United States 800,000 children disappear...

The data collected by the National Center
for Missing & Exploited Children:
each year in the United States
800,000 children disappear

Over one hundred children a year, though, are the victims of "stereotypical kidnapping", ie seizures made ​​by someone the victim knew little or nothing




NEW YORK
The numbers are impressive. According to data collected by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, every year 800,000 children disappear in the United States, that is, more than two thousand a day.

In most cases, these kidnappings that take place within families, even where separated parents or other relatives contend the case. When things go well, the solution may be easier. Over one hundred children a year, though, are the victims of "stereotypical kidnapping", ie seizures made ​​by someone the victim knew little or nothing, where the kidnapped is brought to over 50 miles away from their homes, tortured, killed, or used for ransom.

The story so far had upset about the United States was that of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who disappeared for eighteen years. Jaycee was kidnapped in 1991 when she was 11, while he went to the school bus stop near her home in South Lake Tahoe, California. The adoptive father accompanied her, but before she mounted the bus, a car had approached. He was a man who had fallen Jaycee threatened with a gun, forced her to go up and fled, despite the father's vain attempt to stop him.
The man's name was Phillip Garrido, a pedophile who were involved in at least one other case of harassment. He had carried the child in his home, about 150 miles away, and with the complicity of his wife Nancy had forced her to live in a tent in the garden, surrounded by a fence unsurpassed. Garrido repeatedly raped Jaycee, who had two daughters by him. In August 2009, Phillip had brought the two girls to a meeting that took place at the University of California at Berkeley, and his eccentric behavior had attracted attention. The police had questioned him and discovered the truth. When the agents had found Jaycee, however, she had lied about his identity, trying to defend his torturer arrest. Dugard, now it has returned to a relatively normal life, he published a memoir and has received compensation of $ 20 million from the California authorities, because the police had failed and had many occasions to find her.

Another case that had been feeling was that of Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City in 2002, when he was 14 years old. Her younger sister, Mary, had seen the kidnapper, and had helped to identify him as Brian David Mitchell, a man who did housework for the Smart family. Here too, the Mithchell wife, Wanda Barzee, had helped him to hide and torture the victim. "I will never forget - then told Elizabeth - how I felt, there on the floor. I thought I had lost my purity. I felt that my soul had been destroyed, and I thought of no longer being a person. "Elizabeth then had described as the sense of abandonment, which prevented her from escaping, "I was certain that no one would have rescued. Who would still love me, after what had happened? '. Instead, someone had noticed, while the kidnappers took her out with a wig: it had been released, and is now married to Matthew Gilmour, a Mormon missionary.

Even Shawn Hornbeck disappeared in 2002, when he was 11 years old, abducted by pedophile Michael Devlin while cycling near his home in Missouri. The torture had broken, pushing it to accept any orders without rebelling. Five years later, in January 2007, Devlin had come to strike, this time seizing the thirteen year old Ben Ownby. A friend of the child disappeared had given the clue that led police officers in the house of a pedophile, where with great surprise they had also found Shawn Hornbeck.

Nightmares for the victims, and also for the parents. Which unfortunately are repeated almost every day, in big cities and in the forgotten corners of America.