Real Talk!

May 25th is National Missing Children's Day. Pass it on.

Lately, I've been thinking... if it isn't dire economic forecasts, the news is full of missing people... especially missing children... & that's something that has haunted me, since the 1977 murder of Toronto shoe shine boy, Emmanuel Jaques.

More recently, there have been a few missing girls in the United States and I started listening to the statistics being bandied about.

Federal and state investigators interviewed 44 registered sex offenders that live within a 5-mile radius of missing girl Haleigh Cummings' home in Satsuma Florida.

There are 14 registered sex offenders within a 2 mile radius of missing girl Sandra Cantu's home near San Joaquin California and 80 registered sex offenders living in a five-mile radius.

And... I thought... WOW. So, I went surfing....

A child goes missing every 40 seconds in the U.S .

The chances that your child will become a victim of a sexual predator is 1 in 3 according to http://www.sexoffendersregistry.net/

Up to 70% of convicted sex offenders will offend again & the bare fact is that most child abductors are men. All but 3% of offenders who committed violent crimes against children were male.
- BJS Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991

http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/cor/tls/soir-eng.aspx
Canada's Sex Offender Registry

The Sex Offender Information Registration Act established a national sex offender database containing information on convicted sex offenders. This database is maintained by the RCMP and is intended to assist police in investigating crimes of a sexual nature by providing them with rapid access to current vital information on convicted sex offenders.

This site is a bit "dated" but the chart showing the # of registered offenders "state by state" is quite enlightening:
http://www.familywatchdog.us/OffenderCountByState.asp

The National Alert Registry has a nationwide database of nearly 500,000 registered sex offenders records that can be searched instantly

2005 stats: Every year 200,000 children are taken by family members, and 58,000 children are the victims of non-family abductions.

2006- Giuliani report supports the following statement: Pedophiles are the most charming of men (statistics are that 96% of child sex abusers are men,) even more charming than wife beaters and serial killers. That is not a flippant remark. Psychopaths manipulate normal people easily because they have neither morals nor remorse, and most pedophiles have strong psychopathic traits.

2008: An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing every year in the U.S. During 2006, more than 60,000 children were reported missing in Texas.

2008 reported stat: California leads the nation in registered sex offenders, with about 114000

2,200 children are reported missing each day in the United States and in New York State 22,000 children are reported missing each year.

In 2002- Detective Chris Floyd of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office said there are 103 registered sex offenders in Franklin County, Ohio- the total population was about 1,070,000.

In 2005 there were about 563000 registered sex offenders in the U.S.

There were 603,000 registered sex offenders in 2007 in the U.S. and at least 100,000 were noncompliant, many of them literally missing. Estimates at that time were that “One in five girls and one in ten boys will be sexually victimized in some way before they reach the age of 18"

There were about 645000 registered sex offenders in 2008 more than 50,000 are in Texas, second only to California. One-fourth of the registered sex offenders in the entire U.S. are in California and Texas.

In 2009- Ted Richard, a Volusia County sheriff´s investigator who helps the Florida Department of Law Enforcement track the county´s 670 sex offenders through the career criminal unit. Volusia County is 1,103 square miles.

In Miami-Dade 1,030 registered sex offenders are registered in a county population of 2,387,170 and about 1,946 square miles.

Currently, there are more than 664731 Registered Sex Offenders in the United States.

After booting about 100,000 people off MySpace last year, the chief security officer (Hemanshu Nigam) said "The reality is there are 700,000-plus sex offenders living in the streets of America".

"The serial killer has the same personality characteristics as the sex offender against children"
-Dr. Mace Knapp, Nevada State Prison Psychologist

• Many child molesters know their victims. Some stalk their victims, observing their habits as they walk to and from school. They often try to buy houses near schools or parks.
• Pedophiles have a strong, almost irresistible, desire to have sex with children. The average pedophile molests 260 victims during their lifetime. Over 90% of convicted pedophiles are arrested again for the same offense after their release from prison.

The typical offender is male, begins molesting by age 15, engages in a variety of deviant behavior, and molests an average of 117 youngsters, most of whom do not report the offense.
- Dr. Gene Abel in a National Institute of Mental Health Study

1 in 5 violent offenders serving time in a state prison reported having victimized a child.
- BJS Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991

3/4 of sexual predators are younger than 35. About 80% are of normal intelligence or above.
- Profiles from the FBI Academy and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

A Crimes Against Children Research Center study found dramatic growth nationwide in arrests of online predators who solicited law enforcement investigators posing online as juveniles, the numbers nearly quintupling from 644 in 2000 to 3,100 in 2006.

statistics show, most pedophiles and predators have never been convicted of a crime

· The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children revealed, in a June 2005 study, that 40% of arrested child pornography possessors had both sexually victimized children and were in possession of child pornography (also known as “dual offenders”). Both crimes were discovered in the same investigation. Another 15% were “dual offenders” who tried to victimize children by soliciting undercover investigators who posed as minors online. Overall 36% of “dual offenders” showed or gave child pornography to identified victims or undercover investigators posing as minors online.

· Of those arrested in the U.S. for the possession of child pornography between 2000 and 2001, 83% had images involving children between ages 6 and 12; 39% had images involving children between ages 3 and 5; and 19% had images of infants and toddlers under age 3 (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Child Pornography Possessors Arrested in Internet-Related Crimes: Findings from the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study. Virginia: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2005).

· According to a National Children’s Homes report, the number of Internet child pornography images has increased 1500% since 1988.

· Approximately 20% of all Internet pornography involves children (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Internet Sex Crimes Against Minors: The Response of Law Enforcement. Virginia: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2003).

· Child pornography has become a $3 billion annual industry (Ropelato, Jerry. Top Ten Reviews. Top Ten Reviews, Inc. 5 Dec. 2005 http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html).

· According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), child pornography reports increased 39% in 2004. Ernie Allen, president and CEO of NCMEC, states that the statistics show a significant and steady increase in child pornography reports for the seventh year.

· More than 20,000 images of child pornography are posted on the Internet every week (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 10/8/03).

· 140,000 child pornography images were posted to the Internet according to researchers who monitored the Internet over six weeks. Twenty children were estimated to have been abused for the first time and more than 1,000 images of each child created (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 10/8/03).

· More than half of all illegal sites reported to the Internet Watch Foundation are hosted in the United States. Illegal sites in Russia have more than doubled from 286 to 706 in 2002 (National Criminal Intelligence Service, 8/21/03).

· Demand for pornographic images of babies and toddlers on the Internet is soaring (Prof. Max Taylor, Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe, March 2003).

· More babies and toddlers are appearing on the net and the abuse is getting worse. It is more torturous and sadistic than it was before. The typical age of children is between six and 12, but the profile is getting younger (Prof. Max Taylor, Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe, March 2003).

· Approximately 20 new children appear on the porn sites every month - many kidnapped or sold into sex (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe, March 2003).

· In the last couple of years, we've just seen such young children on regular seizures - babies, 2-, 3-, 4-year-olds (Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie, Toronto Police Force).

· The U.S. Customs Service estimates that there are more than 100,000 Web sites offering child pornography - which is illegal worldwide. Revenue estimates for the industry range from about $200 million to more than $1 billion per year. These unlawful sexual images can be purchased as easily as shopping at Amazon.com. "Subscribers" typically use credit cards to pay a monthly fee of between $30 and $50 to download photos and videos, or a one-time fee of a few dollars for single images. (Red Herring Magazine, 1/18/02).

· Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as 50,000 sexual predators are online at any given moment (Dateline, January 2006).

· Internet pedophiles are increasingly adopting counter-intelligence techniques to protect themselves from being traced (National Criminal Intelligence Service, 8/21/03).

· Forty percent of people charged with child pornography also sexually abuse children, police say. But finding the predators and identifying the victims are daunting tasks (Reuters, 2003).

· One in five children who use computer chatrooms has been approached over the Internet by pedophiles. (Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Akerman, Telegraph.co.uk January 2002).

· 89% of sexual solicitations were made in either chat rooms or Instant Messages. (Pew Study reported in JAMA, 2001).

· 13 million youth use Instant Messaging. (Pew Study reported in JAMA, 6/01).

· 1 in 5 received sexual solicitation or approach in last year. (Online Victimization, NCMEC, June 2000).

· 1 in 33 received AGGRESSIVE sexual solicitation (asked to meet, called them via phone, sent mail, money or gifts). (Online Victimization, NCMEC, June 2000)

· 25% of youth who received sexual solicitation told a parent. (Online Victimization, NCMEC, June 2000).

May 25th is National Missing Children's Day. Pass it on.