An Amber Alert or a child abduction emergency alert is a message distributed by a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children. It originated in the United States in 1996.
Richard Allen Davis is an American convicted murderer and child molester, whose criminal record fueled support for passage of California's "three-strikes law" for repeat offenders. He is currently on death row in Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison, California. He was convicted in 1996 of first-degree murder and four special circumstances of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Davis abducted Klaas on October 1, 1993, from her home in Petaluma, California.
Polly Hannah Klaas is an American murder victim whose case garnered national media attention. On October 1, 1993, at the age of twelve, she was kidnapped at knife point during a slumber party at her mother's home in Petaluma, California, and was later strangled. Richard Allen Davis was convicted of her murder in 1996 and sentenced to death.
Jacob Erwin Wetterling was an American boy from St. Joseph, Minnesota who was kidnapped from his hometown and murdered at the age of 11 on October 22, 1989. His abduction remained a mystery for nearly 27 years.
A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are not known. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, death in a location where they cannot be found, or many other reasons. In most parts of the world, a missing person will usually be found quickly. While criminal abductions are some of the most widely reported missing person cases, these account for only 2–5% of missing children in Europe.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is a psychiatric teaching hospital located in Toronto and ten community locations throughout the province of Ontario, Canada. The hospital was formed in 1998 from the amalgamation of four separate institutions – the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, the Addiction Research Foundation, and the Donwood Institute. It is Canada's largest mental health teaching hospital, and the only stand-alone psychiatric emergency department in Ontario. CAMH has 90 distinct clinical services across inpatient, outpatient, day treatment, and partial hospitalization models. CAMH has been the site of major advancements in psychiatric research, including the discovery of the Dopamine receptor D2.
Parental controls are features which may be included in digital television services, computer and video games, mobile devices and software that allow parents to restrict the access of content to their children. These controls were created to assist parents in their ability to restrict certain content viewable by their children. This may be content they deem inappropriate for their age, maturity level or feel is aimed more at an adult audience. Parental controls fall into roughly four categories: content filters, which limit access to age inappropriate content; usage controls, which constrain the usage of these devices such as placing time-limits on usage or forbidding certain types of usage; computer usage management tools, which enforces the use of certain software; and monitoring, which can track location and activity when using the devices.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a private, nonprofit organization established in 1984 by the United States Congress. In September 2013, the United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, and the President of the United States reauthorized the allocation of $40 million in funding for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as part of Missing Children's Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2013. The current chair of the organization is child safety advocate Patty Wetterling, mother of Jacob Wetterling. NCMEC handles cases of missing or exploited children from infancy to young adults through age 20. In 2021, the group faced controversy over a partnership with Apple to integrate software into iOS 15 which will automatically scan iPhone user's photos for child pornography.
Parry Aftab is an Internet privacy and security lawyer, considered one of the founders of cyberlaw and founder of the world's largest and oldest cybersafety charity. Named by The Boston Herald as "the leading expert in cybercrime in the world," Ms. Aftab wrote the first cybersafety book in the world for parents and has received a long list of honors and has been appointed to the boards of directors and advisory boards of several companies, including TRUSTe, Facebook, MTV and Sesame Street Online. She is a longtime Internet safety expert who founded the Internet safety organization WiredSafety, StopCyberbullying and the consulting firm, WiredTrust. She was "the Privacy Lawyer" columnist for Information Week Magazine for many years. In 2016 Parry Aftab founded Cybersafety India and the StopCyberbullying and sextortion and morphing prevention initiatives for India. She resides in both the US and Canada.
"Stranger danger" is the idea or warning that all strangers can potentially be dangerous. It is an example of a moral panic that people experience regarding anyone that they are unfamiliar with in society. The phrase is intended to encapsulate the danger associated with adults whom children do not know. The phrase has found widespread usage and many children will hear it during their childhood lives. Many books, films and public service announcements have been devoted to helping children remember this advice. The concept has been criticized for ignoring that the most child abductions and harm result not from strangers, but rather from someone the child knows.
The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC), headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, with a regional presence in Brazil and Singapore, is a private 501(c)(3) non-governmental, nonprofit global organization. It combats child sexual exploitation, child pornography, and child abduction.
Microsoft family features is a free set of features available on Windows 10 PC and Mobile that is bundled with the Windows 10, Home edition operating system. On the 17th of July 2020, Microsoft released Microsoft Family Safety on Google Play and App Store (iOS) as well. Starting in Windows 10, a Microsoft Account is required to use the Microsoft family features. A parent can manage settings for a child if both of their Microsoft Accounts are in the same family. When parents turn on settings for their child, these settings are applied to every device that the child logs into with that Microsoft Account.
Lifetouch Inc. is an American-based photography company headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. It was founded as National School Studios (NSS) in 1936 by Eldon Rothgeb and R. Bruce Reinecker and incorporated in March 1948. A subsidiary of Redwood City, California-based Shutterfly Inc., the company provides photography for families, schools, and places of worship, has over 22,000 employees, and operations in all 50 states and Canada. Through Lifetouch Media Productions, video support is provided to internal and external customers.
Until 2013, the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation was a non-profit charitable organization based in Richwoods, Missouri, devoted to the search for and rescue of abducted children. It ran the Shawn Hornbeck Search and Rescue Team.
Safe Kids Worldwide is a global non-profit organization working to prevent childhood injury through research, community outreach, legislative advocacy and media awareness campaigns. Safe Kids Worldwide has over 400 coalitions in 49 states, and has partners in over 30 countries. The proclaimed mission of Safe Kids Worldwide is "protecting kids from unintentional injuries, the number one cause of death for children in the United States." It is a 501(c) organization.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil liberties.
Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.
Harvard E. "Pete" Palmer Jr. is a prominent national authority on promotion and operation of car donation programs for charitable causes. He is "arguably one of the individuals with the broadest knowledge of the far-flung vehicle donation industry." He is a spokesperson for the Vehicle Donation Coalition. His writing includes an op-ed piece in The San Francisco Examiner about how to choose a worthy cause for donating a car, citing California's State Registrar of Charitable Trusts as a source for checking the records of particular charities soliciting in that state.
The National Partnership for Women & Families is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)3 organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1971, the National Partnership works on public policies, education and outreach that focuses on women and families.
Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, previously known as DNA Foundation, is an international anti-human trafficking organization that works to address the sexual exploitation of children. The primary programming efforts of the organization focus on Internet technology and the role it plays in facilitating child pornography and sexual slavery of children on a global scale. The organization was founded by American actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.
