In the United States, an estimated 460,000 children are reported missing every year.
“98 per cent of people who are reported missing are found safe and well, but for those who are not, what follows can be a lifetime of heartbreak and confusion for their families, like the Kotevski's have suffered.”
in crime and criminal justice
Each year, around 30,000 people are reported missing in Australia—one person every 18 minutes.
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.
In 2019, 84% of child kidnapping cases were facilitated through social media. This statistic is a stark reminder of the dangers of social media when it comes to child kidnapping.
Prinstein explained that an implication of these findings is that children may not have the ability to restrain themselves from using social media too much. Recent research shows over 50% of teens reporting at least one symptom of clinical dependency on social media.
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.
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.
In Australia, an estimated 20,000 children are reported missing every year. Australian Federal Police, National Coordination Centre.
In 2021, more than 34,000 missing persons reports in Australia related to children under age 18.
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.
The United States has what may be the world's highest number of missing persons. According to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person and Unidentified Person Files for the 2021 operational year, 521,705 people were reported missing in 2021.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., 20-month-old son of the famous aviator and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was kidnapped about 9:00 p.m., on March 1, 1932, from the nursery on the second floor of the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, New Jersey.
Jaycee Dugard's biological father, Ken Slayton, was not involved in her life, nor in the investigation that followed her kidnapping. When Dugard was seven, her mother Terry married a carpet contractor named Carl Probyn and gave birth to Dugard's half-sister, Shayna, in 1989.
Almost all kids kidnapped by strangers are taken by men, and about two thirds of stranger abductions involve female children. Most abducted kids are in their teens.
Some tactics that kidnappers use on their kidnap children are brainwashing, hypnosis, and physical abuse. Mind control can be a powerful method to turn children from the real truth.
California. California is the first state with the most missing persons, with 2,133 cases reported. The state's missing person rate is 5 per 100,000, which is the same as the national average of 4.4 per 100,000. California also has 13 reported cases of AMBER alerts.
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.
There are various penalties for kidnapping in Australia and NSW. For most kidnapping offences, the maximum penalty is around 14-15 years. However, the maximum penalty increases to 20 years in prison where you were in the company of another person or persons, or you caused actual bodily harm to the complainant.
Two-thirds of U.S. teenagers told a 2022 Pew survey that they are on the app, and 16% said they use it constantly. In 2021, the average time kids and teens spent on TikTok grew to 91 minutes a day, up from 82 the year before, according to a report by TechCrunch.
Approximately 38% of children between the ages 8 to 12 and 84% of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 are using social media, according to The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens.
Social media is also popular with kids, with 11 percent getting their first account when they were younger than 10 while 39 percent did so between the ages of 10 and 12. Facebook and Instagram are most popular, each used by 77 percent of kids. Twitter is embraced by 49 percent of kids and Snapchat by 47 percent.