The Media Loves “The Experts,” Until it’s Time to Count Gaza’s Dead

Current Affairs | Lex Syd

Public debate around Gaza fixates on a death toll that is probably half the size of the real number. 

ar from being inflated by sneaky Hamas propagandists, the commonly cited death toll of the war in Gaza is an extreme undercount. 

Virtually every news article about the Israel-Hamas war cites the death toll provided by the strip’s Ministry of Health. Currently at 60,900 (and climbing by the day), the MOH toll is widely accepted as an accurate minimum. Still, journalists and political figures aligned with Israel often call it into question in a range of ways, from attaching the label “Hamas-controlled” to the Ministry itself to outright denying its accuracy. In 2023, even former President Joe Biden invoked this idea, saying that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

Because the Ministry’s death toll has attracted this undeserved controversy, the standard reporting line is to explain why the MOH figures are considered reliable. For example, the Washington Post recently published a detailed accounting of the names, and in some cases the photos, of roughly 18,500 children who are counted among the dead overall.

But in defending and insisting on the MOH figures, media outlets have defended the bare minimum, and the result is a public debate that revolves around an understated count. Hence why New York Times columnist Bret Stephens can write an opinion piece arguing that 60,000 dead is tragic, but small relative to what Israel could do. Those terms of debate are accepted even by his harshest critics.

But the figure everyone knows is not an undercount of a few thousand or even ten thousand. The real toll could well be twice as high. That is according to a growing body of research that is conspicuously absent in news coverage of Gaza—despite the eagerness of newsrooms to emphasize expert opinion on other divisive topics, like COVID-19 policy or climate change.

The standard figure largely counts only those whose bodies reached health workers and those who were killed violently. But in reality, the institutions that count the dead are heavily degraded, thousands remain under rubble, and deaths due to malnutrition or easily preventable diseases are rarely included in MOH totals, if at all.

How Many Gazans Have Died According to Experts?

A reasonable, conservative estimate of the death toll in Gaza is about 100,000. And the figure may well tally to 200,000, if not now, then by the war’s end. 

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Breathe! Don't Succumb to the Pathological Hysteria from the Coronavirus Madness

Gabriela Segura, M.D.
Sott.net

I practice Family Medicine in Europe and as everybody knows by now, we're in the midst of Coronavirus madness^TM which we are told is now an official global pandemic. It's true that we're living through a critical, decisive and increasingly divisive era, but the real issue is something other than what the media and politicians would have us believe.

Let's review our society's problems for some much needed perspective.

Very Dark Statistics, Indeed

Regardless of how many people on the planet are actively aware of it, the truth is that tens of millions of people drop like flies from illness, depression and self-destruction every single day. And that's a trend that has been ongoing for, well, a very long time.

According to the WHO assessment of deaths by cause for the years 2000-2016, close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. And those who have been paying attention will know that, in the past few years, the generalized state of the public's mental health has not improved.

Data analyzing 55 million insured American millennials (aged 21 to 36) in 2017 found that since 2013, millennials have seen a 47% increase in major depression diagnoses (Hoffower, 2019).

In the UK, prescriptions for antidepressants have more than doubled in the last decade. In 2016, there were 64.7 million antidepressants dispensed - 33.7 million (108.5 per cent) more than in 2006, when there were 31.0 million (NHS Digital, 2019).

The U.S. saw a 64% increase in the percentage of people using antidepressants between 1999 and 2014 (Winerman, 2017). However, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that antidepressant use in the U.S. has increased nearly 400% in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications by Americans aged 18-44 (Segura, 2013). The U.S. population makes up 5% of the world population, yet is prescribed two-thirds of all psychiatric drugs used worldwide.

In Japan, suicide is the leading cause of death among children aged 10 to 14 for the first time in the postwar period (Kyodo, 2019). Suicide rates among American children have increased 77% over the past 10 years, with that number even higher during the school year (Vibes, 2018).

An average of 20 American veterans committed suicide daily in 2014 according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Since 2001, veteran suicides increased by 32%, while civilian suicides among adults increased 23% (RT, 2016).

Another report published in June 2019 revealed that suicide rates are officially at their highest level since World War II with 1.4 million attempting suicide in 2017 (Durden, 2019). More than 70,000 people committed suicide in 2017, and 17.3 million (7%) of Americans are experiencing mental health issues. US life expectancy has also declined for three straight years, in part because of the surge in drug overdoses and suicides. This is the first time in a little over a century that life expectancy fell for three consecutive years.

According to a report that analyzed the causes of preventable deaths in America in 2017, for the first time in history, Americans are more likely to die from an accidental opioid overdose than in a vehicle crash. If it's a consolation, the odds of dying from an opioid overdose are still one in 96 vs one in 6 from heart disease or one in 7 from cancer (Mazzei, 2019). In fact, 1 out of 2 men and 1 out of 3 women will get cancer in their lifetime.

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Immigration, Crime and Propaganda

Pierre Lescaudron
Sott.net

In my previous article on the topic of immigration, I wrote that one of "the destructive consequences of non-integrated mass migration is a rise in crime".

Migration is the top concern for EU citizens

 

I naively thought the connection between migration and crime was obvious. However, after publishing the article, I researched the topic further and realized that, as usual, things are way more complex and interesting than it seems.

In the present article we will try to understand the connections, if any, between migration and crime. To do so, we will go through a series of charts, we will interpret them and, more importantly, we will see how those data are often cherry-picked and twisted to serve extremist ideological discourses.

First, let's have a look at how migration is perceived. In Europe, immigration has clearly become the most important source of concern among the average citizen. It is ranked higher than terrorism or unemployment.

Whether this concern is justified doesn't really matter at this point, because it reveals an important point: a majority of European people are really concerned about immigration into their countries, i.e. there is an emotional load. And we know that heightened emotional states constitute a very fertile ground for hystericization, black and white thinking and extremist ideologies.

Perceived effects of immigration

Negative Perception of Immigration in Europe

European people tend to associate immigration with negative effects like dilution of culture, rise in unemployment, misappropriation of social benefits and rise in crime.

Among those deleterious effects, it is actually crime that shows the strongest negative association with migration, as shown in the chart on the right.

Only 10% of EU citizens (purple ellipse) think migration has a positive effect on crime. This survey dates back to 2014, and the figure has probably deteriorated further since then.

The two previous charts only deal with public opinion. So are those opinions based on some hard evidence or are they just the result of propaganda, fear, prejudice, racism?
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Police not recording a fifth of crimes, watchdog report suggests

Comment: Excuse me while I bin the crime stats of the last twenty years...

-----------------

BBC News

A fifth of crimes in England and Wales could be going unrecorded by police, according to a report.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) said 14 alleged rapes were among the offences that had not been recorded by officers.

One report of rape was not recorded because of "workload pressure", the inspection of 13 forces found.
Home Secretary Theresa May said the report exposed "unacceptable failings" by the police.

HMIC - which inspects and monitors the 43 police forces in England and Wales - is conducting an inspection into the recording of crime data.

If its initial findings were repeated across England and Wales, it could mean 20% of all crimes were going unrecorded, it said.

Mrs May said it was "quite possible" the HMIC study could lead to an increase in recorded crime.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said the report highlighted both "strengths and weakness" in the forces inspected.

Read more

 

Deadly Compassion Part IV

NAMBLA is an extremely tame organization compared to others. NAMBLA would say, for example, that they are opposed to forcible sexual contact with children. Other organizations are not. 
– Andrew Vachss, author, child advocate

Statistics

Although child abuse has always existed the ways which we manage the victims of these crimes has obviously changed with the times. With such a sensitive, complex and poorly understood subject, statistics will always remain controversial in that they are able to shape our perceptions so effectively for whatever agenda is being proposed.

The statistics on sex crime and sexual abuse are some of the most hotly contested of all media reports. Child abuse has been placed in the spotlight yet without the requisite caution and objectivity, courtesy of politicians and the mainstream media. None of the statistics quoted in this series of articles have a unanimous consensus. All are disputed and fought over according to which particular camp the group or individual belongs to. Different definitions and purposes will dictate the outcome of even the most objective data. Sexual abuse is, by nature, highly charged with emotion and instincts, thus a clear statistical appraisal of this phenomena will always be to some degree flawed. Yet how can we know by how much a general heightened awareness has caused the seeming rise in child abuse? Can we differentiate between a rise in the number of cases and an increase in the actual incidences of abuse? How is it possible to formulate definitions of abuse when controversy over these definitions has not been resolved? Author and Child activist Andrew Vachss explains:

I don’t think child abuse has changed. I do think that reporting has changed. When people pick up a newspaper today, they are likely to read about some case of child abuse. I don’t think fifty years ago that was true. In fact, I know it was not. So, if you look at child abuse statistics, which didn’t exist, say, in 1955, and then you looked at them today, you’d say, ‘Oh my God, child abuse has increased into this huge epidemic.’ My suggestion is that there’s no proof that child abuse, in and of itself, has increased. There is proof that case-finding techniques have increased, and reporting has increased. ¹

The very nature of quantitative and qualitative statistical analysis and data gathering is prone to serious bias and belief systems of the researchers and is open to political manipulations. As we will discover, abuse serves an important purpose in this regard. In such a highly contentious field of enquiry the “butterfly effect” applied to data changes that are erroneous and sourced from ideology, beliefs and supposition can result in big differences in the final studies on abuse and neglect. 
 

When the media is told to get behind whatever propagated statistic is deemed useful to those in power then it is almost assured that this truth, or this lie will become a household “norm.” For example, which would you trust? Studies that collect official government statistics or studies that offers the opportunity for anonymous, independent collection and retrospective data gathering from professionals on the ground? The latter would be my preference. However, if the media has some shocking statistics and does not provide anyway to evaluate their authenticity or access to relevant information which could show how these statistics were obtained, then it is very easy to support one’s headline and the associated belief, whatever that may be. 

 

Statistics are uniformly used to substantiate loud proclamations when an argument may be weak. As statistics have the stamp of officialdom and authority, people automatically take numbers as facts. In the world of abuse this can and does lead to severe problems for all, but an easy and useful tool for the Establishment. When well meaning social activism gets the wind in its sails, they can often be a pawn in the chess game of covert forces at work. Innumeracy and lack of critical thinking ensures the game is played out resulting in a “social comedy” that can nevertheless have dire consequences as one writer describes:

“‘Activists want to draw attention to a problem. . . The press asks for statistics. . . Knowing that big numbers indicate a big problems and knowing that it will be hard to get action unless people can be convinced a big problem exists (and sincerely believing that there is a big problem), the activists produce a big estimate, and the press, having no good way to check the number, simply publicizes it. The general public – most of us suffering from at least a mild case of innumeracy – tends to accept the figure without question.’” ²

The article goes on to mention three basic questions to keep in mind when presented with statistics: Who created the statistic? Why was the statistic created and how? It becomes apparent then the identities, history and data gathering of the experts are key component in the support or suspicion of statistics. The National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) remains one of the best and by all accounts the most accurate resources available.

An overriding thought to be aware of is the persistent logic that most reports will not come to the attention of the authorities (assuming these authorities are not implicated in abuse themselves) and we can thus say that sexual abuse may be more common than we think. “Substantiated cases” in the US and “registered children” in the UK are an example of how many cases never reach social services let alone the courts. Children and young adults cannot and will not report their abuser to authorities due to the nature of the crime that is deeply entrenched in social taboos. This is particularly the case with incest (otherwise known as intra-familial abuse). 
 

Overall, statistics are extremely easy to manipulate if they serve a long term agenda. For example, violent crime took a large jump in early 2006 which is hardly surprising coming as it does on the back of a number of new draconian laws related to “protecting freedoms.” In the true style we have come to expect from American institutions: “The FBI report did not give any explanation why the violent crime numbers and murders went up last year, but Justice Department officials said during a news briefing that the government's policies were not to blame.” ³ Of course, that seems fair. “We have no idea but it isn’t our policies that are reshaping US society.” In reality, we may be witnessing a dramatic increase and / or reporting of child sexual abuse rather than the much vaunted decrease by US authorities.

There is evidence that FBI and Department of Justice can be rather selective with their statistics if they can get away with it. Some of the ways in which these data are distorted include:

• Reducing child sex abuse rates by deleting official data on sex abuse of children under 12;
• Eliminating sodomy of boys by reclassifying boys in an ageless —male rape category;
• Lowering child abuse predator recidivism by aggregating child molesters into a generalized category of —violent assault;
• Decreasing abuse data for unmarried fathers, step fathers and —live-in boyfriends by aggregating these men with biological, married fathers into —parents and other caretakers“ for incest offenders;
• Excising data on prostituted and other child sex abuse crimes from DOJ‘s —“Severity of Crime” scales that measure public views of crime severity - implying that child sexual abuse is benign.
• Wholesale failure to tabulate data on child sex abuse within the child protective services system. ⁴

The FBI and Intelligence agencies generally have long history of denying child abuse and any other new social deviancy that begins to burst at the seams of society. The Klu Klux Klan, and organised crime were all initially denied until such denials became embarrassing for their obvious untruths. The existence of organised satanic cults is now also officially denied. Yet when official culture enforces denials which fly in the face of copious amounts of evidence to the contrary it usually means that our governments and agencies stand to benefit. Their benefits will always translate to a substantial loss for the ordinary man, woman and child.

Notes 

1 op c.f. Vachss.

2 pp. 19-21., Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists. By Joel Best, 2001, University of California Press; ISBN: 0520219783.

3 ‘FBI reports biggest violent crime jump in 15 years’ By James Vicini, Reuters, Jun 12, 2006.

4 ‘How the FBI and DOJ Minimize Child Sexual Abuse Reporting’ by Judith A. Reisman, Ph.D. The Institute for Media Education July 2002 An Examination of Relevant Child Abuse Data Suggesting That Reported Decreased Violence to Adults May be a Function of Unreported Increased Violence to Children The Institute for Media Education Interim Report.

Did You Know?

 

American Beauty Part II

The Missing

The Convention on the Rights of the Child ratified in 1990 and was designed to enshrine the principles of protection from economic and sexual exploitation. On October 25th, 1980, the signing of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction was similarly created to promote international cooperation on child rights and abduction cases. Although the objectives are well defined, corruption and cross boarder bureaucracy has ensured that inconsistency, limited funding and deference to underworld imperatives continue to thwart lasting progress. The United States and Somalia are the only countries still to do so.

It may come as a surprise for most of us to learn that procedures and protocols for missing persons are either absent or woefully inadequate from the majority of local and state governments. The Doe Network, an American, internet-based resource was set up by an amateur group of concerned individuals in response to the serious lack of law enforcement record keeping. Unsolved homicides, runaways, abductions and death from natural causes are some of the primary reasons for disappearances of children and adults every day. The daily drum roll of missing persons is a silent crisis of global proportions with causes that are both multifaceted and highly complex.

 

Accurate statistics on the level of missing children are difficult to come by. This is partly due to the fact that investigations are given a low priority due to the sheer magnitude of the problem as well as trenchant bureaucracy and its slow updating of information systems. The net result is that studies become rather misleading and outdated, as is the case today.

The FBI’s National Crime Information Centre (NCIC) is the only mandatory reporting system in the United States. Although it is federal law that all children reported missing or abducted must be entered into NCIC at the time a police report is taken, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that this is not taking place, quite apart from the lack of reporting itself.  It is also apparent that child agencies, advocates and non-profit charities and organizations are not receiving this information in order to provide a partially accurate picture of the problem. In fact, missing person experts estimate that the bodies of 40,000 to 50,000 unidentified men, women and children have been found by police in the US during the past 50 years. 1 Once again, this could be a very conservative estimate judging from the scale of the problem and the accompanying lack of resources devoted to it.

According to a Scripps Howard News Service study of confidential FBI records, the vast majority of unidentified bodies go unreported to state or federal authorities due to a lack of requirement from local authorities to register cases to outside agencies. With weak powers afforded to state coroners and widespread under-funding this significantly increases the depth of the problem.  A random sample of global listings provides an overview:

Alan John Westerfield aged 5

Missing since September 12, 1964 from North Carolina.

Classification: Endangered Missing

Jie Zhao Li aged 12

Missing since February 11, 1988 from Honolulu, Hawaii.

Classification: Endangered Missing

David Michael Borer aged 8

Missing since April 26, 1989 from Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska.

Classification: Non Family Abduction

Christine Green aged 16

Missing since April 23, 1985 from Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. Classification: Endangered Missing

Tania Marie Murrell aged 6

Missing since January 20, 1983 from Edmonton, Alberta Canada

Classification: Non-Family Abduction

Tanja Afra Maria Groen aged 18

Missing since August 31, 1993 from Maastricht, Netherlands

Classification: Missing

Ana Maria Luviano Cabrera aged 17

Missing since August 16, 1996 from Izcalli Piramides, Tlalnepantla, Mexico

Classification: Missing

Beatriz A. Cervantes Barrera aged 7

Missing since February 23, 1992 from Mexico.

Classification: Endangered Missing

Jonathan Ivan Esquivel Negrete aged one month

Missing since July 4, 1995 from Colonia Loma Linda, Naucalpan, Estado de Mexico, Mexico Classification: Endangered Missing

Revelle Balmain  aged 24

Missing since November 5, 1994 from Kingsford, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.  Classification: Endangered Missing

Melissa Ann Schmidt aged 15

Missing since September 5, 1995 from Lincoln, Lancaster County, Nebraska

Classification: Endangered Miss

Missing since February 2, 1996 from Ko ing

Anna Grabarz aged 11lonia Kijany, Poland

Classification: Endangered Missing

Monika Malinauskaite aged 15

Missing since June 16, 1994 from Klaipeda, Republic of Lithuania

Classification: Endangered Missing

Camille Lafond aged 6

Missing since January 29, 1996 from France. Classification: Missing

Looking at the photos of these children - and adults alike - is a poignant experience. There seems to be an everyday underworld of the forgotten. Once beyond the media radar they are quite literally, out of sight and out of mind. As most of the reported missing are murders, one would think it behoves national, state and local governments to place such a crisis at the top of their budget proposals. This is not the case and the back-log of homicides continue to rise.

In conjunction with the rise in murders and rapes in the US it is a disturbing parallel to the ever present shadow of missing children. Although nationwide crime was said to be decreasing  (until 2006) rape is still on the increase with the frequency of related murders rising. Even though Europe is a more dangerous and violent place than a generation ago (between 1975 and 2000, crime rose 97 percent in France, 145 percent in England, 410 percent in Spain) while crime overall is falling.

Missing persons are by far the most extensive in the US. The Interstate Association for Stolen Children (IASC) in Sacramento, California has one of the highest rates of missing children in America and believes that drugs, pornography, prostitution comprise the typical trio of pursuits of crime organizations. IASC Executive Director Greg Mengell described a case in which “three small drug cartels were competing for business in the same area. After one ring burned down the headquarters of another, a child was kidnapped in retaliation. In this case, one of the cartels also had connections to a pornography ring and a “Satanic cult.”  The sheer scale of complexity goes to the heart of our societies and may stem from more than just bureaucratic red tape.

Although over 2000 - 3,600 children go missing in the country everyday 2 (which includes an estimate of unreported cases) law enforcement officials say the sector of missing persons is hugely under-reported as a whole, where the actual number could be more than four to five times higher. As it stands, the statistics from 1997-1999 within the USA alone has estimated 797,500 children reported missing which equates to an average of 91 children disappearing every hour. With 58,200 children abducted by non-family, where children are taken by force or threat of bodily harm, the total works out to more than 159 per day at 6 children per hour.

In percentage terms, the study concluded that nearly 50 percent were assaulted by their abductor. When the child is told to leave home or leaves home without permission, otherwise called “runaway or thrown-away” children these cases totalled more than 682, 900 equating to 1870 per day. 115 children were the victims of the most serious, long-term non-family abductions called “stereotypical kidnappings,” and where court orders were violated resulting in the victims of family abductions, the number reached 203,900. 3

By the year 2000 the NCIC recorded a significant rise to 876,213, where 85 percent – 90 percent were listed as juveniles reported missing. 152,265 of the persons reported missing in 2000 was categorized as either endangered or involuntary. The number of missing persons reported to law enforcement has increased from 154, 341 in 1982 to 876,213 in 2000. That is an increase of 468 percent. 4 Not exactly the proudest moment for democracy, when children are literally dropping off the radar in droves. If we are to believe the FBI, 99 percent of the nearly 800,000 reports of missing persons each year are solved, leaving a manageable 8,000 – to 10,000. (Far be it for me to level scurrilous accusations of statistical bias here, but it seems to be a slightly excessive success rate).

The vast majority of abuse cases are perpetrated by people the victim know, or that could be seen as acquaintances. However, when we look at the ratio of children who are abducted and murdered then the story changes dramatically: 57 percent of these murders are committed by someone unknown to the victim, where family involvement drops to 9 percent. 5  Psychiatric disability, diminished mental capacity, a physical disability, a need for medication, issues with substance abuse, domestic violence, financial difficulties and many other factors can contribute to disappearances which are often much more complex than may first appear.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health an estimated 22.1 percent of Americans ages 18 and older - 1 in 5 adults – suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. This figure translates to 44.3 million people. 6

There is a high probability that depressive disorders are appearing earlier in life from people born in recent decades compared to the past. The figure of 20 percent attributed to children in the US estimated to have mental disorders with at least mild functional impairment, may be another major factor that places children in vulnerable situations attracting abductions and other criminal cross-overs. 7

 Though the suicide rate amongst children has declined since 1992 it remains the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. In 2001, 3,971 suicides were reported in this group. 8

The average victim of abduction and murder is an 11-year-old girl with a stable family relationship. First contact with her abductor usually occurs within a quarter-mile of her own home. 9 Parental kidnapping can no longer be viewed as a domestic issue to be buried under the cultural carpet. Statistics show that there are many children taken from their spouse and once beyond national boarders are unlikely to be seen again. This is a common problem in the USA and Europe, and connected in particular, to the Middle East where interracial and or arranged marriages go sour. Children are on the run, in a cultural limbo and the roots that they may have had established in their formative years have been lost leading to a greater propensity for maladjustment and psychological damage in later life.

There is also a clear pattern between male and female victims. The murder by strangers of young/infant male victims from the 1-5 age groups, teenage males 13-15 years and 16-17 years are all roughly around 60 – 64 percent. 10 While the young/infant females are usually killed by friends and acquaintances while the older females in the 16-17 age bracket are murdered by strangers both at 64percent. 11 Yet after a decline in murder rates in 2004 by 5.7 percent, the first time in five years there had been a decrease in the nationwide murder rate, it however rose again in 2005 by 2.1 percent and has continued to climb. Murder by those unknown clearly comes out on top. So, who are these “unknowns”?

 “If it bleeds it leads” is one crude maxim from the media which most of us heard at one time or another. In the same vain, it could also be said that “if she’s white, blond and sexy then she’s on the front page.” Kym Pasqualini, President for The National Center for Missing Adults, based in Phoenix said the media tends to focus on “damsels in distress”—typically, affluent young white women and teenagers. “We’d like to see a little more diversity in reporting because we have cases that never make the front page of the local newspaper, let alone the national media,”… “All parents are going through the same thing, no matter how much attention their case gets.” 12 Hispanic, black and mixed race kids are way down on the list of media coverage.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported 1,159 African American children Missing in 2000 the highest figures ever recorded for the organization. Although figures dropped by 2002 this had little to do with an upturn in media awareness of black children. More recently, in June of 2005 a disturbing report surfaced of boys from Africa being murdered in England’s London Churches with cultural links to West Africa where “aggressive” forms of exorcism are practiced. Scotland Yard “traced only two of 300 black boys aged four to seven reported missing from London schools in a three month period. The true figure for missing boys and girls is feared to be several thousand a year.” The report revealed that:

…there is a wide gulf between these [ethnic] communities and social services and protection agencies with many people in ethnic communities scared to speak out. The report concludes police face a ‘wall of silence’ when dealing with such cases. Experts differ on the merits of the Scotland Yard report. [...] ‘It is people in positions of power and money that are manipulating poor people.’ 13

No change there. Though there is clearly merit and truth in the report it will also provide more fuel for those who see this as an immigration problem. One wonders why thousands of ethnic children go missing and where “cultural links” have no connection whatsoever.

Even media advocacy that may take up the reins of an apathetic police force can have repercussions as Brian Maitland discovered, whose daughter Brianna disappeared in March 2004, near Montgomery, Vermont: ‘As the parents, we receive many tips that we forward to police,’ Maitland wrote. ‘Are they acted on? Who knows? Police tell you nothing about what they are doing with your case and tips, but we know the results. NOTHING.’

It seems the Maitlands, like so many others, have good reason to gripe about their treatment on top of already unbearable pain that is not allowed to turn to grieving.

The National Crime Information Center itself is under serious strain with 17 separate databases under its umbrella. Over 94, 000 law enforcement agencies have access with more than 39 million records. Critics call it a deeply flawed system where: ‘…a lack of knowledge, indifference or poor training, police officers in Washington state -  and around the nation - routinely fail to take even the most obvious steps, conduct routine follow-ups or comply with the law when handling missing-persons cases,…” 14

Moreover, it has been dawning on several child advocate agencies and families desperate for news of their missing loved ones, that it is not only bureaucracy and police apathy that is causing frustration - but the FBI itself. The bureau obsessively protects a wall of confidentiality over NCIC data, arguing that the database is the private property of local police departments. Then it is the police that steps up to increase the misery by preventing the public’s right to accountability regarding whether or not local police departments and medical examiners are doing their jobs. 

Seattle Police ignored a law that required them to follow up on reports, which in this case, resulted in the rape and murder of a 14 year-old girl. This routine procedure “would have identified her remains nearly 17 months sooner” and “I'm sure police would've caught him, or at least found some clues or evidence, if they would've linked this up sooner,” said Michelle's mother, Tish Curry. “They didn't really seem to care that much. My daughter was just another runaway to them.”

According to the same extensive report by the Seattle Post Intelligencer they found that police routinely mishandled and lost cases, ignored the law, failed to use tracking systems and closed cases with little or no investigation.

If sexual predators do indeed commit crimes against children 50-60 times more before they get caught, it is doubly frustrating for families of victims to learn how easily psychopaths use the system against itself. They naturally prey on those from dysfunctional families, with a prior record of running away or petty crime. Police are even less likely to follow up on such cases:

Criminologist Steven Egger calls the victims of serial killers ‘the less dead’ because they are usually people who have been marginalized -- prostitutes, drug users, homosexuals, farm workers, hospital patients and the elderly.

‘We don’t spend a lot of time dealing with missing people who aren’t particularly important; who don't have a lot of prestige,’ said Egger, a University of Houston-Clear Lake professor and former police officer. It's a public failing as well as a police failing, a common belief being that such people take big risks and get what they deserve. 15

With such a societal pathology it is no wonder we are failing children and adults worldwide. The defining characteristic that all these missing children and adults have in common is that they are largely forgotten by media and the world in general. While society becomes evermore devalued and artificial, the majority of “defective” goods that are children are literally thrown away, nothing more than the ubiquitous cycle of “used goods” that has come to characterise the unsustainable nature of our urban lives.

Notes

1  ‘Americas forgotten dead: Unidentified bodies go unreported’  by Thomas Hargrove - Scripps Howard News Service October 4, 2005. Alaska SitNews.

2  National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMC) www.ncmec.org
3  National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-2) US Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Released 2002.

4  http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/ncic.htm
5 National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-2) US Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Released 2002.
6  Source: National Institute of Mental Health NIH Publication No. 01-4584 Updated: January 1, 2001
7  National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) factsheets.
8  National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) factsheets (quoting from Anderson and Smith 2003).
9  ‘Missing Children Myths’ Connect For Kids by: Daniel D. Broughton Published: September 18, 2000.
10  Ibid

11  Ibid
12 Quoted in ‘America’s Missing’ 2005, The Crime Library, Typical Crimes and Methods http://www.crimelibrary.com/

13  ‘Child sacrifices in London’ By Richard Edwards Crime Reporter, Evening Standard 16 June 2005.
14  A Seattle Post-Intelligencer special report on how police here and around the nation fumble missing-person reports, originally published in 10 parts. Monday, February 17, 2003 Part 1: People go missing, killers go free 'I still worry. I guess I always will' By Lewis Kamb.

15  Ibid.