China’s missing children

There’s a fairly huge child trafficking problem in China right now. Little kids are getting kidnapped left and right. Authorities believe the children are taken by childless adults wanting a child of their own, by son-less households wanting a male heir, or by kidnappers hoping to use the children for labor or sell them for adoption abroad. The magnitude of the problem cannot be underestimated. According to this article:

There are 30,000 to 60,000 children reported missing every year in China, according to the ministry. But people like Tang, who are involved in the search for these kids, say the number is closer to 200,000.

Many, if not most cases are not formally listed because local police are unwilling or unable to investigate crimes that usually involve crossing provincial borders. As well, many of the parents think police might be complicit in the kidnappings. It is a lucrative business that can net about $4,000 for each boy sold and about $1,000 per girl.

To make the problem even more tragic, a lot of times even if the abducted children are recovered, it’s hard to reunite them with their families. Many of the kids were too young at the time of the abduction to remember their identities, and if they were never officially listed as missing, obviously that just makes it more difficult. There’s a national DNA database parents of missing children can contribute to, but not enough have done so and DNA testing is really expensive. This article says it costs the equivalent of $350 per test in Beijing, although the fee varies depending on what province you’re in. Wikipedia says the per capita income in China is a little less than $6,000 annually. I’m not sure whether the parents pay for the DNA testing or the government does.

The Chinese government has just posted this website with photos of kidnapped children and suspected kidnap victims whom they have recovered and are trying to identify. It’s written in Chinese, so I can’t read it and I doubt many of you viewers can either, but you can see the photos of those adorable kids with eyes that haunt you.

I’m not sure how effective this website will be. It seems like the majority of abducted children were probably stolen from poor families and I’m not sure how much internet access the average Chinese person has. But it can’t hurt, might help.

Karla Rodriguez missing 10 years

Two days ago was the ten-year anniversary of the disappearance of seven-year-old Karla Rodriguez from Las Vegas, Nevada. She disappeared without a trace from her neighborhood on the evening of October 20, 1999 and is presumed to have been abducted, but no one saw anything. Police have investigated a number of suspects, including the now-deceased child serial killer Curtis Dean Anderson (posthumously declared responsible for the abduction and murder of Amber Swartz-Garcia who has also never been found). But there have never been really any strong leads in Karla’s case and there hasn’t been much news about it for many years.

Sadly, I could only find one article about the anniversary of Karla’s disappearance. Her case didn’t get as much publicity as it could have. Most of them never do.

Jacob Wetterling missing 20 years

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the abduction of eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling. He was kidnapped at gunpoint by a strange man in front of his brother and a friend, and never seen again. The police don’t seem to have any idea what became of him or who took him, though he is one of the most famous missing children in the country.

Of course there’s a slew of anniversary articles:
Minneapolis Star-Tribune (this is a nice one, focusing on how the abduction affected Jacob’s best friend who saw the whole thing)
Minnesota Public Radio
St. Cloud Times
St. Cloud Times again
USA Today
ABC News
Fox 9 News

Jacob’s abduction reminds me of a lot of cases, namely Jaycee Dugard, Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin, and the Groene family murders and the abductions of Dylan and Shasta Groene. (I wonder if anyone looked at Joseph Duncan as a suspect in Jacob’s kidnapping? Just a thought.) Whoever kidnapped Jacob was incredibly brazen and brutal. My guess is that the abductor had committed other crimes before — not kidnapping but perhaps assaults, burglaries, maybe some sex crimes. You just don’t wake up one morning and decide to stalk and abduct a child at gunpoint in full view of two witnesses.

Is Jacob still alive? Who knows?

As everyone and their gardener has noted…

…current pictures of Jaycee Dugard have appeared in People magazine. She has grown into a beautiful young woman. I think it looks pretty close to her age-progression picture, except for the hair obviously. A lot of kids with light blonde hair have their hair turn brown when they grow up. I did, I think. I’ve been coloring my hair since I was ten but I believe it’s naturally light brown now.

I hope people don’t bother Jaycee if they recognize her on the street or whatever from the magazine photos. I know she is living very quietly in an undisclosed location, but presumably she’s not hiding in her hotel all the time.

Pay dirt again

One of my contributors sent me some articles for some of the kids on my “cases I know hardly anything about” list, so I can update their cases soon. The articles for Jackie Hay and Toya Hill didn’t say a lot, but Francillon Pierre’s was most interesting. His mom and stepdad had been charged with felony child abuse for beating him before he disappeared, but for some reason they still had custody when they told the police he’d wandered off at a flea market. They said they didn’t want his disappearance publicized. (Are they even TRYING to look innocent?) Bio-dad’s in the clear. As I suspected, Francillon is of Haitian descent; his dad lives in Haiti.

Brittany Williams, Rilya Wilson, Darnell Moore and Aarone Thompson again

39-year-old Damion Davis has been charged with abandoning his baby son, Qua’mere Rogers, two or three years ago. The police didn’t even know Qua’mere existed until a couple of months ago when someone tipped them off. The police can’t find a picture of him and even his age seems to be in dispute — the aforementioned link says he was between eight months and one year old, but another article gives his age as two. The press can’t seem to get any of the details straight; they also give two different years for Qua’mere’s disappearance. Perhaps Davis himself can’t remember exactly when it happened.

Qua’mere’s mother was fifteen or sixteen years old when he was born. (Another detail the articles differ on.) Due to her being underage, Davis has also been charged with rape. The mother says she thought Davis was eighteen when she met him, and that he’d given her a false name and she didn’t know his real name until the police contacted her about Qua’mere’s disappearance. She said he was physically abusive to her and she left him and Qua’mere in 2006 and never saw them again, but she lied to the state Department of Social Services and said Qua’mere was living with her, which I guess is part of the reason why he was never missed.

Anyway, Davis says he gave the child to some guy whom he met at a friend’s apartment and that person gave him to a member of the United Nation of Moors. I’m not sure if Davis is referring to this black power group or not. They gave him a phone number to call, but it turned out to be no good. Clearly, however, Davis wasn’t too concerned about it, since he never got in touch with the police or anything.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this child wasn’t abandoned at all, but actually sold, or outright killed. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, lacking even the most basic description and detail for Qua’mere, the police never find him.

All I can do is hope for a happier resolution than seems possible.

Digging through Newslibrary

I just went through the NCMEC’s entire “non-family abduction” category and entered into Newslibrary the names of cases where I have frustratingly little information. I struck paydirt in several cases, finding lengthy articles for David Borer, Christopher Harvey and Raymond Green, and bits of info for other cases. I don’t have that many NCMEC non-family abduction cases left where I have hardly anything. But I’ve made a list of them, in case anyone wants to do some research of their own. I’m not going to link to the cases cause I’m lazy.

Walter Thomas Ackerson
Kevin Jay Ayotte
Jeanine Camille Barnwell
Allen Briscoe Jr.
Andrew Lee Brown
Jose Esauro Dominguez
Curtis MacKeever Fair
Debra Lee Frost
Megan Elizabeth Garner
William Dale Gunn
Charles Hall III (now called Charlie Hall on the NCMEC for some reason)
Jackie Dene Hay
Toya Hill
Cheryl Ann Moser Iacovone
Tyler Jennings Inman
Maria De Los Angeles Martinez
Michael McCool
Francillon Pierre
Kirk Quintons
Ilene Rebecca Scott
Billy Sena
Colleen Vanita Simpson
Kelly Juanita Staples
Edna Christine Thorne
Angela Loraine Westberry
Anthony Tyrone Woodson

Twelve-part series on Amanda Brown

I just found this twelve-part series on that tells in detail the story of the kidnapping and murder of seven-year-old Amanda Brown in 1998. Her body was never found but her killer is on death row.

I saw a poll around the time Willie Crain was sentenced to death asking if they should allow the death penalty in cases where the victim’s body was never found. The idea being that there’s a margin of doubt there. To me it makes no difference. A jury is supposed to convict if there’s evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, body or no body. The standard of evidence is the same whether the defendant is facing the death penalty or a month of probation.

Andrea Gonzalez gets a memorial

I found this article about the missing child Andrea Gonzalez, who disappeared from Russellville, Alabama in 1993 at the age of five. Her father and stepmother were later convicted in her death, but her body has never been found.

Andrea never got a break in life. Her mother went to prison when she was little and she wound up in foster care in Illinois, which was probably a good thing considering she had obviously been abused in her mother’s home and had picked up stomach parasites and an host of behavioral problems. When Mom was released from jail, she didn’t seem all that anxious to reconnect with Andrea or her other two children. Andrea was sent to live with her dad and stepmom early in 1993, and her two siblings were put up for adoption. In less than a year she was dead, supposedly accidentally scalded to death in the bathtub. Curiously, rather than call an ambulance, her father and stepmother chose to get rid of her body and no one as ever found it.

Anyway, a Tennessee company has donated a monument in Andrea’s honor, which is on display near the Franklin County Detention Center in Alabama, along with similar memorials to raise awareness of child abuse. It’s nice that people still care after all this time.

Andrea’s case reminds me a lot of Haleigh Cummings. Except Andrea’s family is even more screwed up than Haleigh’s, and it’s not at all certain that Haleigh is dead.

Shawn Hornbeck on Jaycee Dugard

This is old news, a month and a day old in fact, but I thought I’d post about this interview Shawn Hornbeck gave to People magazine about Jaycee Dugard. He says she was undoubtedly brainwashed and will need a great deal of therapy and should move on from the attack — pretty obvious. It sounds like Shawn is doing well, and I’m glad to hear that. He has such a nice smile.