-year-old, abducted five years ago in Arizona, was found in Los Angeles. The girl will be returned to her mother while another woman has been charged with kidnapping. A more celebrated instance involved the showing of a documentary on missing children.

After the programme the pictures of 18 missing children were shown, one of them Benjamin Studer, aged five. His babysitter was watching the show, recognised the infant she was caring for, and called the police. In that case the child was with his father, one of the many “tug-of-love” cases.

The number of children missing or abducted is not precisely known, although estimates put it about 15 million across the United States annually. Of those, one million are said by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children to be runaways, and most of the remainder taken by estranged parents in custody battles.

Only a fraction are actually kidnapped by strangers — The F. 8.1. investigated 67 cases last year. Ms Margaret Spencer, a psychology professor at Emory University, Atlanta, who studied the impact on children of a series of child murders there, argues that there is little effort going into preventing the problem of runaway children. “Many missing children are victims of custody battles between separated and divorced parents,” she said.

“But what are we doing to help parents before child-snatching occurs? We need to help people be better prepared for marriage, parenthood, and all that implies.”