Missing Children: Growing Effort : Publicity Gets Results but Some Say the Problem Is Overstated

Since the first pictures of missing children appeared on milk cartons and shopping bags several months ago, more than 200 corporations ranging from banks to bus companies, restaurants to laundries and even an airline have joined in the massive campaign aimed at returning missing children to their homes.

The results so far have been encouraging.

Seven of 14 children missing from the Los Angeles area have been found during the last six months, after their pictures were advertised through a program coordinated by Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block. Three more were recovered through a statewide campaign directed by Assemblyman Gray Davis (D-Beverly Hills). And a missing children’s program in San Diego, which suffered through its first several months without a single find, has reported recovering two children during the last few weeks, a program official said.

But law enforcement officials, while delighted with the recent assistance, caution that the problem of missing children may be overstated, largely because several missing children programs have promoted fearsome statistics that may be unfounded.

Statistics kept by the state Department of Justice show that 24,000 children were reported missing in California last year, but only 550 were still lost after 30 days. Of these, only three had been abducted by strangers, officials said.

Need for Coordination

The recent attention focused on missing children has been invaluable in eliciting tips from the public to help locate not only the relatively few children who have been abducted by strangers but the many others who are runaways or were stolen by parents in custody disputes.

However, as the various missing children programs multiply, deputies warn of a need for coordination and central control.

“I see kids’ pictures now and I don’t know who they are because they’re not being advertised through our program. Yet I get phone calls on them,” Deputy Gaylon Saybean said. “It can get confusing.”

Besides several large national organizations that advertise missing children in California and throughout the country, there are half a dozen programs operating in various parts of the state, often in overlapping areas.

Several California organizations focus primarily on finding a particular child, such as Kevin Collins, who disappeared in San Francisco, or Laura Ann Bradbury, who was abducted in San Bernardino County. Backed by an outpouring of support from the private sector, many more groups have sprung up offering preventive programs to educate the public and fingerprint children.

Pictures of missing children have been featured on about 50 million grocery bags and more than 35 million milk cartons, as well as on countless egg cartons, flyers sent out by banks and other businesses, and advertisements in newspapers and on buses and billboards.

“It’s such a worthy cause, everybody wants to get into it,” Deputy David Tellez said.

“(The pictures) are popping up all over the place,” said Don Beaver, president of the California Grocers’ Assn., which has 20,000 stores participating in the missing children program coordinated by Assemblyman Davis.

Besides actually recovering children, Beaver said, “We hope to make it too hot for people to steal a kid anymore. People are going to think twice.”

Grocers Jump In

The grocers were among the first to sign up for Davis’ program, which encompasses 143 businesses.

Another 40 companies, Davis said, have offered assistance and are waiting for proposals to be developed that will suit their special services.

At Davis’ request, Gannett Outdoor Advertising Co. began posting 100 billboards in the Los Angeles area last week, featuring nine children who have been missing from five months to four years.

Davis disclosed that Fosters Freeze International Inc. has pledged to print the faces of missing children on jumbo cups used in its 190 fast-food restaurants. And, he said, Safeway stores will soon be promoting missing kids through its photo developing service--customers will receive pictures of missing children along with their snapshots.

For several months, pictures of missing children have been posted in the Southern California Rapid Transit District’s 2,400 buses, and soon taxis will also carry the photos.

Trailways Bus Co. offered a year ago to send missing children home free. And World Airways announced last week that it will reunite parents with their missing children at no charge.

Trip for Father

As its kick-off, and in honor of Missing Children’s Day on Saturday, World sponsored a trip to Washington for the family of Mike Bradbury, whose 3-year-old daughter disappeared without a trace from Joshua Tree National Monument in San Bernardino seven months ago.

The pixie-faced, brown-eyed blonde followed her brother to the toilet about 50 yards from the family campsite. When he emerged from the outhouse a few minutes later, Laura was gone, believed to have been kidnaped by a stranger.

Although law enforcement officials say Laura’s kidnaping is unusual, they fear that the public believes it is typical of thousands of missing children.

“I think the public has the misperception that most of the kids have been kidnaped,” said Steven Wong of the state Department of Justice. “Because of the hype and the statistics being quoted, it’s caused a lot of problems. It (abductions by strangers) would seem like it was a major problem and it is not a major problem here in California.”

“We try to stress the point that stranger abductions are really a very, very small portion of the missing children reported--about one-quarter of 1%,” Tellez said. “It’s a point that should be stressed so that parents don’t become paranoid that their kids will be picked up off the street corner.”

“I get calls from parents daily who say, ‘I’m scared to let my child go to school alone or to the store alone,’ ” Saybean added. “I tell them there’s reason for everyday precautions, but there’s not a wolfman at every corner waiting to grab your child.”

Figures May Be Exaggerated

The alarm may stem partly from statistics promoted by several experts in the field of missing children. The numbers sound frightening, but law enforcement officials believe they may also be exaggerated.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington has reported that 1.5 million children a year are reported missing. Conceding that their statistics are only estimates, they say about 1 million are runaways. Between 20,000 and 500,000, they say, are abducted by parents locked in custody disputes. And 4,000 to 20,000 are abducted by strangers.

“Their figures don’t match up with what we have here,” FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. He said, for example, that the FBI investigated 67 kidnapings by strangers nationwide last year.

Child Find in Upstate New York once estimated that there were 50,000 stranger abductions annually. But the agency has backed off from that estimate in the face of questioning by skeptical law enforcement officials.

“There’s no way there’s 50,000 stranger abductions a year!” said James Wootten, deputy administrator of the office of juvenile justice and delinquency in the U.S. Department of Justice, which is doing an in-depth study of missing children to determine the exact numbers in several categories.

A spokeswoman for Child Find, Caroline Zogg, said the agency has recently disavowed the estimate of 50,000 stranger abductions a year and is more comfortable with a figure of “1,000--more or less.”

During the last 20 years in California, 13 children under the age of 11 have been abducted by strangers and remained missing more than 30 days, Wong said. This includes three kidnapings last year.

97% Home in Month

About 97% of the 24,000 children reported missing last year returned home within a month.

“Is that really a major problem when only 3% in our files are missing after 30 days?” Wong asked.

Most of the 550 kids reported still missing after a month were runaways or were abducted by parents in custody disputes.

Many contend, however, that a missing child is a tragedy, regardless of what caused the disappearance. They say that it is just as important to find a child who has run away or been stolen by a parent as it is to locate the kidnap victim.

“The point is, the child is missing,” said Ed Catano, who heads the San Diego-based California Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

His organization focuses on finding children stolen by parents.

‘Civil War Going On’

“There’s a civil war going on out there,” said Catano, explaining that countless thousands of bitter custody battles end with a parent disappearing with the contested child.

“These missing children should not be considered safe,” Catano said. “Often they are lied to, brainwashed, told their other parent is dead, kept out of school, given a different name and kept on the run.”

A parent trying to find the missing child used to be helpless because police officials often turned a cold shoulder to their complaints, believing them to be civil matters.

“Police just ran them out of the building,” said David Lara, an investigator in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s child abduction unit.

But the law was changed a year ago making it a felony for a parent to abduct a child and requiring police officials to investigate such crimes.

Lara said that recent publicity about missing children has helped his office recover 163 children during the last year. “People are receptive to us. They don’t slam the door in our face. They’re willing to help when we tell them we’re looking for a missing child.”