Last year I read a post on Reddit that really made me question the FBI and their efforts to solve children’s kidnapping cases. The story started with a person in their mid to late 20s discovering through an “ancestry.com” blood test that they had no blood relationship to their “MOTHER”, but were related to both their father and what turned out to be their HALF sister. As the story further developed, it turned out the poster was the victim of a custodial kidnapping over 20+ years before; the father and his then girlfriend had fled with the victim to another state, married, and convinced the victim that any memories of “before” were imaginary.
With the benefit of hindsight, the poster realized that a two year difficulty in obtaining a passport years before (because the system showed the poster had been “reported dead”) was not simply a clerical error, but caused by the biological mother finally having the victim declared legally dead after zero progress on the then 17 year old case. The “ancestry.com” reunion was pure chance, mixed with a bit of hope and prayer.
The story was a combination of heartwarming and terrifying. Heartwarming was because the poster did end up able to reunite with the biological mother and previously unknown half siblings, but terrifying because at no point had the kidnappers ever changed the victims Social Security number.
Which meant the idiots at the FBI didn’t bother to look up tax records by social security number for the kidnappers or their victim FOR ALMOST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS.
There are currently tens of thousands of “missing children” in the United States. I can’t help but wonder how many could be “solved” with some common sense effort by people who actually give a shit. The system is set up so that divorced parents can’t BOTH claim the same children on tax returns, but the fact the system does not “FLAG KIDNAP VICTIMS” seems beyond incompetent and absurd.
The last thing the poster shared over the course of the story was that getting the father and (step) mother arrested took months, and both were expected to be released on bail. They will probably face worse charges for tax issues than they will for the “custodial kidnapping”.
Good thing our country takes the safety of children so seriously.
Yes, that is sarcasm. 😡
Damn, really makes you wonder just how involved our own gov't has been in trafficking and protecting its participants.
Either incompetence or...what's that word- complicity? Kinda lends credence to claims that some Government agencies are involved with the Global child trafficking problem. It seems as if the system is set up to fail victims sometimes. Speaking of which, wasn't there a State Agency Official couple years ago who actually got caught in child trafficking/exploitation? I can only imagine how many psychopaths look for positions of power like this in order to have leverage and influence.