When Children Are Abducted by Strangers
“PLEASE HELP US FIND HER. PLEASE, PLEASE HELP SARA!”
This impassioned cry from two anguished parents was televised across the United States in an effort to recover their 12-year-old daughter, Sara Ann Wood. She had been kidnapped three weeks earlier as she bicycled home along the country road where she lived.
A MASSIVE search party combed woods, fields, and nearby lakes looking for traces of the missing girl. About the same time, Tina Piirainen, another anguished parent in a neighboring state, also went on camera pleading for her missing daughter. Lured down a wooded path, ten-year-old Holly vanished in less than an hour. Later her remains were found in a field.
Life for the parents of missing children is an agonizing ordeal. Daily they struggle with the uncertainty of whether their child is alive, perhaps being physically harmed or sexually abused, or dead, as was the case with little Ashley. Ashley went with her family to watch her brother compete in a soccer game. Tired of watching, she walked to the playground—and vanished. Later, Ashley’s body was found in a nearby field. She had been strangled.
Horrifying Nightmare
In the United States, each year, from 200 to 300 families will experience the horrifying nightmare of having a child kidnapped and then perhaps never seeing the child alive again. While the numbers appear small in comparison with other violent crimes committed, the fright and terror that ripple through entire communities affect thousands of people. In shock they wonder, ‘How can such a tragedy happen here? Will my child be next?’
In the United States, the annual number of reported cases of children abducted is between 3,200 and 4,600. Two thirds or more of these are sexually assaulted. Ernest E. Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, noted: “The primary reason is sexual, followed by intent to murder.” Also, according to the Department of Justice, over 110,000 other abductions are attempted each year, mostly by motorists, usually men, trying to lure a child into their car. Other lands are also experiencing a wave of violence against children.
Does Society Share the Blame?
Concerning child killing, an Australian researcher shows that it is “not a random event.” In his book Murder of the Innocents—Child-Killers and Their Victims, Paul Wilson states that “both the killers and the killed are caught up in a vicious cycle that society itself has created.”
It might seem strange to think that society may be responsible for, or at least may contribute to, this tragedy, since most people find the exploitation of and the murder of children to be horrendous acts. Yet, industrialized societies, and even many less-developed ones, are saturated with films, TV productions, and reading material that glorify sex and violence.
There are now more and more hard-core pornographic films featuring children and even adults dressed up to resemble children. These depict explicit sex and violence involving children. Wilson further notes in his book that there are movie titles such as Death of a Young One, Lingering Torture, and Dismembering for Beginners. How large an audience do sadistic violence and pornography have? It is a multibillion-dollar industry!
Graphic violence and pornography have a tremendous impact on the lives of those who exploit children. A convicted sex offender who had murdered five young boys confessed: “I am a homosexual pedophile convicted of murder, and pornography was a determining factor in my downfall.” Professor Berit Ås, of Oslo University, explains the effect child porn has: “We made a big mistake at the end of the 1960s. We believed that pornography could replace sex crimes by providing an outlet for sex offenders, and we took the lid off. Now we know we were wrong: such pornography validates sex crimes. It leads the offender to think, ‘If I can watch this, it must be okay to do it.’”
An adult’s desire for titillation escalates as he becomes addicted to pornography. As a result, some are willing to use either coercion or violence to obtain children for their perverted use, including rape and murder.
There are other causes for child abductions. In some lands this has increased because of bad economic conditions. Lured by large sums of ransom money paid by wealthy families, kidnappers target children. Each year many infants are stolen and sold to adoption rings that transport them out of the country.
Who make up the major portion of missing children? What happens to them? The next two articles will examine this matter.
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Millions of Child Prostitutes
According to the United Nations, about ten million children, mostly in developing countries, have been forced into prostitution, many of whom had been kidnapped. This evil trade has increased in Africa, Asia, and Latin America along with the increase in foreign tourism. In some areas, of the millions of tourists, especially from wealthier lands, about two thirds are “sex tourists.” But there is a day of reckoning, since man’s crimes are “openly exposed to the eyes of him with whom we have an accounting,” Jehovah God.—Hebrews 4:13.
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It is a horrifying nightmare when a child is abducted