Net Helping Search for Missing Kids
Elizabeth Norton immediately suspected an abduction when her ex-husband failed to return on time with their two children. So she quickly contacted authorities and began circulating photos.
Ultimately, it was the Internet that reunited her with her two sons nine months later. A woman who became suspicious about her new neighbors searched a Web site on missing children, where she found a photo of one of the boys.
“The Internet absolutely provided a convenient vehicle that very moment she wanted to confirm her suspicions,” Norton said. “Without that, I don’t know what would have happened.”
Organizations that help locate missing children praise the Internet and other new technologies for speeding and increasing recoveries.
Without the Net, the neighbor would have had to call a hotline and try to make a match using verbal descriptions. Or she would have had to spot a flier at a store or on a telephone pole.
Jenni Thompson of the Polly Klaas Foundation in Petaluma, Calif., which assists in locating missing children, said that although parents often worry about molesters making contact with kids online, “we need to remember that the Internet can be used for good things as well.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children credits the Internet for leading directly to the discovery of 48 children since 2000. That’s greater than two other primary methods--44 through posters at Wal-Mart stores and 19 through postcards sent with bulk mailings.
The Internet and other technologies play a contributing role in thousands of other missing-child cases each year.
“In one way or another, we use the Internet in every case,” said Mike Gibson, president of Operation Lookout in Everett, Wash. “It’s just too valuable a tool to not use whenever possible.”
Investigators use online resources such as reverse phone directories--where entering a phone number gets you a name and address--to track down family members suspected of abducting a child. Law enforcement also has its own network for sharing confidential details on suspects.
At the national missing children center, forensics imaging specialist Steve Loftin uses Adobe Systems Inc.’s Photoshop software to show what children might look like years after they were last seen. The age-progression photos are credited in 111 recoveries since 2000.
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sherry Friedlander runs an automated dialing service whose computers can place 1,000 calls in five minutes asking neighbors to be on the lookout for a missing child.
“If you had to go to 500 doors and knock on them, that would take you more than two hours,” Friedlander said.
E-mail allows groups to send thousands of alerts instantly, and it lets people submit tips from their homes.
“Some people are just intimidated talking to police,” said Rod Hegman, manager of the Delaware State Police’s Missing Children Information Clearinghouse.
Using the Internet won’t guarantee success, nor will it completely replace milk cartons, grocery bags, fliers and bulk-mail inserts.
And unlike posters in neighborhoods, a Web site needs to be visited to be seen. Web sites for the FBI, the U.S. Postal Service and other organizations link to a searchable database at www.missingkids.org, but they aren’t always prominent.
E-mail can get a photo out quickly, but photos can linger for years, continually forwarded by well-intended Internet users long after the child is found. And hoaxes have circulated online. Still, the Internet can spread information farther and faster.
Though Norton had posted pictures of her two sons in her and her ex-husband’s neighborhoods in New York, he had left the area with the kids and eventually ended up in a trailer park near San Jose.
The neighbor who spotted them contacted the sheriff’s office in Dutchess County, N.Y., using a number listed with an online photo of one of the boys.
