This past month, US media shared the painful agony of two families whose teenage daughters were found murdered.  One, seventeen year old Chelsea King, was abducted while jogging, her body discovered in a shallow grave a few days later.
     The other, fourteen year old Amber Dubois, had been missing for over a year. Amber was last seen walking to school, less than ten miles from the park where Chelsea would later be murdered. My own teenage daughter happened to attend the same high school as Amber.  I attended the candlelight vigils praying for her safe return and submitted the following editorial to our local paper.

                                         Innocent until Missing

      The disappearance of a child is every parent's worst nightmare, a tragedy so great, every fellow heart grieves.  Amber Dubois and her family have most assuredly been in our family's prayers since her disappearance and I was grateful to see your front page headline, Sunday February 22,  titled "When a loved one suddenly goes missing."  My gratitude turned to dismay however when I continued reading and learned police seemed to justify slow response to missing teen reports due to the prevalence of runaways.
     Painfully little attention though it receives in the media, human trafficking now runs second to drug trafficking in prevalence and profitability.  Experience has established unequivocally that the level of action executed in the first 24 hours of a missing person report is vital to determining the outcome.  These combined facts mandate we give each missing teen report the strongest, fastest, most efficient and comprehensive police and community response possible.  Justifying lesser action due to teens that left homes willingly places us on the side of aiding and abetting abductors and blinds future victims to their own vulnerability.

     I wish today I could write that, thanks to evidence found in the search for Chelsea and Amber and the subsequent arrest of a local registered sex offender, families in our community can rest in peace.  The reality however, one easily confirmed by an internet search, is that every city is home to literally hundreds of sex offenders.  So although the King and Dubois families are working heroically today to honor their daughters by improving legislation which tracks and prosecutes these individuals, the sad truth is no child is safe.  For this reason, we must teach our children how best to avoid being targeted and how to respond in the event someone attempts to abduct them.

Mama Marlaine
Submitted in loving memory of Amber Dubois and Chelsea King
 www.lifeskillsreportcard.com  
 


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