Prevent your child from being abducted or going missing

Nineteen of twenty children voluntarily leave with a stranger, a statistic shows. We should learn better how to prevent our children from being abducted or going missing.

Children are abducted in three cases. One of them: for the purpose of ransom - here the kidnappers get in touch themselves.

The second case - people with mental illness abduct. They can take the child for themselves.

The third case - 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. 

According to statistics, 90% of missing children are found, of which 80% are alive. A very large percentage of children return home on their own: their phone was dead, they were with/at friends or forgot to call parents.

Different rescue services or volunteers advise parents to buy bright, visible clothing if the child will be in the crowd, to photograph their children more often( to have up-to-date picture of the child), and to purchase GPS trackers. According to them, they were never contacted by parents whose children had GPS trackers with them in their backpack or in their pocket.

An active kid of three to five years old can use plastic bracelets. Parents need to write the name and surname of the child, the phone number of the parents, and put on the kid every time before going out with him. Another tool is a Bluetooth alarm. You need to put the keychain in the pocket of the child’s clothes, and if the child moves away from the parent by 5-7 meters, a loud signal will be heard from his pocket. 

For older children who are already allowed to go outside house without a parent, keychain will be not that handy. For such children the best protections will be a tracker. Trackers can be of various shapes, for example, in the form of watches, bracelets, or toys.

Be careful, kidnappers are also aware of such technologies that is why the first thing they do, they throw away the watch and the phone of a child. The best option which we found is a simple stealth black box in the pocket of a jacket or backpack of a child. 

If you see a child, and it seems to you that he is lost, come to him, do not touch. Ask "are you lost?", "Where is your mother?" Most likely, the child will answer you. If it's a mall, call security.

If it seems to you that the child is being taken away against his will, go up and ask the child and the adult what is happening. If he is a kidnapper, then most likely he will leave the child. He does not need too much interest on your part. You paid attention, that means , you remember him.

To avoid the abduction, it’s enough to follow simple rules:

• Talk and trust to your child.
• Make online safety a priority.
• Teach your child to say "No" to strangers.
• Explain to your child that an adult will never need a help from a child, a child should never follow a stranger.
• Use a modern simple technology, provide a mini GPS tracker to your child.
• Do not panic.

The more efforts we make, the more children and adults will return home. The future  is determined by our decisions! And the track never ends.

The information for infographic was taken from https://missingchildreneurope.eu/Portals/0/Figures%20and%20Trends%202018.pdf