NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDRENIn 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted in Florida. His desperate parents, John and Revé Walsh, came to Washington, DC, seeking help. Seeing different sites on their drive from the airport, Revé asked, "Where is the Children's Building?" The driver responded with a blank stare. There was no children's building, no help for searching parents, and no national response to the problem. This is the beginning...
The Walshes turned their anger into action. In 1984, John Walsh co-founded the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). It is a private, nonprofit organization that serves as a focal point in providing assistance to parents, children, law enforcement, schools, and the community in recovering missing children and raising public awareness about ways to help prevent child abduction, molestation, and sexual exploitation. The NCMEC has worked on more than 73,000 cases of missing and exploited children, helped recover more than 48,000 children, and raised its recovery rate from 60 percent in the 1980s to 91 percent today, thereby gaining national and international recognition as "the" resource for missing and exploited children.
The 24-hour, toll free telephone line, 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678), is available in the United States and Canada for those who have information on missing and exploited children. The toll-free number when dialing from Mexico is 001-800-843-5678, and the "phone free" number when dialing from Europe is 00-800-0843-5678. The CyberTipline for online reporting is available worldwide at http://www.cybertipline.com. The TDD line is 1-800-826-7653. The NCMEC business number is 703-274-3900. The NCMEC facsimile number is 703-274-2222. The NCMEC web-site address is http://www.missingkids.com. For information on the services offered by the NCMEC branches, please call them directly in California at 714-508-0150, Florida at 561-848-1900, Kansas City at 816-361-4554, New York at 716-242-0900, and South Carolina at 803-254-2326. A number of publications, addressing various aspects of the missing-and-exploited-child issue, are available free of charge in single copies by contacting the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's Publications Department. Several have been reprinted by permission on the Port Orange Police Department web site. According to a March 1997 Gallup poll, more than half of 13-17 year olds in the United States have gone online one time or more. For more information about rules for cyberspace safety, please read the brochures entitled Child Safety on the Information Highway and Teen Safety on the Information Highway. You can also call 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) to request a free hard copy. The Know the Rules series is for parents and contains valuable information for keeping your children safe. The Just in Case series is for teenage girls and contains valuable information on keeping yourself safe. The specific topics are identified below...
National Center for Missing &
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