Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor (a child under the age of legal adulthood) from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.
The term child abduction includes two legal and social categories which differ by their perpetrating contexts: abduction by members of the child's family or abduction by strangers:
- Parental child abduction is the unauthorized custody of a child by a family relative (usually one or both parents) without parental agreement and contrary to family law ruling, which may have removed the child from the care, access and contact of the other parent and family side. Occurring around parental separation or divorce, such parental or familial child abduction may include parental alienation, a form of child abuse seeking to disconnect a child from targeted parent and denigrated side of family. This is, by far, the most common form of child abduction.
- Abduction or kidnapping
by strangers (by people unknown to the child and outside the child's
family) is rare. Some of the reasons why a stranger might kidnap an
unknown child include:
- extortion to elicit a ransom from the parents for the child's return
- illegal adoption, a stranger steals a child with the intent to rear the child as their own or to sell to a prospective adoptive parent
- human trafficking, stealing a child with the intent to exploit the child themselves or through trade to someone who will abuse the child through slavery, forced labor, or sexual abuse.
- murder
Parental child abduction
By far the most common kind of child abduction is parental child abduction (200,000 in 2010 alone). It often occurs when the parents separate or begin divorce
proceedings. A parent may remove or retain the child from the other
seeking to gain an advantage in expected or pending child-custody
proceedings or because that parent fears losing the child in those
expected or pending child-custody proceedings; a parent may refuse to
return a child at the end of an access visit or may flee with the child to prevent an access visit or fear of domestic violence and abuse.
Parental child abductions may result in the child be kept within
the same city, within the state or region, within the same country, or
sometimes may result in the child being taken to a different country.
Most parental abductions are resolved fairly quickly. Studies performed for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
reported that in 1999, 53% percent of family abducted children were
gone less than one week, and 21% were gone one month or more.
Parental abduction has been characterized as child abuse, when seen from the perspective of the kidnapped child.
International child abduction
State parties to the convention
states that signed and ratified the convention
states that acceded to the convention
state that ratified, but convention has not entered into force
| |
| Signed | 25 October 1980 |
| Location | The Netherlands |
| Effective | 1 December 1983 |
| Parties | 100 (March 2019) |
| Depositary | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands |
| Languages | French and English |
International child abduction occurs when a parent, relative or
acquaintance of a child leaves the country with the child or children in
violation of a custody decree or visitation order. Another related
situation is retention where children are taken on an alleged vacation
to a foreign country and are not returned.
While the number of cases which is over 600,000 a year consists
of international child abduction is small in comparison to domestic
cases, they are often the most difficult to resolve due to the
involvement of conflicting international jurisdictions. Two-thirds of
international parental abduction cases involve mothers who often allege
domestic violence. Even when there is a treaty agreement for the return
of a child, the court may be reluctant to return the child if the return
could result in the permanent separation of the child from their
primary caregiver. This could occur if the abducting parent faced
criminal prosecution or deportation by returning to the child's home
country.
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
is an international human rights treaty and legal mechanism to recover
children abducted to another country. The Hague Convention does not
provide relief in many cases, resulting in some parents hiring private
parties to recover their children. Covert recovery was first made public
when Don Feeney, a former Delta Commando, responded to a desperate
mother's plea to locate and recover her daughter from Jordan in the
1980s. Feeney successfully located and returned the child. A movie and
book about Feeney's exploits lead to other desperate parents seeking him
out for recovery services.
By 2007, both the United States, European authorities, and NGO's
had begun serious interest in the use of mediation as a means by which
some international child abduction cases may be resolved. The primary
focus was on Hague Cases. Development of mediation in Hague cases,
suitable for such an approach, had been tested and reported by REUNITE,
a London Based NGO which provides support in international child
abduction cases, as successful. Their reported success lead to the first
international training for cross-border mediation in 2008, sponsored by
NCMEC.
Held at the University of Miami School of Law, Lawyers, Judges, and
certified mediators interested in international child abduction cases,
attended.
International child abduction is not new. A case of international
child abduction has been documented aboard the Titanic. However, the
incidence of international child abduction continues to increase due to
the ease of international travel, increase in bi-cultural marriages and a
high divorce rate.
Abductions by strangers
The stereotypical version of kidnapping by a stranger is the classic form of "kidnapping," exemplified by the Lindbergh kidnapping,
in which the child is detained, transported some distance, held for
ransom or with intent to keep the child permanently. These instances are
rare.
Child abduction for ransom: United States
The
earliest nationally publicised kidnapping of a child by a stranger for
the purpose of extracting a ransom payment from the parents was the Pool
case of 1819, which took place in Baltimore, Maryland. Margaret Pool,
20-months-old, was kidnapped on May 20 by Nancy Gamble (19-years-old)
and secreted with the assistance of Marie Thomas. On May 22, the
parents, James and Mary Pool, placed an ad in the Baltimore Patriot
newspaper offering a $20 reward for Mary's return. When the child was
recovered on May 23—through the efforts of members of the community who
conducted a search—it was revealed that the child had been badly whipped
by Gamble and bore bloody wounds. Both Gamble and Thomas were tried for
the crime of kidnapping and found guilty. The motive for the crime was
demonstrated to be financial. She had kidnapped the child with the
intention of waiting for a reward to be offered, then would return the
child and collect the money. This is a technique favored by many ransom
child kidnappers before the use of written ransom demands became the
favored method. Nancy Gamble's crime and subsequent trial were reported in detail in Baltimore Patriot (June 26, 1819). The June 26 article, as well as others on the case that had appeared in the Patriot,
were reprinted in newspapers in other states including: Connecticut,
Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Washington D.C.
Children abducted for slavery
In 1597, Elizabeth I of England licensed the abduction of children for use as chapel choristers and theatre performers.
There are reports that abduction of children to be used or sold as slaves is common in parts of Africa.
The Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel paramilitary group operating mainly in northern Uganda, is notorious for its abductions of children for use as child soldiers or sex slaves. According to the Sudan Tribune, as of 2005, more than 30,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA and their leader, Joseph Kony.
By stranger to raise
A
very small number of abductions result from - in most cases - women who
kidnap babies (or other young children) to bring up as their own. These
women are often unable to have children of their own, or have miscarried, and seek to satisfy their unmet psychological need by abducting a child rather than by adopting. The crime is often premeditated, with the woman often simulating pregnancy to reduce suspicion when a baby suddenly appears in the household.
Historically, a few states have practiced child abduction for indoctrination, as a form of punishment for political opponents, or for profit. Notable cases include the kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany (400,000 children kidnapped for possible Germanization), the lost children of Francoism, during which an estimated 300,000 children were abducted from their parents. and the about 500 "Children of the Disappeared (Desaparecidos)" who were adopted by the military in the Argentine Dirty War .
In Australia the 'Stolen Generation' is the term given to native
Aboriginal children who were forcibly abducted or whose mothers gave
consent under duress or misleading information so the government could
assimilate the black population into the white majority.
Some other abductions have been to make children available by child-selling for adoption by other people, without adopting parents necessarily being aware of how children were actually made available for adoption.
Abduction before birth
Neonatal infant abduction and prenatal fetal abduction are the earliest ages of child abduction, when child is expansively defined as a viable baby
before birth (usually a few months before the typical time for birth)
through the age of majority (the age at which a young person is legally
recognized as an adult). In addition, embryo theft and even oocyte misappropriation in reproductive medical settings have been legalistically construed as child abduction.
Global Missing Children's Network
Launched in 1998 as a joint venture of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) and NCMEC, the Global Missing Children's Network (GMCN) is a network of countries that connect, share best practices, and disseminate information and images of missing children to improve the effectiveness of missing children investigations.
The Network has 22 member countries: Albania, Argentina, Australia,
Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy,
Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia,
South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the US.
Each country can access a customizable website platform, and can
enter missing children information into a centralized, multilingual
database that has photos of and information about missing children,
which can be viewed and distributed to assist in location and recovery
efforts.
GMCN staff train new countries joining the Network, and provide an
annual member conference sponsored by Motorola Solutions Foundation at
which best practices, current issues, trends, policies, procedures, and
possible solutions are discussed.
The parents of Madeleine McCann,
a three-year-old girl who disappeared from her bed in a hotel in
Portugal in 2007, approached ICMEC to help them publicize her case.
ICMEC's YouTube channel, "Don'tYouForgetAboutMe," which lets people post
videos, images, and information about their missing children, was
launched that year as a part of these efforts, and as of November 2014 had 2,200 members.
ICMEC reviews the postings to ensure that any child in a posted video
is in fact missing, that authorities are aware that the child is
missing, and that the images are not inappropriate.
Laws
International
Photographs of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
United States
The United States has a variety of related laws on the books at both the state and local levels. The US developed the AMBER Alert system, which broadcasts cases of suspected kidnapping when the child is believed to be in a motor vehicle and the vehicle licence plate is known.
Some laws, such as the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, attempt to prevent stranger abductions by making it possible for people to learn where people previously convicted of sexual crimes are living.
