Comforting parents of the disappeared

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Even after reporting a missing child to police, parents often feel powerless and frantic.

A small measure of relief may come from the local chapter of Victims of Violence (V o V), an organization that helps look for missing children, offers counselling services and distributes information of missing children.

Shari Uri works with the current Edmonton chapter and says Victims of Violence has really grown.

Most of their work is distributing posters of missing kids. But they also give lectures to students in kindergarten to grade 12 on how to protect themselves from abduction and sexual abuse.

They even help witnesses and victims of sexual assault and abduction feel comfortable with Edmonton's Law Courts Building. V o V works with the missing children registry established by the RCMP as well as local police and Alberta Social

Services, who search for the missing.

Posters are distributed all over the country at bus stops, border crossings, police stations and airports. Actual searching is left up to police or social workers, depending on the type of abduction, but they do help look for local runaways, combing

malls, arcades and streets.

Parents who report missing children to Social Services and police are referred to V o V to get kids' pictures in posters as well as receiving counseling.

The organization gets a picture of the missing child and a description of the last sighting, what the child was doing and where he was going.

Most abductions are carried out be separated or divorced parents who use the situation to hurt the other spouse, Uri says. Social workers and police are assigned to these cases. Strange abductions are left up to police.

Last year in Canada there were 40,373 runaways, 446 parental abductions and seven strange abductions.

But these figures aren't entirely accurate, Uri says, because there are a high number of unreported incidents.

People may report sightings of missing people to Victims of Violence if they feel uncomfortable in dealing with police or government authorities, Uri notes.

"If we get a tip we pass it onto the police and it becomes their case to prove right or wrong."

The organization has constantly been faced with funding problems, which prevents the expansion of services.

Victims of Violence wants to offer counseling to adult survivors of child sexual abuse, begin a Child Abuse Action Committee and start networking with missing persons organization in the United States.

This would be a step in the war against the selling of children on U.S. black markets, Uri explains, where abductors often use the U.S. as a place to hide out.