Missing Children

The troubling disappearance of three Michigan brothers who vanished the day their father tried to commit suicide has captured the attention of many of us in the U.S. and beyond.

There are many particularly disturbing elements to the case – the fact that the boys’ father was apparently suicidal and also that he took the boys once before, on the day his wife and the boys’ mother filed for divorce.

The young age of the boys – 5, 7 and 9 years old – also tends to grab our collective attention. And there is the intrigue behind their father’s claim that he left the boys with a woman he initially met online – a woman police say they now believe never existed.

Any decent human being – and certainly any of us concerned with the well-being of America’s children – is surely pulling for the safe return of these baby-faced brothers.

Other cases also have captured our attention through the past few months, of course.

There was Kyron Horman, who mysteriously vanished from his school on the day of the science fair. And the haunting case of 10-year-old Zahra Baker, whose fight with bone cancer left her reliant on a prosthetic leg and hearing aids.

The case of Elizabeth Smart, of course, also troubled us deeply, particularly when we heard her own detailed testimony of how she suffered at the hands of a brutal captor.

As people who care about children – and about the basic safety and decency of modern society – we come to care deeply about these missing children who are in the news. Some of us find ourselves crying when we learn that a child’s remains have been found. And we shed tears of joy when other children are found safe, just when the news seemed most grim.

And yet, we also know that all missing children are not given this level of attention, concern and compassion.

The number of children who go missing each day in the U.S. is staggering. An average of 2,185 children and teens are reported missing each day, according to information from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Of the 797,500 children reported missing in a typical one-year period, about 203,900 are victims of family abductions, and 58,200 are victims of non-family abductions.

Of those missing, 115 children are found to be victims of stereotypical kidnapping – where someone they did not know held them overnight, transported them more than 50 miles, killed the child, demanded ransom or planned to keep the child permanently, according to the Department of Justice statistics.

Many of these missing children never even make it into their hometown newspapers, much less the international network news stations. Research has repeatedly shown that missing minority children and teens, or those from disadvantaged families, often do not have their stories told.

And some missing children – some experts say as many as 100,000 a year -- are never reported at all because their parents or others have sold them into slavery or prostitution and authorities simply never know.

The story of the missing Michigan boys should touch our hearts – because their lives matter. Any available resources should be used to locate them as soon as possible.

But we also should be careful to share the same level of concern for other missing children – whatever their age, ethnicity, economic background, physical appearance or background story.