Group Looks for Missing and Exploited Latino Children
Jake Rollow

A disproportionately high 13,000 U.S. Hispanic boys and girls are abducted by strangers every year, and the fact has grabbed the attention of the nation’s top resource organization that tracks missing children.

To learn how it can better serve the Hispanic community, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will hold its first town hall meeting planned to be held this summer. It will take place in Alexandria, Virginia, where the Center is located, and will be followed by town hall sessions in San Antonio, New York City, Los Angeles and Miami before the summer is out.

The meetings are specifically designed “to find out what the Latino community needs from us,” says Ju’Riese Colon, who heads up the Center’s Hispanic outreach. Additionally, they will give the Center opportunities to share summer safety tips and inform attending families of NCMEC services.

Colon says Latinos comprise 23% of the 58,200 non-family abductions that occur annually, citing a U.S.-Department of Justice report from 1999 (the last time such data was tabulated). According to U.S.-Census numbers, Latinos under 18 years old are only 18% of the U.S. population in that age range.

The disproportionate percentage is caused by socioeconomic factors, says Colon. More Latino parents work long hours and often at night, forcing them to leave their young ones unattended at times, she explains, “Predators go where children are accessible.”

Moreover, because some Hispanic families fear or are suspicious of law enforcement, or aren’t familiar with U.S.-custody laws, many missing Hispanics are not reported, Colon contends. Therefore, as many as 200,000 Latino youths may be missing annually, when family abductions and runaways are counted, if the 23% Hispanic ratio holds (DOJ did not publish the ethnicities of all 800,000 missing children reported).

NCMEC’s minority outreach department was created last February, but Colon says Hispanic outreach has always been important to the organization. It’s garnered special attention since 2002, the year media spotlighted the abduction of a white teenager, Elizabeth Smart, but gave no publicity to the comparable case of Laura Ayala, Colon explains.

NCMEC currently provides all its publications in Spanish and is producing Spanish-language radio and television public service announcements. To disseminate information to the Hispanic community, the Center is working with the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens, which have local and affiliate chapters nationally.

There is also always a Spanish-speaker available at NCMEC’s toll-free hotline, 1-800-THE-LOST, which operates around the clock, 365 days a year.

NCMEC has grown gradually since it was founded in 1984. Mandated by Congress as a nonprofit entity, it had only a handful of staffers at the time. Now 300 employees operate from its five-floor Virginia office, and branch offices are located in New York, Florida, California and Missouri. Since its founding, the Center has handled 104,000 cases, with a 94.9% rate of recovery.

NCMEC serves as a clearinghouse to train and coordinate law enforcement officials on missing child cases nationally. Although it is not an investigative operation, the Center employs members of the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Secret Service.

To help locate a missing child, NCMEC has been granted access to large privately owned databases that track and store people’s names and addresses. With the help of U.S. Postal workers and retired law enforcement officials, the addresses are then checked to see if the child or a family member is indeed present.

Within minutes of when a child is reported missing �\ and it is the first few hours that are most crucial to recovery �\ the Center can also post photos in Wal-Marts throughout the region. When the case is not so quickly solved, NCMEC can send out photo postcards of missing children nationally. One in six of the children on postcards are recovered.

By morphing together photos of the child and a parent, the Center can also age-progress photos for postcards of children that have been missing for years. The photos are often quite realistic. So accurate, in fact, that Forensic Imaging Specialist Glenn Miller tells the story of a young woman with long hair, whose age-progressed photo depicted her hair short. Once recovered, she cut her hair, explaining it looked better in the photo.

The Hispanic community specifically may have another asset when a child goes missing, according to Colon: the strength of its families. The large infrastructure Latino families often provide can be beneficial to track and recover a missing child, she says.

She’s optimistic, explaining that NCMEC has received relatively more calls from Latino families in recent years.

“I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to reach Latino communities and educate them on how to keep their kids safe,” she says.

SIDEBAR

How kids can stay safe this summer:

• Before going anywhere, check first and regularly with parents.
• Always take a friend.
• Keep home door locked.
• Stay away from bodies of water �\ creeks, ponds, rivers �\ when without a parent.
• Never take shortcuts without permission.
• Don’t wear clothes that say your name on them.
• Always trust your feelings.

(Jake Rollow is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. he can be reach via e-mail at jakerollow@yahoo.com.)

© 2005, Hispanic Link News Service
07/03/05
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