Child Abductions: True Or False?

Without a doubt, the greatest fear as a parent would be finding out that your child is missing. Even worse, that your child has been abducted. Child abductions can not only tear families apart, but can affect communities and even nations. It is a tragedy that no child could ever recover from. People often say that abductions can be prevented, that infact the internet has made abductions easier, and most children are abducted by strangers. But those facts aren’t always true nor are they always false. First of all, many people believe they can prevent their children from being abducted by telling their children to simply not talk to strangers. But not talking to a stranger doesn't prevent a child from being taken off the street. Just imagine

From reading the book Buried Memories by Katie Beers, it is shown how capable family is at abducting their own. On December 28th, 1992, Katie Beers was lured by a trip to a toy store for a birthday present and then to the home of a family friend by the name of John Esposito. He abducted her and society knows this by Katie leaving a message for her grandmother saying, “I’ve been kidnapped by a man with a knife.” (Beers 17). Katie was kept in an underground cell for seventeen long days and was physically and sexually abused against her will, and this was all done by a family friend. Someone she trusted, or so she thought.

After looking into the statistics of this fact, it is proven that most children are not abducted by strangers but more so, family members or close family friends, “Based on the identity of the perpetrator, there are three distinct types of kidnapping: kidnapping by a relative of the victim or "family kidnapping" (49 percent), kidnapping by an acquaintance of the victim or "acquaintance kidnapping" (27 percent), and kidnapping by a stranger to the victim or "stranger kidnapping" (24 percent)” (Bilich). The highest percent of abductions are by relatives or family friends. The lowest percent, being