STATS.org - Phony Numbers on Child Abduction

Phony Numbers on Child Abduction
August 01, 2002
VitalSTATS
Bill O'Reilly contributes to the abduction hype with wild claims of 100,000 children abducted by strangers every year.

As the media focused on a string of terrible child kidnappings, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly warned that we were only seeing the tip on an iceberg. In a segment on the July 16 O'Reilly Factor, the host warned viewers that there were "more than 100,000 abductions of children by strangers every year in the United States."

Caught between a media feeding frenzy and 'the no spin zone,' parents could have been forgiven for pulling their children off the streets and putting them back in front of the TV.

The figure of 100,000 child abductions by strangers every year, however, is a massive over-estimate. Most abductions are related to child custody disputes, and of the 3,000 to 5,000 abductions of children by someone who is not a parent or relative that are reported, on average, each year, a substantial proportion are short-term or involve someone known to the children or their families. However, between 200 and 300 of these cases are serious, and involve ransom, murder or sexual abuse. In about 50 of these the child is killed by his or her abductor. Horrific, yes. An epidemic? No. With 50 million children under the age of 13 in the United States, the actual chance of child abduction and murder turns out to be 1 in a million.

Likewise, the number of 725,000 children reported missing in 2001 is an easy candidate for media exploitation. Historical data indicates that most of those children had either briefly run away from home or, hard as it is to believe, had lost track of time (a STATS study in 1995 showed that 73 percent of children reported missing that year were home within 24 hours).

If the media's intense coverage of recent abductions suggests a growing problem, figures from the FBI and local police forces actually show a significant decrease in the number of serious abductions, from an average of 200 to 300 per year during the 1990s to roughly 100 in 2001. By the end of July 2001, there had been 51 cases reported. By the same date this year, there had been 49 cases.

Some have suggested that the media's concentration on this story is akin to the hype surrounding last summer's shark attack story. Criminology Professor James Alan Fox of Northeastern University told CNN's "Reliable Sources" on July 27 that he thought the abduction story was merely this year's "media-created epidemic." Yet missing children advocate Marc Klaas, whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered, credits the national coverage with helping to find the killer of Samantha Runnion and in the recovery of Tamara Brooks, Jacqueline Marris and, most recently, baby Jessica Cortez alive.

This presents a dilemma in how we should understand the news coverage. On the one hand, the media have exaggerated the problem. On the other, the intensity of the coverage may have saved lives. The problem is not easily solved, but clearly Bill O'Reilly's disregard for the true measure of child abduction in America replaces sympathy for the real victims in this story with unconscionable spin.


	home
	Phony Numbers on Child Abduction August 01, 2002 VitalSTATS Bill O'Reilly contributes to the abduction hype with wild claims of 100,000 children abducted by strangers every year. As the media focused on a string of terrible child kidnappings, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly warned that we were only seeing the tip on an iceberg. In a segment on the July 16 O'Reilly Factor, the host warned viewers that there were "more than 100,000 abductions of children by strangers every year in the United States." Caught between a media feeding frenzy and 'the no spin zone,' parents could have been forgiven for pulling their children off the streets and putting them back in front of the TV. The figure of 100,000 child abductions by strangers every year, however, is a massive over-estimate. Most abductions are related to child custody disputes, and of the 3,000 to 5,000 abductions of children by someone who is not a parent or relative that are reported, on average, each year, a substantial proportion are short-term or involve someone known to the children or their families. However, between 200 and 300 of these cases are serious, and involve ransom, murder or sexual abuse. In about 50 of these the child is killed by his or her abductor. Horrific, yes. An epidemic? No. With 50 million children under the age of 13 in the United States, the actual chance of child abduction and murder turns out to be 1 in a million. Likewise, the number of 725,000 children reported missing in 2001 is an easy candidate for media exploitation. Historical data indicates that most of those children had either briefly run away from home or, hard as it is to believe, had lost track of time (a STATS study in 1995 showed that 73 percent of children reported missing that year were home within 24 hours). If the media's intense coverage of recent abductions suggests a growing problem, figures from the FBI and local police forces actually show a significant decrease in the number of serious abductions, from an average of 200 to 300 per year during the 1990s to roughly 100 in 2001. By the end of July 2001, there had been 51 cases reported. By the same date this year, there had been 49 cases. Some have suggested that the media's concentration on this story is akin to the hype surrounding last summer's shark attack story. Criminology Professor James Alan Fox of Northeastern University told CNN's "Reliable Sources" on July 27 that he thought the abduction story was merely this year's "media-created epidemic." Yet missing children advocate Marc Klaas, whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered, credits the national coverage with helping to find the killer of Samantha Runnion and in the recovery of Tamara Brooks, Jacqueline Marris and, most recently, baby Jessica Cortez alive. This presents a dilemma in how we should understand the news coverage. On the one hand, the media have exaggerated the problem. On the other, the intensity of the coverage may have saved lives. The problem is not easily solved, but clearly Bill O'Reilly's disregard for the true measure of child abduction in America replaces sympathy for the real victims in this story with unconscionable spin.