OUR CHILDREN ARE VANISHING WITHOUT A TRACE

This is absolutely tragic and as someone who has never had a child of my own, I can only imagine the horror and pain that parents of missing children go through.

It is unfortunate that in this world there is a dark side and that there are people who would rather walk on the dark side than walk in the light and that these people prey children.

Keep your children safe and teach them about the dangers that lurk.

'Our children are vanishing without a trace'
Graeme Hosken
March 12 2007 at 04:49AM

Despite the South African Police Service having one of the world's highest success rates when it comes to finding missing children, there are hundreds of mothers who will never know what has happened to their young ones. While the SAPS has a more than 80 percent success rate when it comes to finding children, for seven-year-old Sheldean Human, abducted from her home last month and found murdered in a storm water drain outlet last week, it was too late.

The ordeal of Sheldean's family has highlighted the plight facing South Africa's children. Every year more than 1 500 children disappear in South Africa without a trace. More than 200 of these children come from Pretoria.


'After 72 hours you start looking for a body'

While a large number of them will be found, there are more than 900 who remain listed as missing on the SAPS' Missing Persons Bureau database. Most of those who vanish come from Pretoria and Johannesburg with Gauteng having the dubious honour of having the highest rate of child disappearances in the country. Shocking figures released by the SAPS' Missing Persons Bureau reveal that one child disappears every six hours in South Africa. And time is not on their side.

Missing Persons Bureau commander Superintendent Fanie van Deventer said he was extremely concerned by the number of children who remained missing. "What I am alarmed by is the approximately 970 children who remain listed on our SAPS database as still missing. "We do not know whether they are alive, dead, or are being exploited sexually or otherwise by certain perpetrators," he said.

According to Van Deventer, who also heads the South African Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (Sacmec), international statistics show that the golden period for finding a child alive is 72 hours. This period applies to children who have been abducted for sexual or personal motives such as murder. Van Deventer said: "If a child is kidnapped for sexual motives we have three hours to find them before the perpetrator is done with them and dumps them, alive or dead."

The next deadline is 48 hours and this is for finding children who have been kidnapped or abducted by people who want to produce pornographic material as time is needed to make the material. "After 48 hours, international statistics show that for every hour that it takes to find a child the chances of finding them alive decreases by two percent."After 72 hours you start looking for a body," he said.

Van Deventer said the number of people reporting missing children had increased dramatically. "There is an increase in reporting missing children because people, especially after the Sheldean Human saga, are now realising the danger facing the country's future," he said. He said it was vital for people to notify the police immediately about missing children because of the dangers that they might be subjected to. At least 80 percent of children who went missing were runaways, while 15 percent of those who disappeared were children who got lost in places such as shopping centres. He said the other five percent of children who went missing were children who vanished because of crimes such as abductions and kidnappings. "Although the highest number of children who vanish are runaways this does not make it any less urgent to find them."It is just as important to find runaway children because on the streets they are open to opportunistic criminals who will rape, murder or assault them."It is because of this that all children who disappear, regardless of the reasons they vanish, must be reported to the police immediately."It was important that people look carefully at photographs of missing children, he said, "because we need any and all information regardless of whether people think it is useless information as this might be the final piece of the puzzle that we were looking for".Van Deventer urged parents to register their children on the Sacmec website - a database which, if a child should go missing, can be used to distribute information to thousands people and the media.

To register your child on the Sacmec website, which is free, go to http://www.missingkids.co.za/ now. Anyone who has information on missing children can contact 086 164 7746.