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As a parent and grandparent, it’s hard to imagine anything more devastating than a missing child. Unfortunately, the grief associated with not knowing what has happened to a child touches the lives of almost 800,000 families each year. Of those, over 58,000 are non-familial abductions, and 115 fall into the category of stereotypical abductions where the perpetrator intends to permanently keep or kill the child.
However, this number of abductions is not reflected within the national media coverage. In fact, we often see only a handful of high profile child abduction stories reported nationally. According to a Scripps Howard News Service study, the odds of a child abduction receiving national media attention are increased if the missing child is white, wealthy, cute, and under the age of 12. While millions of Americans recognize the story of Elizabeth Smart or Jessica Lunsford, very few could tell you about Alexis Patterson, a 7-year-old African American girl last seen in 2002 after being dropped off at her school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; or Laura Ayala, a 13-year-old Hispanic girl who never returned home from a Houston, Texas store in 2002.
Too often when the missing child is from an economically depressed or high crime area, the initial assumption is that the child is missing as a result of the neighborhood surroundings. In the case of Laura Ayala, police initially suggested that the girl ran away from home. Laura had last been seen buying a newspaper at a store less than 100 feet from her home. She disappeared shortly after leaving the store. Her shoes and the newspaper were found scattered in the adjacent parking lot. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children lobbied the media to broadcast the disappearance, but were met with resistance. The assumption was that as a pre-teen girl, she must be a runaway.
Alexis Patterson disappeared one month before Elizabeth Smart was abducted in 2002. However, despite the same tearful pleas from her parents, Alexis Patterson did not receive nearly the same media attention that the Smarts’ received. Unfortunately, Laura Ayala and Alexis Patterson have never been found. Police suspect both were abducted and murdered.
This is not to say that every child who is rich and white receives national media attention, while all poor minority children are ignored. Or that these high profile abduction broadcasts are strictly racially motivated. Rather the choice of which children will receive broadcast time is likely driven by ratings. And if that is the case, it now becomes an ethical question regarding the motivation behind this type of news coverage. With the drive for 24-hours news, celebrity interviews, and sensationalized coverage, it appears that what was once a public service has turned into a form of lurid entertainment.
The media certainly plays a key role in bringing attention to the abduction, and can greatly increase the likelihood of finding a missing child. The implementation of the Amber Alert System has made an immense difference in the way we handle missing children. While the Amber Alert System has kept the Laura Ayala’s and Alexis Patterson’s disappearance from being completely ignored by the media, we can certainly do more.
A value cannot be put on human life, and judgment on how much a parent loves a child cannot be made based on their ethnicity or economic status. Too often we’ve become jaded and impervious to the news of another missing child. We cannot simply assume that children of certain ethnic or socio-economic background are runaways.
We, as a society, need to demand more for our missing children. The Dallas Examiner does a great service in publishing the names and pictures of missing children in the newspaper. These kids and their families aren’t just strangers; they are members of our community. While we may not be able to recover every child, we can certainly join together to ensure that they do not join the ranks of the forgotten.
U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson is the highest-ranking Texan on the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure. She represents the 30th Congressional District, which includes downtown Dallas, Northeast, East Oak Cliff & Pleasant Grove; all of Balch Springs, De Soto, Lancaster & Hutchins and parts of Cedar Hill, Duncanville, Glen Heights, Wilmer and Ovilla.
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