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Showing posts with label Missing Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Missing Children. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Child Safety Resources:
Monday, July 22, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
Missing: CHAFOULAIS, FIONA - 5 Years Old
Missing:
CHAFOULAIS, FIONA
Present family name :CHAFOULAIS
Forename :FIONA
Sex :Female
Date of birth :03/12/2007 (5 years old)
Place of birth : CLERMONT FERRAND , France
Nationality : France
Father's family name & forename :CHAFOULAIS NICOLAS
Mother's family name & forename :BOURGEON CECILE
Height :1.1 meter
Colour of hair : Blond
Colour of eyes : Light
Language spoken : French
Date of disappearance : 12/05/2013 When 5 years old
Place of disappearance : CLERMONT-FERRAND, France.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Polly Klaas Foundation Video:
The Polly Klaas® Foundation is Dedicated to the Safety of All Children
The Polly Klaas® Foundation is a national nonprofit dedicated to the safety of all children, the recovery of missing children, and public policies that keep children safe in their communities.
We have helped more than 7,691 families of missing children, counseling them on ways to find their children and work with law enforcement. We make and distribute posters of missing children for these families, and have a national eVolunteer force that distributes posters of missing children in their communities. Our hotline has been answered 24/7 since 1993.
We publish and distribute child safety information to people around the world. Our free Child Safety Kit and Internet Safety Kit can be ordered or downloaded online.
Awarded by the US Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Sunday, March 10, 2013
India faces epidemic of missing children:
About 60,000 children go missing every year in populous nation, and child activists say many end up in sex trade.
A staple storyline of popular Bollywood films over the years has been about siblings getting lost in a village fair or being forcibly separated by a hideous villain, only to be reunited years later. The happy endings normally spelled success: moviegoers went home happy while the filmmaker went laughing all the way to the bank.
But reel life has little resemblance to reality, and happy endings are not as common for those who go missing in India as they are on celluloid.
Official statistic shows that some 60,000 children go missing every year from across the populous nation. Though some are finally traced, many are never found.
According to Jitendra Singh, the federal minister of state for home affairs, about 22,000 of these missing children vanished without a trace in 2011.
The figures are startling and symptomatic of a scourge that's long gone unnoticed, until the findings of a commission instituted by the government in the wake of the notorious Delhi gang-rape of a young girl in December brought out the hidden dangers that stalk India's children.
The Justice Verma commission report served to jolt the nation, as it found that a child goes missing in India every eight minutes, on average.
"Children in this country are no more safe. I get worried till my daughters reach home safely after their school and tuitions," Nagurajun R, a father of two teenage girls from Hyderabad who works in the IT industry, told Al Jazeera.
For one, it's easy to get lost in a nation as crowded as India. Seven-year-old Ramu lost his way while travelling on a train with his family from Maharashtra to Uttar Pradesh. Luckily for him, he was picked up by the police, who with the help of child activists tracked down his address a fortnight later and handed him back to his distraught parents.
But similar luck mostly eludes those who fall prey to sinister designs and go missing.
Willful crime by parents
There were a total of 33,098 crimes reported against children in 2011, of which 15,284 were kidnapping cases.
Child activists blame the missing children phenomenon on a number of reasons, from organised traffickers to families eager to dump their daughters, whom they see as a liability.
"This act of willful crime by parents often goes unreported or unregistered with the police," Nishit Kumar, an activist with Childline - a 24-hour helpline for children in distress - told Al Jazeera.
"Even though this is an unfortunate trend, I feel the primary reason for this is the lack of attention paid by parents - either poor, or single, or broken families," said Suma M, an assistant professor of computer science from Bengaluru who is concerned about her young daughter's safety.
That doesn't mean that only children from poor families go missing, though. "Children from well-to-do families become victims of circumstances - here too, lack of attention towards them being the prime reason," said Suma.
Activists like Kumar also speak of the "Kumbh Mela syndrome" - the Hindu religious congregation that draws millions of pilgrims to the city of Allahabad on the banks of the river Ganga once every 12 years - where fathers deliberately lose their daughters in the crowd. That getting rid of the girl child is not a pious act is hardly a deterrent.
But kidnappings account for most of the missing. According to a report issued by the social statistics division of the Indian government, there were a total of 33,098 crimes reported against children in 2011, of which 15,284 were kidnapping cases. The kidnappers may send the children to other countries, hold them for ransom, or force them to beg.
Shockingly, the report also noted 3,517 incidents of child trafficking - which includes the buying and selling of girls for prostitution, child marriage, and trafficking children for the illegal transplantation of organs - in 2011.
Addicted to street life
India has the largest number of child labourers under the age of 14 in the world. Even though law prohibits children below the age of 14 from working, as many as 12.66 million children work as labourers.
"Very often we find kidnapped children are forced to work as cheap labour in factories, shops and homes. They get exploited as sex slaves or are pushed into the child porn industry," NDTV reported Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat as saying.
India is well-connected by the train network, which comes in handy for children who run away from homes - as well as for the abductors who kidnap them.
It gets difficult for police or activists to trace the children, as many parents fail to give recent photographs of their lost children.
And in most cases, when child rights activists or volunteers find children on streets, they find it difficult to rehabilitate them. "They are addicted to the street life," Kumar notes. "It's the complete anonymity which draws kids to the streets. They enjoy complete freedom … they are not bothered by elders, they are not forced to study," Kumar told Al Jazeera.
Other child rights volunteers agree: "If we can't take a child off the street within the first month of finding him, it's difficult to rehabilitate him later, as he gets addicted to street life. He is not at all interested to study, or to get rehabilitated."
Inadequate law
One of the main reasons for the increasing number of missing children and kidnappings is "inadequate law on missing children in the country", say experts.
Police in many states are often reluctant to register first information reports for missing children, which means no formal case is even filed. Their insensitivity could be because they are over-worked and ill-equipped and tracking down missing children are not their priority.
Suma, the computer science professor, says the government should "set up special police stations that register 'only child-missing complaints' and see to it that such cases are taken to a logical end".
But some states, such as Delhi, have implemented strict laws after serial killings in Noida, Uttar Pradesh in 2006 that claimed the lives of 17 children. For instance, after 24 hours, if a missing child is not found, police in Delhi are required to file a case of kidnapping.
The police in some regions have also begun a database for missing children, but forensic experts say a DNA databank needs to be established to help identify missing children.
Professor Jose A Lorente, a forensic geneticist at the University of Granada known for identifying the remains of Christopher Columbus and South American liberator Simon Bolivar, says that in a big country like India where so many children go missing, "DNA can play a unique, positive role". A DNA databank can also help "to avoid stolen, kidnapped children to be sold for illegal adoptions", Lorente told Al Jazeera.
One potential model could be Guatemala. In 2010, the impoverished Central American country passed the Alba-Keneth Law, requiring the government to create a DNA databank of missing children and giving the relatives of missing children the right to have their DNA analysed.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Two Missing Kids Found Dead In Lagos - Family - Nairaland:
Ketu area of Lagos State was thrown into confusion after the shocking discovery of the corpses of two toddlers, Toheeb Adedokun and Tajudeen Falilu, who disappeared in January. PUNCH Metro had reported exclusively on January 30, 2013, that the missing children were suspected to have been kidnapped when all efforts to locate them proved abortive.
However, the corpses of the children were found in an abandoned vehicle, two houses away from their parents’ home on Taike Street. Reliable sources told our correspondent that the vehicle was a Honda Pilot Sports Utility Vehicle which the owner had used as collateral and thus abandoned it.
The source said after the children wandered off, they went into the vehicle and were trapped inside, causing them to suffocate. He said, “We had searched all over for the
children to no avail and assumed they were kidnapped. Even the police thought it was kidnap. Only if we had known that the children were trapped in a vehicle in the next compound, we would have saved them.”
The spokesperson for the state police command, Ngozi Braide, confirmed the discovery to our
correspondent on the telephone.
http://www.nairaland.com/1215773/two-missing-kids-found-dead
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Two Missing Children Found Dead In Delhi Jungle:
PTI
Two children, who went missing three days ago, were found dead in a jungle here today.
The children, aged five and seven, went missing three days ago from Mandawli, police said.
Their bodies were recovered from a jungle near Tilak Marg and Pragati Maidan.
Police said they were awaiting the post-mortem report to ascertain the cause of the death.
http://m.indianexpress.com/news/two-missing-children-found-dead-in-delhi-jungle/1082164/
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Overseas adoption racket: How children are sneaked out by the hundreds:
by Danish Raza Feb 20, 2013
That afternoon is indelibly printed in Saddam’s memory. He and his two-year- old sister Jabeen were playing in an auto rickshaw parked near their home in Washermanpet area of north Chennai. A man, who Saddam remembers, as “tall, short haired with a limp in his right leg”, appeared on the driver’s seat. “Next moment, I recall, he was maneuvering the auto-rickshaw through the alleys.” As the vehicle slowed down at a speed breaker, the boy, then four years old, jumped out. Watching the vehicle going afar, helplessly, he shouted non-stop, “Someone save my sister.”
Jabeen never returned. That was November 1998.
Six years later, Chennai police arrested two men, Sheikh Dawood and Manoharan, suspecting their involvement in a child trafficking racket. During interrogation, they confessed to have sold children to Malaysian Social Service (MSS), an adoption agency in Tamil Nadu.
Hundreds of children are victims of the overseas adoption racket in India. AFP.
Jabeen, as police found in MSS records, was adopted by an Australian family in the year 2000. She was one of the 100 children MSS had given up for adoption overseas. With a new name, fabricated history and an obviously uncertain future, the children were handed over to adoptive parents in the West, the organisation told police.
On Tuesday, child rights activists and families who have lost their children to overseas adoption demanded a stay on inter-country adoption until a child protection mechanism was put in place. They underlined the dark side of inter-country adoption even as Central Adoption Recourse Agency (CARA), a body under the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, is holding an international conference on adoption on February 19 and 20.
More than 5,000 children were reported missing in 2011, said Minister of State for Home Affairs, Jitendra Singh, responding to a query in Rajya Sabha.
In other words, a child goes missing every eight minutes in India.
Between 2010 and 2011, the number of cases of kidnapping and abduction went up by 43 percent, as per a report prepared by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
More than 3700 children went missing from Delhi in the last five years and are still untraceable, according a status report filed by the Delhi government in Supreme Court during the hearing of a PIL.
“As these cases show, many such kidnapped and missing children are victims of gangs which place children in overseas adoption with the help of adoption agencies,” said Anjali Pawar of Sakhi, a Pune based NGO, referring to the families who had come to the national capital to protest inter-country adoptions.
Arund Dohle of Against Child Trafficking (ACT), Netherlands and Brussels based organisation, which claims to have reunited 20 plus adopted kids to their biological families, said, “In the discourse on foreign adoption, we have forgotten Jabeen and similar other cases.”
Dohle added that in cases where adopted children were able to trace their parents of birth, the damage done was irreparable. “By that time, they are grown up adults. They don’t speak Hindi and are not accustomed to the Indian culture.”
There is no law governing adoptions in India. There are only CARA guideline based on child protection principles and provisions mandated in Juvenile Justice (care & protection of children) Act.
CARA guidelines say that adoption agencies have to follow 80-20 ratio between domestic and foreign adoptions, failing which they can loose their licenses.
The guidelines say that while sending children for inter-country adoptions, agencies should give priority to Indian nationals, Indian nationals living abroad (NRI), Overseas Citizen of India card holders, and foreign nationals, in that order.
Between 2009 and March 2012, more than 13000 children were placed in domestic adoption against 1848 inter-country adoptions, as per CARA data.
For every adoption, domestic or inter-country, Child Welfare Committee (CWC), a quasi- judicial body formed under the Juvenile Justice Act- has to declare a child legally free for adoption.
But in many cases, says Enakshi Ganguly of HAQ- Centre for Child Rights, a Delhi based NGO, the committee’s role has been unsatisfactory. “Gangs involved in adoption mislead the committee,” she said.
Citing the case of siblings Esha and Mayank, earlier reported by 2 Comments Ganguly said, “On their part, the committees don’t do enough to restore the child to the family.” Monday, February 4, 2013
Over 60,000 children go missing in India every year, activists point at police inaction:
Meenakshi Upreti, CNN-IBN
New Delhi: In the wake of the brutal Delhi gangrape and massive outpouring of public anger, the Justice Verma Committee was formed to look into amendments in criminal law. But it also highlighted one of the biggest problems of the country - the missing children of India. "A lakh kids go missing every year. The police must file an FIR, DM should maintain records," Justice JS Verma said.
Official records show 53,000 children were reported missing in India in 2010,59,000 missing in 2011, that is 1 child every 8 minutes. Activists claim the biggest problem is police inaction.
New Delhi: In the wake of the brutal Delhi gangrape and massive outpouring of public anger, the Justice Verma Committee was formed to look into amendments in criminal law. But it also highlighted one of the biggest problems of the country - the missing children of India. "A lakh kids go missing every year. The police must file an FIR, DM should maintain records," Justice JS Verma said.
Most missing children are victims of human trafficking and sexual violence, often with police connivance, observed the Justice Verma commission, citing the case of a minor girl who was trafficked from Jharkhand to Delhi, made to work for a year without pay and then trafficked again to Punjab.
Fortunately, the girl was rescued by an NGO, but thousands of children aren't as lucky. Kunwarjit, whose 11-year-old son went missing two years ago said nothing has been done to locate him. "Police hasn't done a thing to find him. I got a call from my son once but the police refused to act on it saying that it was a hoax call. Had they acted then, probably I would've had my son, but now I think I won't see him again," said the missing child's father.
Official records show 53,000 children were reported missing in India in 2010,59,000 missing in 2011, that is 1 child every 8 minutes. Activists claim the biggest problem is police inaction.
Delhi has the largest number of untraced children as 14 kids go missing from the city every day. Police claim most are cases of children running away willingly, rarely investigating allegations of child trafficking and sexual abuse.
Activist AR Chaurasia said, "The police shuts the case saying that the child ran away and came back on his own. My question is what did the child do for four years? Someone must have employed him, why don't they probe it?"
According to the NCRB 60,000 children go missing every year despite the fact that big states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar, along with Punjab and Jharkhand, did not provide the data for missing children. Perhaps it is time the police take strict actions to ensure no child has to suffer the same misery as her.
Official records show 53,000 children were reported missing in India in 2010,
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
MISSING JOHNNY: Documentary Focuses On 1982 Case:
A special documentary focusing on an Iowa kidnapping case that changed how police search for missing children will air on MSNBC Sunday.
Executive Producer Paul Sparrow said, “I think people today would be shocked at what the real situation was in 1982. Police were required to wait 72 hours before investigating a missing child’s case. The FBI would track your stolen car across state lines, but it would not track your stolen child across state lines. There was absolutely no national infrastructure to support the hunt for missing children.”
Those were the struggles Noreen Gosch was up against when her son was kidnapped in West Des Moines in 1982. Though Johnny Gosch was never located, his mother’s efforts helped make sure other kidnapping victims were returned to their families.
The documentary called “Missing Johnny” will air at 9 p.m. Sunday night on MSNBC.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Branstad: Policies on missing kids should be reviewed:
Branstad: Policies on missing kids should be reviewed
A state trooper on Thursday mans a checkpoint by the Seven Bridges Wildlife Area in Bremer County, Iowa, near where two bodies were found Wednesday. Officials are investigating whether the remains are those of two missing cousins.
DES MOINES | Gov. Terry Branstad on Thursday said state officials will review policies on missing children in light of news that two bodies were found in a wooded area of Evansdale, Iowa, on Wednesday. An autopsy will determine whether the remains are those of two missing cousins.
"It's a tragic situation," said Branstad, whose office held off issuing a public statement pending official identification by the state medical examiner.
He said state Division of Criminal Investigation agents will take evidence from the autopsies "to determine what clues there might be as to who may have committed this heinous crime. We have confidence that they have the ability and we want to make sure that they have the tools they need to do a thorough investigation and continue to try to apprehend the perpetrators."
Elizabeth Collins, 9, Lyric Cook-Morrissey, 11, have been missing since July.
The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports that Heather Collins, the mother of Elizabeth, confirmed in a Facebook post late Wednesday that the bodies are those of the missing girls.
"We have been so blessed by ... all the prayers and support tonight with the gut wrenching news that my beautiful daughter and niece's bodies were found by hunters today," Heather Collins wrote.
Officials are planning a 4 p.m. press conference to announce the autopsy results.
Branstad during a Thursday news conference commended the efforts of local and state authorities, the community, the families and volunteers that worked to find the missing girls. He said he last spoke to family members of the missing girls at the Iowa State Fair last summer.
Branstad said legislative efforts to respond to missing child reports date to the disappearance of West Des Moines newspaper carrier Johnny Gosch in the 1980s and there have been numerous updates since then. However, he said, it would be appropriate again to look at "what we've done, what could be done differently and what could be done better" to strengthen protections and response efforts when children are kidnapped or abducted.
"We need to recognize a lot of times a missing child is not kidnapped, but there are times like this when the child is a victim of kidnapping and we need to move very quickly and we need to make sure the public is aware and we can get information from whatever source can be helpful," he said. "We'll review our laws and see if there's more that we can do to be as effective as possible."
Monday, November 26, 2012
Missing Children in Greater Manchester has risen dramatically:
Published on Monday 26 November 2012 15:04
THE number of children reported missing in Greater Manchester has risen dramatically, a charity says.
Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Railway Children shows an increase of around 270 per cent in the number of reports of missing youngsters between 2008 and 2011.
More than 2,000 children under the age of 16 were reported missing in 2011, rising from 571 in 2008. the majority choosing to flee life at home or in care.
Although the vast majority of cases ended with their being reunited with their parents or guardians, with no reports of children still missing and only three cases remaining dormant on the books of Greater Manchester Police in 2011, the charity says it is greatly concerned about the spike in cases.
Railway Children also believes the reported cases may be just the tip of the iceberg, with figures from the Children’s Society suggesting as many as 100,000 children in the UK run away from home each year.
Railway Children’s head of strategy and policy Andy McCullough said: “It is alarming to see that the numbers of children reported missing in Greater Manchester has risen so significantly year on year.
“Children run away for many reasons, usually to escape things they find stressful such as problems at school or home.
“However, anecdotal research indicates that as many as two thirds of young people who run away from home are not even reported missing and may be too vulnerable and afraid to seek help from official services.
“There is a clear need for UK society to collectively take responsibility to tackle this issue at its cause.”
Vigil marks 2 years of boys’ disappearance:
Family clings to hope brothers may return
Vigil marks 2 years of boys’ disappearance
BY MARK REITER AND VANESSA McCRAY
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
Karri Waters, left, an aunt, McKenna Shaffer, center left, a cousin, Mason Shaffer, center right, and Kristy Shaffer, right, join the ceremony to remember Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner Skelton. They were at Morenci's Wakefield Park on Sunday. THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGTEnlarge | Buy This Photo
MORENCI, Mich. — It has been two years since Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner Skelton vanished from this Lenawee County community near the Ohio-Michigan border.
Reminders of the boys, who were ages, 9, 7, and 5, respectively, when they were last seen on Thanksgiving Day, 2010, are scattered throughout the town of 2,500. Faded yellow homecoming ribbons wrap around trees and light poles, and posters offering rewards for information about their whereabouts hang in the doors and windows of offices and shops.
While the mystery surrounding the boys’ disappearance haunts the community, their mother, Tanya Zuvers, and her family refuse to give up hope they will be found and returned safely.
Roughly 100 family, friends, community members, and supporters gathered Sunday afternoon at Wakefield Park in Morenci to share memories of the three boys and watch the family unveil a plaque in their honor. The boys’ likenesses and names are inscribed on the plaque, as are as the words “faith, hope, love.”
It’s attached to a boulder from the Hudson, Mich., farm of Ms. Zuvers’ sister and brother-in-law. The rock symbolizes not just the family and community’s love for the boys, but also voices the great unknown question of the last two years: Where are they?
Photos of what Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner might look like now have been posted on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Web site. THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGTEnlarge | Buy This Photo
Its placement in the park, underneath one of three trees dedicated to the boys, is intended to be temporary. If the boys return home alive, the monument will move to Ms. Zuvers’ house; if only bodies are found, the rock will serve as a headstone, the boys’ mother and grandmother both said.
Some in the crowd sniffled and teared up as Ms. Zuvers and others recalled memories of the three boys. The family also thanked people for their support.
Beverly Zuvers, the boys’ grandmother, said the tragedy binds the town.
“It’s tied us together. We’ve always had a loving, caring community,” she said and noted that residents now are more aware of child safety issues.
The family continues to reach out to the community and beyond to raise awareness about the boys. Ms. Zuvers recently turned to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for help, and age-progressed photos of each child were posted on the agency’s Web site. She showed the photos at Sunday’s event, and the images also were displayed at the town fire station, where community members gathered after the park event.
She said the missing-children’s center blended photos of the boys with images of their mother around the same ages to project what they might look like now.
“I am hoping that someone will be able to see these photos and recognize that they resemble children that they may have seen,” she said. “Hopefully that will bring in the tip that we need.”
A plaque honoring the boys has been placed on a boulder in Wakefield Park. If the boys are found alive, the plaque will be moved to their mother's home. THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGTEnlarge | Buy This Photo
Ms. Zuvers and the boys’ father, John Skelton, were in the midst of a bitter divorce when she gave permission for him to take the children to his home, where they were last seen in the back yard.
They were reported missing by their mother the next day, after Skelton failed to return the boys. During that time, he was taken to a Wauseon hospital for treatment for an ankle injury suffered in an apparent suicide attempt.
Skelton gave authorities different accounts of the boys’ whereabouts. He testified during a court hearing that he handed them over to a secret child-protection group. But he gave other statements too, including recounting a dream about seeing the boys and their belongings near a trash bin.
Skelton, 41, pleaded no contest to charges of unlawful imprisonment and was sentenced in September, 2011, to 10 to 15 years in prison. He is housed at the Chippewa Correctional Facility and may seek release in 2020.
Weeks after the boys’ disappearance, law enforcement changed the focus of the case from a search to a homicide investigation, with their father as the suspect.
Morenci Police Chief Larry Weeks doesn’t discount the efforts of Ms. Zuvers and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to publicize the case, but his position hasn’t changed. He believes Skelton killed his sons during the early-morning hours of Nov. 26, 2010, and hid the bodies.
“His choice to hide behind this outlandish story is selfish and cowardly. If he cared about his sons at all, he would disclose the truth and bring resolution to this case,” the police chief said in a statement.
More than 1,300 tips have been collected during the two years, said Chief Weeks, who has been assisted by the FBI and Michigan State Police in the investigation.
In addition to reaching out to the missing-children agency, Ms. Zuvers has embraced social networking and the Internet to keep her sons in the public eye.
Details about the boys are posted on the sites — skeltonbrothers.org and facebook.com/ MissingSkelton Brothers — as well as on the posters offering a $60,000 reward for information leading to their return.
Also, through the efforts of an awareness group that Ms. Zuvers and others began, volunteers recently handed out 3,000 flyers with information about the boys at roadside rest areas and truck stops. Supporters continued fund-raising Sunday for an awareness effort. Ms. Zuvers’ cousin Kristy Shaffer of Morenci presided over a baked-goods table at the fire station.
Mrs. Shaffer has two children who were close to the missing boys and said the boys frequently come up in discussions around town and with her own children.
“We would just always try to stay positive and upbeat and continue to remind them that we will bring them home,” she said.
Anyone with information about the boys is asked to call Morenci police at 517-458-7104.
Contact Mark Reiter at: markreiter@theblade.com or 419-724-6199.
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