In Australia, an estimated 20,000 children are reported missing every year. Australian Federal Police, National Coordination Centre. In Canada, an estimated 45,288 children are reported missing each year.
“Sadly, they're not alone in their experience, in 2021, over 34,000 missing persons' reports in Australia related to children under 18.
in crime and criminal justice
Each year, around 30,000 people are reported missing in Australia—one person every 18 minutes.
How common is child abduction in Australia? Australia has a very high rate of child abductions compared to the rest of the world. According to the Australian Missing Persons Register, more than 150 children are abducted by a parent every year and many of these children are never located.
There are currently about 2,600 long-term missing persons cases in Australia and experts estimate there are some 500 unidentified human remains archived around the country.
Man Pleads Guilty to Abduction of 4-Year-Old Cleo Smith, Australian Girl Found Alive After Missing for 18 Days.
A four-year-old girl allegedly abducted from her family's tent in remote Western Australia 19 days ago has been found alive. Cleo Smith was found by police in a private home around 30 miles from the campsite and has been reunited with her parents, Western Australia police said in a statement.
Moe, Victoria, Jaidyn Leskie was 14 months old when he was kidnapped and murdered in 1997. Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Daniel Morcombe was 13 years of age when he was kidnapped and murdered in 2003. Lumea, NSW, Rahma el-Dennaoui was 19-month-old when she was kidnapped in 2005.
Attempted abductions most often occur on the street while children are playing, walking, or riding bikes. Younger children are more likely to be playing or walking with a parent or an adult whereas school-age children are more likely to be walking alone or with peers.
According to research by Child Recovery Australia, 250+ children are abducted into or out of Australia by a parent every year.
The disappearance of Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont on Australia Day in 1966 became one of the country's enduring mysteries and remains unsolved. The children — aged 9, 7 and 4 — left their Somerton Park home for a day at Glenelg beach, but never came home.
Jane Nartare Beaumont (born 10 September 1956), Arnna Kathleen Beaumont (born 11 November 1958) and Grant Ellis Beaumont (born 12 July 1961), collectively referred to in the media as the Beaumont children, were three Australian siblings who disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, on 26 January ...
William Tyrrell (born 26 June 2011) is an Australian boy who disappeared at the age of three from Kendall, New South Wales, on 12 September 2014. He had been playing at his foster grandmother's house with his sister, and was wearing a Spider-Man suit at the time of his disappearance.
Childhood is a critical time, affecting our health, development, and setting the foundations for the rest of our lives. Sadly, around 19,400 children aged 0-14 are homeless in Australia.
Cheryl Gene Grimmer (30 October 1966 – disappeared 12 January 1970; declared legally dead 2011) was a three-year-old toddler who was kidnapped from Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong, Illawarra, New South Wales, in January 1970.
In the post-war era, approximately 3,300 children were shipped to Australia while New Zealand, Rhodesia and Canada received a combined total of about 1,000 children.
Victims of attempted stranger abduction have an average age of 11 years. Victims of completed abduction (with a clear sexual motive) have an average age of 14 years. Roughly two-thirds of abductions by a stranger involve a perpetrator in a car. Nearly half of attempted abductions by a stranger involve physical contact.
Countries with the highest rates
In 2018 the UN found Pakistan and England had the highest amount of kidnappings while New Zealand had the highest rate among the 70 countries for which data is available.
Kidnapping rate - Country rankings
The average for 2017 based on 65 countries was 1.8 kidnappings per 100,000 people. The highest value was in Belgium: 10.3 kidnappings per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in Bermuda: 0 kidnappings per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 2003 to 2017.
Cleo Smith, a four-year-old Australian girl, was abducted on 16 October 2021 from a campsite in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia (WA). She was found alive and well on 3 November, after police raided the home of Terence Darrell Kelly in the nearby town of Carnarvon.
"Mr Cruel" is an Australian serial child rapist and suspected child murderer who attacked three girls in the northern and eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He is also the prime suspect in the 1991 abduction and murder of a fourth girl, Karmein Chan.
Cleo Smith, age 4, disappeared from her family's tent in Western Australia in October, sparking a major search operation, after which she was found 18 days later, alone inside a locked house. Cleo Smith's accused abductor, Terence Darrell Kelly, pleaded guilty via video link from prison.
Melissa Highsmith, 53, was abducted by a babysitter from her home in Fort Worth in 1971 when she was just 22 months old. Years of searching by the family yielded nothing - until DNA samples sent to an ancestry website produced a match.
After years of searching, the baby was finally reunited with her biological family -- now as a 42-year-old woman. In an embrace over 40 years in the making, Holly Miller hugged her grandmother Donna Casasanta, her aunt Debbie Brooks and her aunt Tess Welch, among other extended family members, for the first time.