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: Never In Our Names

Little Girls (and Boys) Lost

By Alexa

Sometimes I wonder why people (1) have children. Doesn't it stand to reason that if you don't want a child, aren't willing and happy to accept the "responsibility" or the crimp in your party girl lifestyle, you'd take some precautions to avoid bringing yet another unwanted child into the world?

Another little girl is missing in Florida. And yes, I do take it personally. I'm not here to sit in judgment of her mother or play amateur sleuth or keyboard crimesolver. The dread that washes over me is not, I'm sorry to say, a unique experience, because children "go missing" with startling frequency in this country and I want to know how in co?o we watch it happen over and over again on television and do nada but wring our hands and pray.

Caylee Anthony, age 2

In spite of everything we don't know, and the spiderweb of lies that we've read or heard about, no one knows where Caylee Anthony is -- now 5 weeks missing.

Actually, I can't say no one knows. The thing about a 2 year old is that she's too small to speak up for herself, is woefully, entirely reliant on the tender mercies of adults to survive, and it's a safe bet Caylee herself had no will in the matter. More precisely, if someone knows where this little girl is, he or she isn't telling.

They [FBI] said the biggest obstacle in the case is Caylee's mother.

Caylee's mother, Casey Anthony, was charged on June 16 with child neglect, lying to investigators and interfering with a criminal investigation. The judge denied bond because she showed a "woeful disregard for the welfare of her child."

Carlie Brucia, 1992-2004

All told, it took less than a minute for Joseph Smith, a 39 year old auto mechanic from Sarasota, to capture, control and ultimately destroy Carlie Brucia, age 13.

This may well be the most haunting minute of videotape I've ever seen, and living near Sarasota, it was impossible to avoid seeing it during the search for Carlie and the subsequent trial and sentencing of Smith. There's no sound. At about 8-9 seconds, Carlie looks up at the strange man who approached her as she walked home from a sleepover, and her expression is one I can easily see on any child's face, including my own. "What do you want, mister?"

The truth (that Carlie's mother was drunk and drugged on a days-long binge, that no one knew Carlie was missing until the car wash manager checked his surveillance videotape over 36 hours later, that there was a connection in that Joseph Smith had been Carlie's mother's drug dealer) didn't save Carlie Brucia. That "the system failed her" (to state the obvious) is too little, too late.

Missing White Girl Syndrome
In 2002, the year Laci Peterson was killed by her husband, 804 other women were murdered by their spouses. You didn't hear about most of them. Unless you were family or friends, you don't know about their circumstances or the outcome of their cases because few of them were newsworthy. ("Newsworthy" being pretty and white.)

Of any women you remember receiving a substantial amount of press and the primetime minutes, how many were black or Latino or poor or what could be considered unattractive?

The media's fixation with pretty white girls in jeopardy is so prevalent there's a name for it: Missing White Girl Syndrome. Certain girls of a certain image get disproportionate play. Meanwhile, missing and exploited minority children are gone -- forgotten as even Chandra Levy was and JonBenet was, but without the benefit of having their stories first publicly flogged into the earth by every tabloid rag, news mag and cable scream-fest that subscribes to 'if it bleeds, it leads' over the other less clich? and rhythmic philosophy of 'serve the public good.'

How many missing children are there?
Via The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, The U.S. Department of Justice reports:

• 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
• 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
• 58,200 children were the victims of non-family abductions.
• 115 children were the victims of "stereotypical" kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.

Why?
Can anyone explain to me how this is possible? It's a true pandemic. I don't believe all these children were neglected or unloved any more than I believe space aliens abducted them into outer space during the pre-dawn hours. And I would expect that some percentage of the so-called "family abductions" are one parent's attempt to keep a child or children safe from an abusive relationship between adults.

I look at these statistics, and I've checked on my own sleeping daughter yet again, and I feel overwhelmed with despair. How am I going to keep her safe in this cold, cruel world? I've been careful to teach her the precautions that my parents taught me, but the world is a different place now, it seems. A merciless place.

Amy has known for a few years now to never cooperate in a situation of "stranger danger" in the hope that it might save her life. Run. Scream. Fight. Resist.

In my early twenties, I minded my own business and it's something I regret now, amigos. I was raised to be polite and not "interfere" with the "family matters" of others. I was raised this way because my mother, even though she was a registered nurse, couldn't quite believe that the "nice" families she knew were every bit as prone to domestic violence and child abuse as the next person. Possibly, she did know better, and just told me not to interfere because telling me that something wasn't "polite" was never a particularly successful strategy.

I think I'd rather be wrong a million times over, no matter who it offends, than ignore a child or another woman who's visibly distressed, looking about wildly, crying or trying not to cry, who may need acknowledgment, eye contact, a simple, soft-spoken affirmation of her existence in this cold and lonely world. I'd rather be wrong than not speak up when a "missing" child in a store reacts in hysteria and panic to an adult who shows up to claim her or him.

Everywhere I Look . . .
There are too many missing children, too many bruised and demolished young women for me to passively stand around anymore. Everywhere I look, I see injustice and oppression. I see apprehension and hopelessness in the eyes of the migrant workers whose children I tutor. I've seen quick flashes of real fear in the eyes of a coworker or a friend over the years, the cornered-animal look of a destructive relationship that won't be mentioned because of misplaced guilt and shame.  I've seen children in my classrooms flinch when called on by another adult.

And it's one thing to write about human rights on a blog, but avoid obvious signs of abuse when you encounter them. That's hypocrisy at its finest. No one person can bear the weight of the world on his or her shoulders, but that doesn't exempt any of us from a responsibility to one another, to our friends and neighbors and communities and to the children we see. Because we want to keep those kids where we can see them. To even have a chance at that, each of us has to be vigilant - discreet but vigilant.

It seems to me that it's the least we can do for the people least capable of defending themselves.

(1) I want to be very straightup about the fact that the notion of "family planning" doesn't apply to a great many people in the world. In average Lou Dobbs-watching America, however, the principle stands.  

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on August 02, 2008 (boomark / email).