Child Find is with you if the unthinkable happens

Page 6

Losing a child in a busy shopping centre is harrowing. With adrenaline rushing, parents rush through the crowds looking for their toddler who has wandered off. Most times, the little guy or girl is spotted in a store or staring at a toy or candy through a window - most times. But what if your child simply disappears.

Statistics from Child Find Alberta are frightening for parents and guardians of children, but at the same time, the organization's recovery rate is very promising.

Although giving much of the credit to local law enforcement agencies, the public and other support, the Child Find program is an important piece of a puzzle that threatens the very core of security of the general public. . . What if my child went missing?

Although case loads of missing children reported to Child Find agencies in Alberta have doubled each year since 1994, the case closure rate of the organization is remaining at a steady 95 per cent.

Child Find was incorporated in Alberta in 1983. It is part of a national network delivering services to all families of missing children, and provides education and prevention programs to eliminate the crime of child abduction from happening.

From 1984 to the end of 1996, Child Find Alberta has opened 334 cases involving 414 missing children. In 1996 alone, there were 58 reported cases opened in Alberta. Fifty-six of them were resolved. With slightly higher than 95 per cent success rates, the agency (as of Dec. 31, 1996) has 16 active cases involving 20 children in its files.

Those cases are broken down into five stranger abductions - where the victim is taken by persons unknown to them, four parental abduction cases, five runaway or voluntary missing cases, and two unknown circumstance abductions.

The role of Child Find, whether it be regional, national, or on an international level is to aid in the location of missing or abducted children. One common misconception about the organization is that they are an investigative body. That is not the case. Child Find believes it takes a group effort of all concerned community members to help locate a missing child. Part of that group effort comes in the form of education and awareness.

Child Find offers several programs and educational material on the best way to make sure your children don't become victims. All services are free of charge.

The agency offers and teaches prevention programs to community level groups and enforcement agencies. Some of these programs include child identification services (In 1996, Child Find Alberta fingerprinted more than 10,000 children, with thousands more fingerprinted by community agencies as a service to Child Find.) which assists with a missing children registration program, referral services for victims and their families, mediation services, and a variety of public awareness and education services including information booths, presentations and information pamphlets.

What Parents Can Do to Prepare Their Children, Stranger Abduction Precautions, Parental Abduction Precautions, Tips For Tots, Tips For Grade School and Tips for Teenagers, are just some of the informative pamphlets provided by the agency. Any one, or all of the information can be collected from the province's two main offices of Child Find. The provincial headquarters are in Calgary at #101, 424-10 St. N.W. and the Edmonton district office can be found at Bonnie Doon High School in room 230, 8205-90 Ave. The phone number at the Calgary office is (403) 270-FIND and the Edmonton phone number is (403) 465 1003. The cross-Canada toll free line is 1-800-387-7962.

The common denominator in all the pamphlets is common sense. The information should be learned by parents and guardians and taught to their children.

Recommended precautions set out by Child Find include:

o Teach children the facts of abduction at an early age.

o Define a stranger to children - an ice cream man seen every day is still a stranger.

o Teach children how to use teephones.

o Teach children that it is best to travel in groups.

o Never leave your car unattended.

o Know who your child is with and where they are.

o Instruct your child to scream, kick, yell, shout and fight if threatened by a stranger.

If your child does go missing, Child Find emphasizes one vital component. .

.

The first step in the case of a missing child -

Contact your police!

The numbers are frightening. In Canada, sources estimate that between 100,000 and 250,000 children go missing every year. Of those, 50,000 are reported to the police.

Almost three quarters of all missing children are runaways. The remaining 25 per cent are made up of parental abductions and stranger kidnappings. Statistics show that stranger abductions - by persons unknown to the victim - make up two percent of all reported cases.

In the photographs shown on this page, the victim of a stranger abduction is the top photo of Jeffrey Andrew Dupres. At only three years of age, Dupres was taken from Slave Lake, Alta., on Apr. 24, 1980. Dupres will turn 21 on March 16 of next year. Dupres has blue/grey eyes and brown hair. Age enhanced photos of Dupres are available through the Child Find Alberta office.

Victim number two on this page is Holly Ann Painter. The 1.65 metre tall youth went missing on June 26, 1995 from Toronto, Ont.. Painter was 18-years-old. She has brown hair and brown eyes and weighed approximately 60 kg.

The third victim on this page is Kevin James Charles. The Chitek Lake, Sask., native was 16-years-old when he was abducted on April 3, 1993.

Charles has dark brown hair, brown eyes, weighs 65 kg. and was approximately 1.65 metres tall. Charles has a birthmark on his upper left arm, a scar over his right eye and is allergic to green peppers.

Saskatchewan RCMP and Child Find believe Charles may be with a woman named Mary Goodfellow.

Anyone with any information on these three missing people should contact their local police or Child Find at 1-800-387-7962.

For nformation on other victims, age advanced photos and descriptions of people who may be responsible for the abductions, Child Find has a web site on the Internet. They can be reached at www.childfind.ca/content.hte.