The Most Dangerous Kidnappers: Parents

Aug. 19 -- Despite what seems to have been a rash of children abducted by strangers this summer, there aren't any more than normal, and vastly greater numbers of children are kidnapped by their own parents and relatives — and those cases rarely generate headlines.

Stranger abductions make up the smallest percentage of children reported missing every year. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children believes that stranger abductions are decreasing overall and projects that there will be approximately 100 of these kind of cases by the end of this year.

According to statistics cited by the NCMEC, most missing children are abducted by relatives or parents: a soon-to-be released report, the Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children, referred to as NISMART-2, finds that 203,900 kids were abducted in 1999 by family members or parents. Approximately, 58,200 were "non-family" abductions — only 115 were defined as the frightening kidnappings by strangers.

Parental kidnappings do not spark media attention — and the sense of urgency from law enforcement officials — that the disappearance of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the kidnapping and slaying of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion and this month's abduction and rescue of two California teenagers attracted.

Experts say there is a perception among the public and law enforcement that children kidnapped by their parents are not endangered. After all, figures from the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile and Delinquency Prevention show that only 4 percent of children abducted by their parents are physically harmed.

"I think there's a perception with people that, 'Oh, since they're with a parent no harm will come to the child,'" said Nancy Hammer, director of the International Division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "And also since it involves two parents and family, it seems to be a messy situation. It doesn't seem as black and white as if a child was abducted by a stranger. It's taken a while, but progress has been made in making these abductions crimes, felonies. But they can lack the sense of urgency in the public and law enforcement reserved for other cases."

A Very Lucky Recovery

Tracy and Robert Morse had to fight those perceptions when their children were abducted. In December 1996, three of Robert Morse's children from a previous marriage were kidnapped by their biological, non-custodial mother when they got off the bus at school.

"There's this perception in the public and among law enforcement, that when children are abducted by their parents that they're safe, and that just isn't true," said Tracy Morse, co-founder of American Parental Abductions Resource & Support Organization — APART for short. "These children are separated from everything they know and love, they are forced to live a life of a fugitive, constantly on the run, separated from their identity and their schooling interrupted and often told their left behind parents don't care about them.

"When my husband's children were kidnapped by his ex-wife, she pulled up at school and made a big scene at school and everything," Morse continued. "People who saw her take the children, they just thought, 'Oh, it's a domestic thing. We shouldn't interfere.'"

Tracy and Robert Morse spent more than more than two years trying to find their children and only got a break in their search when the children's mother remarried and sparked the suspicion of her new in-laws and their relatives. One of her new husband's relatives went on the Web site for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, saw the faces of the three children and contacted NCMEC officials. The children were recovered and reunited with the Morses in March 1999.