Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Parental Child Abduction

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

If You Find Me

by Emily Murdoch
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 26, 2013, 256 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2014, 256 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Parental Child Abduction

This article relates to If You Find Me

Print Review

According to the U.S Dept of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, about 200,000 children are reported missing each year as a result of parental abduction. 53% of family abducted children were gone less than a week, and 21% for more than a month.

In many parts of the U.S. there is uncertainty about how to handle this crime. If parents have not established an official custodial agreement, the state's child abduction laws do not always recognize parental child abduction as an official crime or take into consideration the danger it presents to the abducted child. In fact, it would appear that, only in California and Texas, is parental child abduction clearly categorized as a criminal offense.

In her report, Parental Child Abduction is Child Abuse, presented to the United Nations Convention on Child Rights, Nancy Faulkner, Ph.D. demonstrates how parental child abduction is essentially child abuse, often leaving deep scars on both the child and the family left behind. She documents how children abducted by a parent often suffer from not only psychological trauma, but also fall victim to neglect, lack of proper schooling, poor nutrition, and an unstable lifestyle, while often being turned against the left-behind parent and led to believe that the missing parent is dead or wishes them harm.

The report cites Dr. Dorothy Huntington, an early leader in the study of parental child abduction issues, from her article, Parental Kidnapping: A New Form of Child Abuse: "Child stealing is child abuse...Children are used as both objects and weapons in the struggle between the parents which leads to the brutalization of the children psychologically, specifically destroying their sense of trust in the world around them...We must re-conceptualize child stealing as child abuse of the most flagrant sort."

More often than not, children in these situations are used by one parent against another; they are the pawns in an act of spousal revenge that one parent aims at the other to cause distress, worry and grief, not knowing if their child is safe and if they will ever see them again. The abducting parent and child usually go into hiding with no contact with doctors, counselors, police or child protective services, leaving the child extremely vulnerable.

Statistics show that children are equally abducted by mothers as fathers. In some cases, the parent might be fleeing with the children from an emotionally disturbed atmosphere at home. But at least half of the parents who abduct a child have a history of violence, substance abuse or are emotionally disturbed and many have previous criminal records.

Even as adults, victims of parental child abduction feel a great sense of loss: of identity, personal history, and extended family. They long to be reunited with the lost parent. Children and families eventually reunited must start over, receive counseling and sometimes, depending on the state, allow visitations with the abductor, risking the possibility of re-abduction.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic, I suggest this very comprehensive document produced by the U.S. Dept of Justice which offers advice to parents dealing with a parental abduction both during the abduction and after the child's return, and to those supporting them. Those dealing with a parental abduction across international lines will likely find the U.S. Dept of State's resources useful.

Filed under Society and Politics

Article by Sharry Wright

This "beyond the book article" relates to If You Find Me. It originally ran in June 2013 and has been updated for the April 2014 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access become a member today.
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Real Americans
    by Rachel Khong
    From the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, a novel exploring family, identity, and the shaping of destiny.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

Who Said...

A book may be compared to your neighbor...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.