By Janis Prince Inniss

Regardless of where you live in the U.S.—or probably anywhere in North America—you are likely to recognize at least one of these names:

Danielle van Dam

Samantha Runnion

Jessica Lunsford

These are girls who we learned were missing because of widespread media coverage. Apart from the sadness I feel upon  learning about any of these cases, I am struck by their similarities: they are almost always girls, and always white, as is the missing character in the recently released film Gone Baby Gone. 

I can’t think of one missing minority child or young white boy whose story I know as well as any of these missing little white girls. Based on what is presented in the media (television, radio, newspapers, Internet, magazines, movies, CDCs, DVDs), it appears that young white girls are regularly abducted by strangers and that children of color and white boys are almost never missing. 

Does this misinformation about missing children contribute to a culture of fear – the creation or stoking of public anxiety by the manipulation of information? In an effort to learn more missing children, I looked at data from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Data released in 2002 indicate that in 1999, an estimated 1,315,600 children (under age 18 years old) were missing, but less than 1 percent remained missing. What are the characteristics of missing children? More than three-quarters (76 percent) of all missing children are older than 12 years: 45 percent are 15 to 17 and 31 percent are 12 to 14. Although 57 percent of missing children are boys, statistically, they are not over-represented among missing children. 

The majority (57 percent) of missing children are white; however, one-third (34 percent) of the parents experiencing the anguish of having a missing child are parents of African American/Black and Hispanic children. 

Almost half (48 percent) of all missing children are runaways/thrownaways (kids kicked out of their homes)—and most (68 percent) of these are 15-17 year olds. Fifty-seven percent of the
group is white, with equal numbers of boys and
girls represented.

The second largest group of missing children has a benign explanation; 28 percent of children are thought to be missing because of miscommunications between children and their parents. Combined, runaways/thrownaways and the benign explanation group total 84 percent of missing children. (This estimate counts each child only once, although some children had more than one episode). 

Table 1 details kidnappings and abductions, which of course get the most media attention. An overwhelming majority of victims of both nonfamily abductions and “stereotypical” kidnappings (the kind we hear so much about on the news) are children over the age of 12.

Of non-family abduction victims, 81 percent are older than 12, with the majority (59 percent) between 15 and 17. Similarly, more than half (58 percent) of the victims of stereotypical kidnappings are older than 12, with 20 percent of these between ages 15 and 17. 

White children account for about one third (35 percent) of non-family abductions, while black children seem to be over-represented among this group; the estimate for black children, however, is based on too few cases to
be reliable. White children were the majority (72 percent) of the stereotypical kidnapping victims; 19 percent were black. Girls of all races are more likely victims of both non-family abductions and stereotypical kidnappings than boys (65 percent and 69 percent respectively) and teenage girls in particular are targeted; sexual assault is often the motive for non-family abductions. 

Note that the total number of stereotypical kidnappings was 115. That’s 115 more kidnappings than a civilized society should tolerate, but this number does not suggest that there is the epidemic one might think there is from watching mass media coverage of such stories.

In the rare event that a child is abducted, he or she is far more likely to be taken by family or acquaintances than by a stranger; only 3 percent of missing children are abducted by strangers, yet this is the scenario that receives widespread attention. Although the news coverage suggests otherwise, when the perpetrator of abduction is not a family member, 99 percent of children are returned alive, within 24 hours, and even in these cases the perpetrator in more than half of the cases is someone known to the child.

In some ways, the widely covered case of 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart, who was found alive, is more “typical” than most; and the recent spotlight coverage on the coming of home of teenage boys, Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck serve as contrasts to what we typically see in the news.

Many stories about missing children feature young girls, despite the fact that more than three-quarters of all missing children are at least 12 years old. Based on what we know about missing children, you would think that mass media stories would focus more on older children, more on boys, and more on African American and Hispanic children. Why don’t they? Perhaps because the media assumes that audiences are not as sympathetic to these groups. 

We must recognize that family and acquaintances are more likely to be responsible for kidnappings than strangers, and that these are rare events. Undoubtedly, for those who have ever had a missing child, the fact that they have experienced an unlikely event is cold comfort, but this is indeed the reality. Why do you think we focus on the rarest of cases, and ignore the plight of other children when they go missing?