Photo: NCMECD
Today 25 May is National Missing Children’s Day, a day setforth to strengthen the protection of all children and seek to ensure that we inciate whatever it takes to find missing children across the country. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children there are some 800,000 reported missing each day, NCMEC also reports that more than 200,000 children are abducted by family members every year in the United States (National Breifing on National Missing Children’s Day 2011).
President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the first National Missing Children’s Day on May 25, 1983, and was established as the commemoration of a 6-year-old boy named Etan Patz, who disappeared in 1979 while walking 2 blocks to his school bus stop in New York City. Etan, nver made it to his bus, nor school and it wouldn’t be until the end of the day, when he didn’t make it home at 3:30 that his parents would realize he was missing, as school officials never notified the family of his failure to arrive. The story of Etan’s disappearance soon spread nation-wide following the distribution of his photo to the national media by his father Stan Patz, who was a professional photographer. By distrbuting the photo widely and quickly to the media the Pats case soon became one of the most publicized missing child cases in history.
The publication of Etan’s photo soon led to the emergence of a prime suspect, Jose Antonio Ramos, who was later arrested on charges of indecently assaulting a 5-year-old boy, howeve Ramos nor any other suspect was ever charged in the case and Etan’s body was never found. However while the Patz case was never solved it litterally changed the face of how we handle missing children’s cases across the country, by bringing awareness to abdution and quick response actions, especially the national distribution of children’s photos and the utilization of the media.
Many missing child cases since Patz have re-defined how missing and abducted children cases are handled and increased both best practices and urgency in the search for children. Another famed case that both shocked and changed the nation was that of Adam Walsh. In 1981 6-year-old Adam Walsh disappeared from a mall in Florida, his parents John and Revé immediately went to the police for quick action to find their son. They were quickly alarmed when they found that local, state and federal law enforcement agencies didn’t work together or share resources in the search to find missing children. The case took a tragic ending when in just a month following the disappearance proof of Adam’s death had surfaced, with the discovery of his head, he had been axphixiated, then decapitated, the remaines of the rest of his body were never found. Following his son’s tragedy John Walsh became a tireless advocate for victim’s rights, and helped found the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children (NCMEC). Walsh also hosted the show America’s Most Wanted, which is said to be responsible for the capture of more than 1,100 criminals.
It was following these high-profile that the country, and undoubtedly the world, found themselves increasingly aware of the dangers children face from predators. More importently these cases led to increased awareness and practices such as the placement of photos of missing children on milk cartons, motivated the joint forces of law enforcement agencies to work and share resources, and led to Amber Alerts (originally named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old child who was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas in 1996) to quickly spread the word about missing children and enable the public to get involved.
