High recovery rate for missing children

Anastasia Cunningham, Senior Gleaner Writer

Though children still make up the largest percentage of persons reported missing, with figures showing them accounting for up to 70 per cent of cases, the recovery rate has drastically improved since 2009.

According to statistics from the Missing Person Call Centre (MPCC), which falls under the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), of the 2,394 people reported missing for the period January to December last year, 1,680 were children. Of those children, 1,248 have returned home.

The figures also include habitual missing children.

Fifty-nine people were found dead, eight of whom were children, and 424 remain missing.

For 2008, it was reported that 960 went missing, while for 2009, 1,770 disappeared.

The head of the Ananda Alert system has attributed the high recovery rate of missing children to the introduction of that mechanism.

"In fact, for the first quarter of last year, 55 per cent of children reported missing were recovered and there was a gradual improvement, reaching a high of 70 per cent by December," said Wayne Robertson, who is also senior director, strategic policy, planning and reform in the Department of Local Government.

"This speaks to the whole success of the dissemination of the alerts. What it does is trigger awareness of the missing persons."

The Ananda Alert was introduced in May 2009 and named after 11-year-old Ananda Dean, who was abducted and brutally murdered the previous year. It is Jamaica's version of the Amber Alert for missing children which was developed in response to the 1996 abduction and murder of nine-year-old Amber Hagerman in the United States. The system targets children up to age 18.

Cleared-up cases

The introduction of the MPCC in April last year has also helped to reduce the figure.

According to Steve Brown, head of the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), since the centre was set up, the police have managed to clear a significant percentage of the cases.

"Several persons reported missing actually returned home or were located by the family but the police were not informed. When the missing persons' centre started doing follow-ups on each case, we were able to close a number of them," said Brown.

According to the statistics, the age group 14 to 16 has the highest incidence of missing persons. The youngest in recent history is two-year-old Augustus 'Baby Ralston' Mitchell, but Brown said there have been cases of newborn babies being taken from hospitals.

The figures also revealed that eight out of every 10 children reported missing were girls. St Catherine, St Andrew, Kingston and Clarendon have the highest number of missing children.

"The Spanish Town corridor is frightening," said Robertson.

He said the general trend was that the areas with the larger numbers of missing children usually have the higher crime rates.

"The data is also frightening that all the cases of missing children are from the lower level of the socio-economic ladder," Robertson said. "It frightened us when we saw it because we kept seeing a recurrence. We don't know if persons uptown are victims of abduction or otherwise but they are not reporting the children as being missing. What the data is saying is that the reports are all from a certain socio-economic grouping. It says something and, of course, the state will now have to look at interventions in that regard, which include parenting seminars."

Citing a myriad of reasons for children going missing, Brown noted that only five per cent of those gone missing were abducted.

"The stepfather syndrome has become a major factor. In a lot of the cases, the stepfathers are the ones abusing the children, both boys and girls," said Robertson.

Brown also said almost 95 per cent of the cases solved were through the efforts of the police.

anastasia.cunningham@gleanerjm.com

Why kids go missing

In some counselling sessions that police
and various support groups hold with children who return home, the
following were revealed as some of the reasons they go missing.

• Broken homes
• Peer pressure
• Sexual, physical or verbal abuse at home
• Poverty
• Rebellion
• Lured away by men
• Abducted or captured
• Went with a boyfriend
• Lured through chat rooms on the Internet or cellphones.