Sharing images of underage kidnap victims with the press

[liliaeth]

I'm not entirely sure how to look for this

Comments

[direwolfdragon]

As for the fingerprints- they might. There are great pushes to have children fingerprinted just in case they were kidnapped. I remember getting this done back in the eighties and two of my younger cousins had this done in the late eighties and early nineties.

Since photos are widely distributed in the case of Amber alerts, I am sure the children's photos would be given to the press.

[rosehiptea]

Since photos are widely distributed in the case of Amber alerts, I am sure the children's photos would be given to the press.

Yes, if we're talking about the U.S., I have certainly seen pictures of underage kidnap victims in the press.

[liliaeth]

Oh? responses at ask_a_cop said that they wouldn't allow that kind of information to be given to the press.

Might be because the children were rescued, and the amber alerts are given before the children are found.

[rosehiptea]

Oh I'm sorry, I read your post wrong. If they are already rescued then it's totally different.

ETA: However, I do think the police would be able to match them up with missing person's records even though they were taken across state lines. Unless for some reason they were never reported as missing, which would be pretty odd (but I don't watch Supernatural...)

[leoraine]

Just a question here... but even if the children are underage, they should be able to give their own names (in case they aren't too young for that). Or are they unable to speak/write

[liliaeth]

Thanks, in this case, only one of the victims would still be capable of giving her own name. The others would have been conditioned not to speak through the use of drugs, electric shocks and other punishments. Including poor Dean. The idea is that the bad guy,who's more than a bit mentally troubled, was allergic to cats and still wanted pets, so he had his people take teenagers that were then trained/conditioned, to behave like domestic cats. Including a drug that directly attacked the memory, suppressing the connectors involving longterm memory, actively causing amnesia, and stopping the kids in question from retaining memories for more than a few days/little over a week at most

[nineveh_uk]

UK - the photos of people who turn up with severe amnesia are reproduced in the press. One would think that if an adult was found who had been kidnapped as a child, it would be considered as in his interest in the first instance to try to find the family.

[rockthecj]

Police in Britain definitely wouldn't release a photo of a child under 16 because of a law against publicising a U16 child's face in the media without guardian or parental permission. If one does show up in a newspaper, it's usually done without the police's knowledge and permission

[lolmac]

You need to tell us the era and the location. If it's the contemporary US, you can start by searching for stories of rescued imprisoned kidnap victims.

The story mentioned, in which the boy had been kidnapped so long ago that he barely remembered his original life, was Steven Stayner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Stayner

His story was dramatised for TV as "I Know My First Name is Steven".

[liliaeth]

Thanks, sorry for not giving more info, I keep forgetting to do that.

The story is set in the recent past, early to middle nineties in the American midwest.

[lolmac]

That makes a huge difference. The internet age has caused a major shift in how people regard personal information, especially for children.

[reapermum]

What country is this set in?

[liliaeth]

US, American Midwest in the early to middle nineties.

[misachan]

I think teenager is too old for the FBI to be automatically involved, but if they have any reason to believe any of the kids were taken across state lines they may show up anyway, and their procedures are different from the ones local cops would use. (And, excuse to bring in Hendrickson!:)

[liliaeth]

I'm having it that the FBI got involved because the kidnapper had ties to a prostitution ring. Any of his captives that outgrew his age preference would have been sold into prostitution.