[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE NEGLECTED EPIDEMIC OF
MISSING BIPOC WOMEN AND GIRLS
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 3, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-69
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-067 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
Columbia Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Michael Cloud, Texas
Ro Khanna, California Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Pete Sessions, Texas
Katie Porter, California Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Cori Bush, Missouri Andy Biggs, Arizona
Shontel M. Brown, Ohio Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Scott Franklin, Florida
Peter Welch, Vermont Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., Pat Fallon, Texas
Georgia Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Byron Donalds, Florida
Jackie Speier, California Vacancy
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Russ Anello, Staff Director
Devon Ombres, Subcommittee Staff Director
Amy Stratton, Deputy Chief Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Chairman
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Nancy Mace, South Carolina,
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Ranking Minority Member
Robin Kelly, Illinois Jim Jordan, Ohio
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts Andy Biggs, Arizona
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Scott Franklin, Florida
Columbia Byron Donalds, Florida
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Danny K. Davis, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on March 3, 2022.................................... 1
Witnesses
Ms. Pamela Foster, Mother of Missing Child
Oral Statement................................................... 7
Ms. Angel Charley, Executive Director, Coalition to Stop Violence
Against Native Women
Oral Statement................................................... 9
Ms. Patrice Onwuka (minority witness), Director, Center for
Economic Opportunity, Independent Women's Forum
Oral Statement................................................... 10
Mr. John E. Bischoff, III, Vice President, Missing Children
Division, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Oral Statement................................................... 12
Mr. Shawn Wilkinson, Father of Missing Child
Oral Statement................................................... 13
Ms. Natalie Wilson, Co-Founder, Black and Missing Foundation
Oral Statement................................................... 15
Written opening statements and statements for the witnesses are
available on the U.S. House of Representatives Document
Repository at: docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
* Statement from Tara Sweeney; submitted by Rep. Mace.
Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.
THE NEGLECTED EPIDEMIC OF
MISSING BIPOC WOMEN AND GIRLS
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Thursday, March 3, 2022
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:07 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom; Hon.
Robin Kelly presiding.
Present: Representatives Maloney, Raskin, Mfume, Kelly,
Norton, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Mace.
Ms. Kelly. [Presiding.] The committee will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time.
First, I would like to start by recognizing the chairman of
the subcommittee, Mr. Raskin, for his opening statement.
Congressman?
Mr. Raskin. Thank you so much, Ms. Kelly, and, especially,
thank you for chairing this hearing as I continue to recover
from COVID-19. Good morning, everyone. Thanks to our witnesses
for joining us today. Thanks to all the members for
participating. Again, I want to thank Representative Kelly for
her leadership, and I want to thank Representatives Pressley
and Ocasio-Cortez also for joining in this critical work of
combating intimate partner violence and advocating for missing
women and children throughout the country. This is a crisis
that is hiding in plain sight, and I hope the hearing will help
us to shine a light on the shocking plague of missing and
murdered women and girls in communities of color across the
country.
In 2020, 100,000 of the quarter million women and girls who
went missing in the U.S. were black, brown, or indigenous.
Black women and girls make up just 13 percent of the female
population in the country but accounted for fully 35 percent of
all missing women in 2020. This crisis is dire in indigenous
communities. In South Dakota, 2 of 3 missing persons are Native
American despite only 1 of 10 South Dakotans being Native
American. In Montana, Native Americans account for 1 of every 4
missing persons despite only 1 of 20 Montanans being Native
American. These numbers don't even reflect the full extent of
the epidemic. According to the GAO, the total number of missing
and murdered indigenous women is still unknown. Federal data
bases do not contain comprehensive nationwide data. The data
that is collected includes Hispanic and Latino women among
white women, leaving their numbers also mysterious. Missing
women from immigrant communities also go unreported and
uncounted out of fear of deportation.
The causes driving the disproportionate rates of missing
women of color are many and complex. Intimate partner violence
affects nearly half of African American and indigenous women
compared to 37 percent of white women. Unfortunately, fewer
than 20 percent of all women who face intimate partner violence
seek services, which only perpetuates the cycle of violence.
Sex trafficking also drives these disproportionate numbers.
Nearly two-thirds of sex trafficking victims in this country
are black and Latino or Hispanic. The numbers are just as dire
for native women. In South Dakota, Native-American women and
girls constitute 40 percent of victims of sex trafficking.
Native women also face unique dangers: so-called man camps.
Temporary housing for pipeline and oil industry laborers
affects indigenous and other marginalized communities in rural
areas where they are located. Studies have shown that the
placement of man camps statistically coincide with dramatically
significant increases in crime. For example, the Fort Berthold
Reservation saw a 75-percent increase in sexual assaults on
native women after man camps arose in their region during the
oil construction boom of the late 2000's. Notably, there was no
corresponding rise in crime outside of this area.
Unfortunately, these communities are structurally hamstrung
in their response to such threats. Tribal law enforcement is
prohibited from prosecuting non-native individuals who commit
crimes against their people. Local law enforcement often has
limited resources, are spread thin, and may be hesitant to
engage with jurisdictional uncertainty. Federal law enforcement
has not been able to step into the gaps. They may have a
geographically limited presence to investigate and prosecute
serious crimes against native communities. Even so, in 2017,
U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute over 1 in 3 of their cases
arising in Indian Country, primarily citing a lack of evidence.
Jurisdictional wrangling and limited resources often lead to
significant delays. The first 24 to 48 hours in a missing
persons case is critical, and poor communication between law
enforcement agencies can make the difference between life and
death.
The neglect shown by the media toward cases involving
missing and murdered women of color is a primary reason that
this epidemic remains obscure to the public. Countless families
in these communities shoulder the burden of a missing loved one
alone. Countless others shoulder the additional trauma of a law
enforcement system that discounts their fears and their
experience. Just one example here: in Wyoming, out of the more
than 700 indigenous women who have gone missing last 10 years,
less than 1 in 5 received any media coverage. How is that
possible?
So we are here today to render visible this invisible
crisis in our midst. Congress and the Biden Administration have
taken some important preliminary steps to clarify the epidemic
of missing and murdered women of color. Savanna's Act, the
Ashlynne Mike Amber Alert in Indian Country Act, and the
Ashanti Alert Act have all been enacted into law. There have
been executive orders, but we have more work to do. We must act
to ensure that Federal law enforcement is fully coordinating
with the Western states that have created missing and murdered
indigenous women task forces. The Administration needs to
constitute the Joint Commission on Reducing Violence Against
Indians. Congress must reauthorize the Violence Against Women
Act and the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention
and Protection Act, and fully fund implementation of the
Ashanti Alert Act. Finally, we must consider the Protect Black
Women and Girls Act, introduced by my friend and our
distinguished colleague, Congresswoman Kelly.
We must work together to confront and address this pressing
problem. The core function of government is to protect the
safety and the security of the people. That is the essence of
the social contract. We must secure and fortify the social
contract for women of color all across America. I look forward
to hearing the testimony of our witnesses today, and I yield
back to you, Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. And with that, I now recognize the
distinguished ranking member, Ms. Mace, for an opening
statement.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, Chairwoman Kelly, and thank you
Chairman Raskin as well. You look great, so I am glad to see
you are doing OK. I thank the chairman for holding today's
hearing on such an important issue.
In my hometown of Goose Creek, South Carolina, just over
two years ago in September, I believe, of 2019, there was a
huge human trafficking and sex trafficking bust. These kinds of
issues are happening all over our country unbeknownst to many
people today, and there are thousands of innocent victims. All
Americans, especially women and girls, deserve to realize their
full potential in this country and achieve the American Dream,
but far too often, violent criminal activities and sex
trafficking serve to limit opportunities and extinguish their
livelihood.
A shockingly high number of women and girls will be the
victim of tragedies of child abuse, domestic violence, sexual
assault, or human trafficking during their lifetime. According
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, intimate
partner violence has affected or will affect 1 in 4 women in
the U.S., and half of all female homicide victims in the U.S.
are killed by a current or former male intimate partner. In my
home state of South Carolina, there were almost 60 homicides in
2021 alone related to domestic violence. According to the South
Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual
Assault, the rate in South Carolina is over twice the national
average for femicide.
The 1 in 4 number I mentioned previously is only for the
general population. In fact, there are even a higher proportion
of survivors of domestic violence among women of color, with 35
percent of Native-American women estimated to be victimized by
rape, physical assault, and stalking by an intimate partner in
their lifetime. In New York City alone, despite only making up
20 percent of the population, black women were 45 percent of
domestic violence related to homicide victims. Women and girls
are also frequently targeted by human traffickers, especially
by sex traffickers who prey on the most vulnerable.
These tragedies are particularly acute among women of
color. For example, despite only making up eight percent of the
population in South Dakota, Native-American women are 40
percent of sex trafficking victims in the state. In Louisiana,
almost half of sex trafficking survivors are black women and
girls, even though they make up only 19 percent of Louisiana's
youth population. Nationwide, black women and girls are
estimated to be about 40 percent of domestic sex trafficking
victims in the U.S., and it is estimated that there are
currently between 64,000 and 75,000 missing black women and
girls in the United States, many of whom have been targeted by
sex traffickers. These crimes subject victims and their
communities to great cost. The CDC estimates the total economic
impact of domestic violence to be somewhere north of $3-and-a-
half trillion, which includes medical services for injuries,
lost productivity from work, criminal justice costs, and,
tragically, the personal cost for every victim of domestic
violence is greater than $100,000 over this women's lifetimes,
on average.
This is an important hearing. I look forward to learning
from the witnesses today about their own experiences with these
tragedies and what they and their organizations are doing to
raise awareness of these issues to reduce the vulnerable from
being targeted, and to ensure that survivors can live the best
life possible in our country. I am especially interested in
what policies we should be advocating for to improve access to
education and economic opportunities for all women to decrease
their vulnerability and risk for being targeted by criminals.
All of us deserve to live in a society free from the fear of
falling victim to violent crimes, and I hope this hearing will
illustrate how important this issue is today because so many
Americans are not informed, don't have the data or the
information, and would never believe this is happening in our
country today.
So, I want to thank the chairwoman. I do want to, Madam
Chair, ask for unanimous consent to enter a statement into the
record from Tara Sweeney, who is a former assistant secretary
for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of Interior.
Ms. Kelly. Without objection.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, and I yield back.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Ranking Member Mace. I now recognize
the chair of the full Committee on Oversight and Reform,
Chairwoman Maloney, for an opening statement.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Thank you so very much,
Chairman Raskin and Ranking Member Mace. I commend both of you
for your leadership in calling attention to this tragic and
underreported story. Congresswoman Kelly, thank you, too, for
the leadership role you have played on this issue, and in
developing this hearing, and literally having other hearings in
your district on the subject. I also appreciate your
willingness to fill in as chair this morning.
Of the more than 250,000 women and girls reported missing
in 2020, at least 40 percent were women of color. Despite
making up a much smaller share of the overall U.S. population,
black, indigenous, and Hispanic women are going missing at
shockingly high rates, and there is really no data on what
happened to them. No one knows where they are. It is just a
shocking, almost unbelievable situation in this country, and we
are going to have to do a much better job in helping these
women and really documenting what is happening. They are also
more likely than white women to fall victim to intimate partner
violence and other crimes that contribute to missing person
cases.
Yet the data available to us today likely understates the
problem, and there is very little governmental data. It comes
from not-for-profits, and according to the Government
Accountability Office, the total number of missing indigenous
women is unknown due to inadequacies in Federal data bases.
These data bases also lack any data whatsoever on missing
Hispanic women who are included with white women in official
Federal counts. This tells me women of color are likely even
more disproportionately represented among missing person cases
than we know, creating a significant blind spot for
policymakers as we seek solutions to these problems.
Women of color who go missing or who are victims of crime
are also not getting the assistance and attention they deserve.
This is a dire problem in my home of New York City. In
Brooklyn, Natoya Stephens, a 29-year-old black woman of two,
has been missing since 2012 after an argument with her fiance.
Her loved ones are still seeking information on her
whereabouts. Leanne Marie Hausberg, a 14-year-old girl of
Native-American descent, also from Brooklyn, has been missing
since 1999 when she disappeared from her family's apartment. To
this day, her parents don't have answers about what happened to
her. And earlier this year, we learned the tragic news that a
43-year-old Hispanic mother from my district in Queens, Yecely
Sanchez, was found dead after going missing on New Year's Eve.
Her four children will now have to grow up without their
mother.
I hope to learn more about this through this hearing, about
how we can do better by these women and the tens of thousands
of others whose families and loved ones are still seeking
answers. At the very least, I hope we can identify solutions to
the data gaps that exist so we can know the true extent of the
problem. In addition to the demographic information that is
clearly lacking, there is likely additional data we should be
routinely collecting and examining. More information on who is
going missing, the communities they belong to, and what
happened to them will help us direct the resources and
attention necessary to better serve women of color who may be
at risk.
In closing, I would like to echo President Biden's call
during the State of the Union Tuesday night for Congress to
finally send him a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against
Women Act. The House acted nearly a year ago passing
reauthorization legislation I co-sponsored on a bipartisan
vote. Our bill would provide vital services to victims of the
types of crimes that fuel missing person cases, and it would
address some of the challenges we will be discussing today. I
hope it can be signed into law soon. And I think that this
hearing is a long overdue, and it is hard to believe that so
many women are missing in our country, unaccounted for, and we
must do everything to improve the situation.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for sharing their
stories and for their work in this area with us today, and I
yield back. And I wish a speedy recovery of our chairman of the
subcommittee, Jamie Raskin. He looks healthy and good, but we
are all praying for you, Jamie, and thank you for your hard
work in pulling this subcommittee hearing together. I yield
back.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I would like to
thank the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee for
holding this important hearing. I would also like to thank the
panelists for appearing here to speak on such a critical issue,
and especially Ms. Foster and Mr. Wilkinson for sharing your
stories. I know this cannot be easy for you.
The issue of missing black, brown, and indigenous women and
girls in America is truly an epidemic and critically important
to me. Just under a month ago, the Caucus on Black Women and
Girls hosted a roundtable discussion in my district on this
very issue. We heard from a number of experts on the topic:
families of victims and victims themselves. Resources were
shared and made available for victims, including a toolkit so
people could keep themselves and their communities safe. We
heard ideas on how Federal and local agencies could work
together to improve the reporting and solving of missing
persons cases and better protect BIPOC women and girls. It was
a productive conversation, but it was clear that more work
needs to be done.
Black women and girls are too often ignored when they go
missing, and they go missing at a much higher rate than white
women. Even with these cases being underreported, black women
made up a little more than one-third of all missing women
reported last year, which is far higher than the nearly 15
percent of the population we account for nationally. Human
trafficking also disproportionately affects black women. The
congressional Black Caucus Foundation issued a report on human
trafficking and found that 40 percent of sex trafficking
victims were black women. All these factors contribute to the
disproportionate number of missing black women. Unfortunately,
the same can be said for many other minority populations. These
shocking numbers are likely lower than reality as crimes
against black women and BIPOC women in general are
underreported. It is horrible that these cases do not receive
more attention.
The media reporting of these women pales in comparison of
white women, as in the tragic case of Gabby Petito, which
received nearly 24-hour coverage until her body was found. You
could not scroll through Twitter or read the news without
seeing coverage of the story. Yes, she deserved to have this
kind of media attention, but so do other women of color. Much
of this can be contributed to biases toward women of color and
what Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery calls hyper-visibility of black
women. When women of color are talked about in the media, it
generally perpetuates negative stereotypes, creating a vicious
cycle where we get less positive media attention. But this is
not just about media attention. The issue of disproportionate
missing BIPOC women and girls is one that needs more national
attention by law enforcement policy as well.
States, such as Minnesota, have created task forces to
better coordinate crackdown on the factoring contributions to
missing BIPOC women and girls. At the Federal level, we need
better coordination as well. This is why I introduced the
Protect Black Women and Girls Act. This bipartisan bill would
establish an interagency task force to examine the conditions
and experiences of black women and girls in the United States
and inform policymakers on how we can better respond to this
epidemic. We must authorize, as you have heard over and over,
the Violence Against Women Act, which has not been reauthorized
since 2013 and expired in 2018. The House has done its job, and
now the Senate must act. Lives are on the line. We need better
coordination among Federal and state law enforcement, better
funding to community organizations that report on missing
persons cases, and support in finding these women.
I am grateful that the committee is having this hearing and
bringing light to this issue. I am hoping for a productive
hearing that will produce solutions to finding our missing
women and girls.
Now I would like to introduce our witnesses. Our first
witness today is Pamela Foster of the Navajo Tribe, the mother
of a missing child. Then we will hear from Angel Charley, the
executive director for the Coalition to Stop Violence Against
Native Women. Then we will hear from Patrice Onwuka, the
director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at the
Independent Women's Forum. We will then hear from John
Bischoff, the vice president of the Missing Children's Division
at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Then
we will hear from Shawn Wilkinson of Gaithersburg, Maryland,
the father of a missing child. Finally, we will hear from
Natalie Wilson, one of the co-founders for the Black and
Missing Foundation.
The witnesses will be unmuted so we can swear them in. If
you can stand up. Please raise your right hands.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
[A chorus of a yes.]
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. Let the record show that the
witnesses answered in the affirmative. Thank you.
And without further objection, your written statements will
be made part of the record, and you can sit down.
With that, Ms. Foster, you are now recognized for your
testimony.
[No response.]
Ms. Kelly. You are still muted.
Ms. Foster. Can you hear me?
Ms. Kelly. Yes, we can.
STATEMENT OF PAMELA FOSTER, MOTHER OF MISSING CHILD
Ms. Foster. Good morning to everybody from the
subcommittee. I am honored to be here today. My name is Pamela
Foster, and I am a Navajo from the Navajo Nation.
On May 2, 2016, my children, Ian Mike and Ashlynne Mike
were kidnapped at the bus stop after school on the Navajo
reservation in New Mexico. My children were abducted by a
stranger and taken deep into the desert miles from home where
Ian managed to escape, and, to great sadness, Ashlynne was
brutally assaulted and murdered. With the kidnapping of my
children and the horrific murder of my daughter, I felt a great
injustice. It was during the events of the abduction that I
found out that there were no AMBER Alerts established on the
Navajo Reservation. There were no 9-1-1's to call or roadway
digital signs. Tribal law enforcement did not act quickly
enough, and had poor communication systems, and had little to
no training on missing persons and child abductions. The lack
of technology and infrastructure made it difficult to search
for my children.
Because I felt there was a slow response from tribal law
enforcement, I got on social media and reached out to family
and friends asking them to share my urgent message. My
community had no training regarding abductions, plus they had
no idea an abduction had occurred. Myself, family, and friends
reached out to law enforcement and search and rescue teams off
reservations and pleaded for their help. Due to jurisdictional
laws, authorities off reservations were not able to help. They
had to receive word from tribal police that an abduction had
occurred. This amplified the strain that we felt. That evening,
Ian was found by a passerby and taken to law enforcement. After
what seemed like an eternity, an AMBER Alert was finally issued
for Ashlynne 12 hours after we made that first call to law
enforcement, and 12 precious hours were wasted.
Since the kidnapping of my children, I have found out that
the first 48 hours after an abduction are the most critical
times to search and investigate for a missing person. As each
hour passes, the likelihood that a missing person will be found
decreases substantially. I began voicing my concerns about the
problems that I faced during the abduction of my children, and
I found other tribes were experiencing the same problem as
Navajo. My daughter's death may have been prevented if there
was an AMBER Alert system in place at the time of her
abduction. Prior to the abductions, the Navajo Nation had been
given the opportunity to implement an AMBER Alert system, and
they failed to do so.
I began advocating about the tragedy we experienced and
vowed to make a difference on Indian Country. I spoke about the
many crimes that happen to our indigenous people on and off
Indian Country--kidnapping, sexual assaults, child abuse,
violence against women and girls. And I also felt the urgency
to ask our leaders to locate all sexual offenders on
reservations because many had not registered in the system, and
their whereabouts were unknown.
Shortly after, I started a petition, called the AMBER Alert
in Indian Country Act, to bring protection to indigenous
families and their children, and with the help of
representatives from Washington, I was able to pass my bill
into law. The bill was signed into law on April 13, 2018, and
renamed Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert in Indian Country Act.
Ashlynne's Law amends the PROTECT Act and helps tribes to
implement their own AMBER Alert systems, and helps tribes with
education, and training, and technological challenges
encountered by tribes. We were actively implementing AMBER
Alert legislation directly into Indian Country when COVID-19
hit. There are still a lot of reservations which need to
implement the AMBER Alert system, and hopefully this progress
will move forward again.
The dynamics of violence contributing to missing and
murdered indigenous people is immensely difficult and
challenging to understand. It is important to bring awareness
to the challenges that indigenous people face on a daily basis,
to bring attention to the obstacles that can only be fixed by
lawmakers like you. I am fortunate I had a large platform to
share my story because there are thousands of stories that
don't have the media coverage, and they have been silenced by
falling through the cracks of the judicial system. I hope my
story can help make the changes that we desperately need. If it
means my story helped to save one life, then it was worth
sharing.
I thank you today for my testimony, and I hope that we will
be able to make much-needed changes. Thank you.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you so much, Ms. Foster. Thank you for
sharing.
Ms. Charley, you are now recognized for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF ANGEL CHARLEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COALITION TO
STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST NATIVE WOMEN
Ms. Charley. [Speaking native language] Chair and members
of the committee. My name is Angel Charley, and I'm from the
Pueblo of Laguna. I serve as the executive director of the
Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women. Today, I thank
you for the opportunity to speak with you about an issue that
is impacting the lives of too many indigenous peoples: the
murdered and missing indigenous women crisis, or MMIW.
Our goal at the Coalition is to build healthy families and
healthy communities. We do this by enacting social change that
is grounded in the principles of kinship, healing,
accountability, and love. Based on these principles, I am here
to share with you what we believe is at the root of inaction
that our families face when seeking justice or closure to the
murder or disappearance of their loved one. It is a system that
is rooted in the devaluation of indigenous lives since the
onset of colonization.
While some progress has been made in attempting to address
this crisis, what continues to obstruct our ability to access
the resources and appropriate support is the embedded
bureaucracy within these well-intended solutions. Families
across Indian Country remain burdened with the financial cost
of investigation, search, and rescue. The system responses
created to date have left these families un-resourced, without
direction, and lost within the intricacies of tribal, state,
and Federal bureaucracies.
Last week, I spoke with a mother from Farmington, New
Mexico, who was told by investigating detectives not to speak
publicly about her case, but the only media coverage that keeps
her daughter a priority requires that she tells her story.
During Operation Lady Justice listening sessions, a family from
Shiprock, New Mexico, were forced into silence because they did
not have internet access, transportation to a hotspot, nor the
ability to leave their community during lockdown orders. Right
now, here in Washington, DC, exists an unknown number of
backlogged, untested, and unprosecuted rape kits from across
Indian Country. These are untraceable by tribal leadership,
families, and victims. These cases remain unsolved.
These examples are too common throughout our communities,
and it is a failure on the part of the justice system. It is
the repeated deferred responsibility of those who have sworn to
protect, declaring complications of jurisdiction or a lack of
resources. This is keeping our families from having justice,
but, more importantly, this is keeping them from healing.
Our organization knows that it is not if a native women
will experience violence in her lifetime, but it is when. More
than 85 percent of our women will experience it, more than half
of it will be sexual violence, yet annually, over a third of
these cases are declined for prosecution, citing lack of
evidence. It is the complexity of jurisdiction, the historic
lack of funding, and systemic racism that continue to fuel the
crisis of MMIW. The disparate treatment of indigenous women by
law enforcement and media goes unchecked, and our communities
experience multiple disappearances: a disappearance from
family, from community, then by the media, and then in the
system.
Our women are 10 times more likely to be murdered, and so
we continue to ask why. Why are our lives not valued? Why are
we invisible? What is clear is that our justice is caught in
the limbo of bureaucracy. This is not an epidemic. This is a
crisis ongoing through time, created by the very system that
now seeks to address it. Congress, the Department of Justice,
and decision-makers throughout Indian Country have the reports
outlining the violence that we face, yet year after year, we
fail to follow through with increased funding, expansion of
service areas, and multi-year commitments to address the root
causes of these issues. The reauthorization of VAWA remains
unauthorized where a list of tribal provisions expand oversight
and, thereby, protection of our women and children.
Recommendations from government oversight committees linger
with continued inaction, and the sexual violence created by man
camps and extractive industries practices continue to cause
devastating impacts on our communities, adding to this crisis.
In closing, I would ask the committee to remember this:
that it is our communities who are left filling in the gaps of
the system. It is the families and advocates who continue to
show up against all odds to tell their story, demand
visibility, and ensure that justice remembers their loved ones.
Thank you.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Ms. Charley. Ms. Onwuka----
Ms. Onwuka. Thank you.
Ms. Kelly [continuing]. You are now recognized for your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF PATRICE ONWUKA, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ECONOMIC
OPPORTUNITY, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S FORUM
Ms. Onwuka. Thank you, Chairman Raskin, Congresswoman
Kelly, Ranking Member Mace, and the members of the committee. I
appreciate you having me here today. My name is Patrice Onwuka,
and I am a director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at
Independent Women's Forum. We are a nonprofit committed to
advancing policies that enhance people's freedoms,
opportunities, and well-being, and my work is focused primarily
on women of color. Now, we cannot begin to discuss the
solutions to economic mobility and freedom when many of our
daughters, granddaughters, sisters, and students disappear into
the darkness every year. My heart goes out to my fellow
panelists whose loved ones are still missing.
According to missing persons data provided by the NCIC,
over 540,000 missing cases were open in 2020. They tend to be
young. About half are female. Black and minority women are
disproportionately represented, as we have heard today. Just
over a third are people of color, including black, Asian, and
Indian. Now, this is noticeably higher than the proportion of
the larger U.S. population, and among the 37 percent of missing
women of color, the lion's share tends to be black. Now, 80
percent of missing person cases were closed because the missing
person was located by law enforcement, returned home, or the
file was determined to be invalid. In fact, in 2020, the year
closed with 89,637 still missing, far too many, but far fewer
than I think we started this number with. Among these open
cases, we do still see similar racial trends: 35 percent are
people of color, not including Hispanics; 31 percent are black;
17 percent are females of color; and 15 percent are black
females.
I pause here just to underscore how important it is to
recognize that most missing person cases are closed. That
should give us some perspective but also recognize that there
is an opportunity for hope. Nevertheless, the disappearance of
just one child can be devastating to a family and community. I
think of Asha Degree, a nine-year-old from Shelby, North
Carolina, who is missing 22 years after her disappearance on
Valentine's Day in 2000. Today, she'd be 31 years old. But then
there is Jashyah Moore, a 14-year-old New Jersey girl who
vanished on October 14 of last year. Luckily, she was found in
New York City one month later; or a 12-year-old Bronx girl who
went missing on January 10 of this year and found days later
doing a Facebook Live on the famous red stairs in Times Square.
These stories of minority girls who disappear may not have made
national headlines, but they did make local headlines. By
acting quickly to report the missing children, law enforcement
authorities, working with the family and the community, were
able to track them down and reunite them with their families.
As we have heard, experts tell us that the first 48 hours
following the disappearance of a child, or an individual are
most critical to finding them and returning them home. So it is
important to explore the role of families, communities, and law
enforcement, as well as the media in helping to find missing
persons. You know, we also need to explore what causes young
adults or juveniles to run away from home to begin with. And by
the way, missing people tend to be young people who are leaving
home, very often by choice. The home environment plays a
significant role here. Juveniles in vulnerable situations may
perceive that fleeing is their best option, even if it is more
dangerous. Domestic violence, child abuse, sexual abuse, drug
addiction, mental illness, and economic hardship can all
contribute to the destabilization of the home.
Public policy is important but can only go so far in
strengthening families. This is where civil society, like
churches, grassroots organizations that are building human
capital and empowering individuals to be good parents and
gainfully employed, productive citizens, can also help.
Education is a key concern for many reasons. One of the
negative impacts of the prolonged pandemic lockdowns and school
closures was that these policies kept more women and girls in
vulnerable home situations. They fell through the cracks. Any
discussion of missing, abused, or exploited women and girls
must also start with the role that good education and in-person
learning provides. In addition, rising crime across our Nation
cannot be ignored. More funding for policing can be helpful in
solving missing person cases and tackling the domestic violence
that drives young people to leave their homes.
So finding all missing persons, but especially girls and
women of color, should be a priority. We can discuss reforms
needed to VAWA, but let's also engage in solutions that prevent
people, particularly young people, from disappearing in the
first place. Thank you, and I look forward to today's
discussion.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Bischoff, you are now recognized for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF JOHN E. BISCHOFF, III, VICE PRESIDENT, MISSING
CHILDREN DIVISION, NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED
CHILDREN
Mr. Bischoff. Good morning, Chairwoman Maloney, Chairman
Raskin, Ranking Member Mace, Congresswoman Kelly, and members
of the subcommittee. My name is John Bischoff, and I'm the vice
president of the Missing Children Division at the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I'll refer to the
National Center by our acronym, NCMEC, throughout today's
hearing. I'm honored to be here today to discuss this crucial
topic.
NCMEC data shows us that black, multiracial, and Native-
American children go missing at disproportionate rates in the
United States, and we are appreciative that the subcommittee is
calling attention to this issue. We would not be able to
fulfill our mission without the generous support of Congress,
and we are grateful for the critical resources we receive to
carry out our work. Since 1984, NCMEC has relied on many
public/private partnerships to find missing children, support
their families, and provide victim-centered services. NCMEC
offers several core services, which include a 24-by-7 call
center, case management support, forensic services, analytical
resources, and peer support for families experiencing a missing
or exploited child. My written testimony provides a more
detailed description about many of our core programs, but for
the sake of time, I'll move on with the topic at hand.
In recent years, NCMEC has seen an exponential increase in
cases involving children missing from state care and a
disproportionate increase in the missing child cases involving
black, multiracial, and Native-American children. The
Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act
requires state agencies to report children missing from state
care to both law enforcement and to NCMEC. This law was
essential in compelling states to address a problem that often
went unnoticed and unaddressed. An analysis of our missing
child data from 2016 to 2020 shows an increase in overall
casework by 38 percent. Of that data, 31 percent of the
children reported missing were black, which is more than double
their representation in the U.S. population. Ten percent of the
children reported missing were multiracial, while they
represent four percent of the U.S. population. An early
analysis of our 2021 data shows, unfortunately, similar trends:
the number of missing black children reported to NCMEC
increased from 31 percent in our four-year analysis to 34
percent in 2021. Black and multiracial children continue to be
disproportionately represented in cases of child sex
trafficking. Black children represent 36 percent, and
multiracial children represent 12 percent. Representing another
area of concern, 60 percent of children missing from care were
girls.
To address these trends, NCMEC has worked to expand our
partnerships and resources to better address how cases of
missing black, indigenous, and native children are reported,
investigated, and resolved. We always strive to serve as a
conveyor for collaboration, bringing together representatives
from civil rights, law enforcement, and child-serving
communities to discuss the disproportionalities we are seeing
within our data. Over the past decade, NCMEC has worked to
engage native, indigenous, and tribal communities to learn how
we can best support them. From 2009 to 2021, over 3,200 Native-
American children were reported missing to NCMEC. Of these
children, almost 2,500 were missing from state care, and 56
percent were female.
In our experience, cases involving Native-American children
go unreported for many reasons. Tribal child welfare entities
do not have the same reporting requirements as state agencies.
We also acknowledge that the lack of reporting is rooted in a
distrust of outside organizations based on historical and
present-day traumas these communities experience. NCMEC
continues to invest in building partnerships with initiatives
like hosting the Northeast Tribal Conference on Child
Victimization with tribal partners and other trial child-
serving organizations. Earlier this year, we created our first-
ever tribal fellowship position to continue to develop and
maintain meaningful relationships with tribal communities.
In closing, NCMEC is an organization centered around hope:
hope that no parent or guardian has to make that dreaded call
that their child is missing, hope that every missing child will
be recovered safely. While hope inspires us to improve, it
takes action to accomplish goals. Action is required to address
the obstacles our black, Native-American, and indigenous
children face when they go missing. NCMEC will always take
action to be the voice for all missing children, especially
those who are marginalized.
On behalf of NCMEC, thank you again for the opportunity to
appear before the subcommittee, and I look forward to your
questions.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. Mr. Wilkinson, you are now recognized
for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF SHAWN WILKINSON, FATHER OF MISSING CHILD
Mr. Wilkinson. My name is Shawn Wilkinson. I thank you for
the opportunity to speak today.
My daughter, Akia Eggleston, eight months pregnant, went
missing in May 2017 and today is still missing. It is with
great displeasure to speak on such a topic as this. However,
the magnitude of this specific topic has become a major part of
our family's being. There is not a day that goes by without
conversation about our daughter/unborn grandson's ongoing case.
How do you wrap your mind around the fact of Akia and baby's
disappearance, domestic violence, and subsequent murder
investigation in the same breath? From the beginning, the
family was in awe of the news and had no clue what to do in
such a matter. Report her missing to the police is the natural
thing to do, right? Let's have a search party, right? Let's
report it to the media, right? These are all things you would
see on a TV show like Law and Order. It is unfortunate that all
of these things don't work exactly like TV shows.
The epidemic of missing persons of color is not a new topic
but one that has been dismissed because society does not care
about us. This is a trickle effect that has come down through
this country's history. Only time has brought us to this point
of actually acknowledging the disparities that exist. As a
retired veteran of the United States Marine Corps, three tours
in Iraq, who gave all to my country with every regard to
protect her with my life, I stand broken at the thought of not
being able to receive immediate help for my daughter when
needed. Also, to include that having PTSD further heightens my
emotional and physical being. This episode has intensified my
ability not to sleep, like others.
Support for black, indigenous, or people of color is needed
now. We are important and deserve the same attention as whites.
I have exhausted everything that has been asked of me to do,
and I still feel like nothing has been accomplished. I try to
understand why her case is so secretive and only want to know
what happened and where she is. Parents are not supposed to
live longer than their children, but we are here to see their
accomplishments in life. That will never happen, and in some
regards, the justice system took almost five years to figure
out what we already knew. The ability to communicate with the
police has been very difficult, to say the least: multiple
calls with no response for weeks, even up to a month; being on
hold for countless minutes at a time just to be told the
detective on the case is not available as he moved to another
office. Talking to several officers at the police desk and then
being hung up on just intensifies who picks up the phone next.
Handing out flyers in the community and beat officers do not
even know who my daughter is when a local district is less than
two miles away from her home. Having to write a congressional
swift to Dutch Ruppersberger, the U.S. representative for
Maryland's 2d congressional District, was the only way to let
people know how we were feeling. Through this, this led to
speaking to the heads of various Baltimore police divisions,
the FBI, and meeting with the ADA of Baltimore City, which has
been an experience that will live with us forever. These
encounters have not been ones that have been good. Again, the
lack of communication has been very stressful.
The ability to communicate with those who have the
authority to provide media coverage was what I thought most
ridiculous. Calling or emailing every news station in Baltimore
to get coverage did not get the case attention. It made no
sense that even after her case was aired on local television in
Baltimore, it only stayed within the confines of the city. It
did not get picked up in neighboring counties. It did not get
state, national, or international coverage. Why is this so? My
thought only: single black woman with child living in low-
income neighborhood that is known for drugs and other issues
where the police only know the community for being an area of
troubled folks who don't care to trust law enforcement anyway.
The slogan here, ``snitches dig ditches,'' is well known. A
community that stays to themselves is not how cases get solved.
Even though within her case an assailant has been arrested,
if you read the letter written used to arrest the individual,
it details a timeline of her last days, possibly her resting
place in a landfill in Virginia that covers acres of land. We
struggle with not knowing what happened to them, where are
they, why they can't be found. Will the evidence in this case
put this person in jail for life? Funding groups that can
assist in helping black, indigenous, or people of color is more
important now than ever. External search teams, to include
dogs, are needed, teams to plaster flyers in local areas are
needed, and extended community activism on the part of local
law enforcement needs to be improved and/or developed.
Education for all is imperative. Moneys toward training
advocates in the areas of media relations, community relations,
cultural relations, and family assistance that a national
standard operating process for missing people be provided
instead of each level or law enforcement having their own, this
would be fundamental in the area of media coverage. In the case
of being proactive, suggested by Akia's aunt, Sanobia Wilson,
an alert for pregnant women that details their status in case
of being missing until found.
I make this comment now that Akia's case is horribly
unfortunate, but the outcome can be different for the next
family. Thanks to Black and Missing for their guidance and
critical understanding of how to get the attention that keeps
Akia's case in the spotlight of law enforcement, media
relations, and all levels of local, state, and Federal
Government. I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you
today. I yield my time.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you so much and thank you so much for
being willing to share your story. Thank you.
Ms. Wilson, you are now recognized for your testimony.
Ms. Wilson. OK.
STATEMENT OF NATALIE WILSON, FOUNDER, BLACK AND MISSING
FOUNDATION
Ms. Wilson. Good morning, Chairman Raskin and members of
the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. I am
Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation,
a nonprofit organization that brings awareness to missing
people of color across the country, and I'm pleased to provide
testimony today on the issue of missing women and girls of
color. My sister-in-law and I started the foundation after
hearing about the case of Tamika Huston, who disappeared in
Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was disheartening to us that
her family struggled to get national media coverage on her
disappearance, yet another missing woman, Natalee Holloway, was
dominating the national headlines.
While missing persons of color made up 40 percent of the
missing population, their stories were rarely told by the
media, and their families often struggled to get sufficient law
enforcement resources to bring their loved one's home. We are
not naive to believe that every missing person's case will get
national coverage. However, missing persons of color cases only
receive seven percent of the national media coverage. And we
can all name Gabby Petito, Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy, and
many other white women who have gone missing, but can any of
you name a person of color that has garnered national media
coverage? We want our missing to be household names, too, but
when we peel back the layers, we find that these families deal
with several stereotypes that ultimately impact the resources
and support they receive, and our missing deserve to be treated
equally.
The three most common stereotypes for missing people of
color are the runaway child, the thug or criminal, and the
undeserving poor. From our interactions with families, we find
that 9 out of 10 children of color reported missing are
classified as a runaway by law enforcement, and if you're
classified as a runaway, you do not get the AMBER Alert or any
media attention at all. There's no urgency to find them, and
this stigma further delays the search and steals precious time
to collect evidence. With missing adults, particularly black
women and girls, they're often not viewed as victims. This
stigma hampers efforts to find them because there's a mindset
that their action or deviant behavior led to their
disappearance. These individuals are viewed as a burden to
society and on our tax dollars, and we must not forget they are
our daughters and mothers. In our nearly 14 years as an
organization, we have seen firsthand how our Nation has become
de-sensitized to the plight of missing people of color who come
from marginalized communities. The perception is when someone
of color is reported missing, no one will miss them, so why
dedicate the resources to finding them. Race shouldn't be a
barrier to media coverage and law enforcement support, and here
are the challenges and possible opportunities for change.
The data available is not robust or reliant to paint a full
picture of the magnitude of the problem. We believe the numbers
are much higher based on the information below. Missing Latinos
are being classified as ``white,'' although all the research
shows that at least 24 percent of them classify themselves as
Afro-Latina, otherwise identifying as black. No one is keeping
track of the whereabouts of those who are homeless, in foster
care, or part of the social services system. In regard to law
enforcement, there is no uniformity in policies across
jurisdictions throughout the Nation. Specifically for
guidelines for reporting a missing person, in some cities there
is no time-frame limit in reporting the person missing. In
other localities, it could be as much as 24 to 48 hours, and we
know that time is of the essence when a person goes missing to
collect those vital clues and evidence that could help bring
them home. The classification of runaways should be prohibited.
When children are reported missing, resources should be
dedicated to find them.
And I want to share some examples of the power of media
coverage. Within 14 minutes of a segment airing on The View, we
received a tip that led directly to a missing child. And I
remember a time when a young woman went missing out of St.
Louis and I called every single news station, and yet there was
no interest in her story. Media coverage is important because
it alerts the community that someone is missing, but it also
adds pressure to law enforcement to add resources to the case,
which increases the chance of a recovery. And earmarking funds
for organizations, such as the Black and Missing Foundation, is
needed to continue support for these families, and we need
stronger sentencing guidelines for perpetrators of sex
trafficking. Black girls are sex trafficked at a higher rate.
They make up 40 percent of sex trafficking victims, and, sadly,
the perception by sex traffickers is that if you traffic a
black girl, you get less jail time.
I will close with some promising news. Last year, HBO
launched a four-part docu-series that provided an insider's
look that families of color face as well as the organization in
getting media coverage and law enforcement assistance and
resources. The black press has been instrumental in providing
visibility for our cases. The Black News Channel has a weekly
missing person series on their platform. We have been invited
to and have had conversations with some of the top national
news outlets, and Access Hollywood has launched a monthly
missing persons series to feature our cases. You know, we need
to care as a Nation because it takes all of us--law
enforcement, the media, and the community--to help bring
awareness to and find our missing.
Thank you.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you so much for your testimony.
I now recognize Chairman Raskin for five minutes for
questions.
Mr. Raskin. Madam Chair, thank you so much. I want to thank
all the witnesses for this extraordinary and riveting
testimony. And let me start, Ms. Wilson, with you. You made a
significant point at the end there where you said that media
coverage can actually drive police resources and the intensity
of investigation. And you pointed out that there are dramatic
differences in the media's propensity to cover cases of missing
women who may be white versus missing women who may be African
American or other people color. Can you just elaborate on that
point a little bit and explain how the presence of media
coverage will drive police resources and the absence of media
coverage will have a dampening effect on police attention to a
missing person case?
Ms. Wilson. Right. So, we have seen that media coverage
really adds traction to the case where law enforcement, they
don't want to be embarrassed. They don't want to be called out
by the community, so they then add resources to the case. I'll
give you an example. Derrick Butler out of the District of
Columbia, his sister was missing, and he utilized his media
contacts. And he, you know, talked to the media quite
frequently, and this, you know, caused law enforcement to add
additional resources to the case. But we also have to look at
law enforcement as the first line or the gatekeepers in getting
that media coverage. So normally, they are the ones who would
reach out to the local stations asking them to profile or to
feature that missing person. So, again, media coverage is very
vital because it alerts the community that someone is missing,
and we are not picking on the media or law enforcement. We all
have a responsibility. But if the community isn't aware that
someone is missing, then they are not looking for them, and
they normally hear about these cases through the media. And we
have been using social media as well because we cannot wait for
any news cycle, and we need to get this information out
instantaneously to the best audience.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. Thank you for that answer. Ms.
Foster, thank you for your testimony. I am terribly sorry for
your loss, and I commend you for your leadership and your
advocacy. You know, if democracy means anything, it is that the
lives of all the people, in a moral sense, have to be treated
equally by the government. And you said something powerful in
your testimony about how you felt a great sense of injustice
after your kids were kidnapped and after you lost your
daughter, and I wonder if you would just expand upon that a
bit. What ingredients in the legal system and in the political
atmosphere created a new a sense of injustice about what had
taken place?
[No response.]
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Foster?
Ms. Foster. There we go. Can you hear me now?
Mr. Raskin. I got you now, yes.
Ms. Foster. OK. I felt a great injustice. Because of the
death of my daughter, I saw that there were different rules
being on the reservation, then off, and that it took her death
to start something, and that the commitment for safety on the
reservation wasn't as strong as I felt that it should be. So
through that, I felt that there was an injustice because we
lacked a lot of the infrastructure that people have off of a
reservation. If my daughter had been abducted and taken off the
reservation, there would have been a quicker response to start
searching for her and start an investigation, and the things
that I needed, the resources that I needed, would have been
available for her. And, unfortunately, since the events
happened on the reservation, the resources that I needed
weren't available for her to start the search.
Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you for making that really powerful
point, and you experienced it as an injustice, and it was an
injustice. And the differential investment of law enforcement
and police resources in the Native-American communities, on the
reservations, versus what is taking place outside is a matter
of basic injustice and justice. And I want to thank you for
trying to make a bad situation better by converting your pain
into activism to make sure that future families and parents
don't go through the nightmare that you have experienced.
So I want to thank you and all of the witnesses for their
activism and for their public advocacy today, and I yield back
to you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Chairman Raskin. I would now like to
recognize the ranking member for five minutes for questions.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, Chairwoman Kelly. And, first of all, I
want to thank everyone for their testimony today. Mr.
Wilkinson, thank you for serving our country. Listening to your
testimony and Ms. Foster's testimony this morning, as a mom, it
is very difficult to hear. And I wish everyone in the House of
Representatives was here today to hear your story, and I wish
those stories were told to the national press because there is
great disparity in the national media in how black women and
girls are covered when they are missing versus not. And this is
a very educational hearing today, and I wish everybody could
hear how heartbreaking your stories are of your daughters. So I
want to say thank you.
My first question goes to Ms. Onwuka. Can you explain why
you believe human traffickers and other criminals frequently
target women of women and girls of color?
Ms. Onwuka. Thank you for your question, Ranking Member
Mace. You know, human traffickers, I think, you know, these
individuals who profit off of the bodies of girls and women,
they see vulnerable women, particularly black minority women,
as an easy target. Many of them may be coming from homes, not
all of them, but maybe there are vulnerabilities in their
backgrounds. They are coming from places where maybe they
themselves are either viewing abuse, they are victims of abuse,
they are exposed to it, they may be raped themselves, and so it
is easy to profit off of individuals like that. And I think
that is a fantastic opportunity for our law enforcement and our
criminal justice system to beef up, as one of the other
panelists mentioned earlier, the penalties for this kind of
behavior.
Ms. Mace. And then in terms of the last two years in the
COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of schools have shut down. Children
are at home. Women are at home. Women have had to leave their
jobs. How has COVID-19 and these sorts of shutdowns affected
women and girls of color? Has it exacerbated the situation and
their vulnerabilities? Has it made them a greater target for
human and sex trafficking because of that?
Ms. Onwuka. Absolutely. So I teased it a little bit in my
opening comments, just talking about pandemic-related
educational and economic disruptions. An interesting study by
the Council on Criminal Justice found that the imposition of
lockdowns early in the pandemic--you are talking about March
and April--led to an eight-percent increase in domestic
violence. Another study analyzing over 39 children found that
physical abuse of school-aged kids tripled between March and
September 2020. What is going on here is that schools are
opportunities, are places where people who care about our
children, they can catch a child who is in a vulnerable place.
And, unfortunately, because of those prolonged, protracted
school closures--in particular, this is school-aged kids'
closures because we don't see in some of the data the same
impact on toddlers, on young kids who are not in public
schools, for example--but those school-age kids, that is where,
I think, a lot of them fell between the cracks. There is plenty
of data and information about the learning loss that we have
seen, the emotional toll that these pandemic closures have had.
And so I think it is also interesting that we are seeing the
impact on children, on women, on vulnerable populations when it
comes to domestic violence during the pandemic.
Ms. Mace. How do we reduce victimization of, specifically,
women and girls of color? How do we move forward and do what is
right by these victims?
Ms. Onwuka. It is complex. I have heard that word mentioned
before. When it comes to those who are experiencing violence,
No. 1, education. I talked about it earlier. According to the
CDC, attachment to school is a factor that protects a young
person against dating violence, for example. So making sure
that women, young girls, teenagers are going to school, in-
person learning. It is not just about education, as important
as that it is. It is about ensuring they don't fall through the
cracks. I mean, I think there is also a role for civil society
to play. There are organizations, grassroot organizations, that
are in neighborhoods building strong families, investing time
being mentors to young people who could potentially, you know,
not just fall through the cracks, but find themselves in
criminal enterprises by no choice of their own, sometimes by
choices of their own thinking that they are leaving for a
better life. And so civil society plays a role there.
And I do think that when you talk about law enforcement,
there has to be a place where our law enforcement has the
resources, they need to really look for these cases. And it is
sad that we have so many cases that, I think, law enforcement
doesn't always take it seriously. But I think if you have
special domestic violence training where law enforcement agents
are spending time understanding what is going on in the
household, there is evidence to suggest that that kind of
training is helpful in getting some sort of help to victims and
ensuring that they don't continue to be victimized.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, and our time is up. I yield back.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. I would now like to recognize the
chair of the full committee, Chairwoman Maloney.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you so much, Robin Kelly. Before
we can grapple with the epidemic of missing and murdered women
of color, we need to get our arms around the scope of the
problem that is currently impossible because of gaps in Federal
data collection. As I noted my opening statement, existing
Federal data excludes missing Hispanic and Latino women and
girls altogether. Mr. Bischoff, your organization has really
done the best job in collecting data on missing girls by racial
background, including Hispanic and Latino girls. I would like
to put a graph of the data you have collected up on the screen.
[Chart.]
Chairwoman Maloney. And can you tell us about the epidemic
of missing girls, what we are not capturing in governmental
data?
Mr. Bischoff. Thank you, Congresswoman Maloney. We actually
do capture Hispanic/Latino information within our data. I know
that varies across many organizations depending on what they
are going to collect. We do have that. Just to give you the
number and back to that chart, about 19.5 percent of our cases
were Hispanic/Latino. It kind of goes in trend with that chart
on certainly a population that very much needs services and
assistance as well. We recognize that through our work. About
half of our case managers are Spanish speakers. We have
language line services to communicate in 230 different
languages, and a majority of our publications are written in
both English and Spanish to reach out to that community as well
and engage with our resources.
Chairwoman Maloney. OK. I want to ask you; do you have any
data on what happens to these missing girls and women? Do they
go into sex trafficking? Are they murdered? What happens? Do
you track what happens or, if someone is found, the outcomes? I
know you work on it. Do you capture what happens?
Mr. Bischoff. Yes, ma'am, we do, but, honestly, in our area
in working with social service children in care, when they are
recovered, that is one of the gap areas that we constantly are
working to improve. At times, we don't receive exactly what the
recovery information was, although our case managers work daily
to try and receive it because we know that information is
valuable, valuable for situations like this, valuable to go
into making the system better. We work to pull that information
as best we can, but, unfortunately, it is either not provided
to us always or not available at the time when we are talking
with social workers at the time the recovery is taking place.
We do have quite a bit of data in that area, though, when it
relates to missing, murdered, child sex trafficking. We have
got an entire team dedicated to the issue of child sex
trafficking, and they do amazing work, but we are happy to
have--yes, ma'am?
Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Bischoff, what percentage goes into
sex trafficking? And congratulations on the work that you have
done. You have filled in gaps where the government has not
been. How many have gone into sex trafficking would you
estimate or does your organization believe are sex trafficked,
and how many are kidnapped?
Mr. Bischoff. According to our 2021 data, about 1 in 6 were
likely victims of sex trafficking. When our case managers are
working the case, they are showing indicators. That is where
the ``suspected'' comes from. There are indicators saying
something else is going on here with this child in care. So 1
in 6, I believe, is the number that you are looking for when it
comes to child sex trafficking.
Chairwoman Maloney. And what about kidnapping young people?
What percentage is kidnapped?
Mr. Bischoff. So non-family abductions is about one percent
of our data. What many of us were raised on as far as standing
on the street corner and being abducted, that still very much
happens today but certainly not to the degree that it did back
in the 1980's and 1990's. However, one area that we are
beginning to very much focus on is online enticement.
Chairwoman Maloney. Wow.
Mr. Bischoff. The case may look like----
Chairwoman Maloney. My time is almost up.
Mr. Bischoff. I am sorry. Yes, ma'am.
Chairwoman Maloney. I just want to ask what steps can
Congress take to help with the data gaps, or do you think your
group can handle it? And what can we do to protect women and
girls?
Mr. Bischoff. The U.S. Congress took an important step with
the passing of the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening
Families Act, and, more recently, the Families First Prevention
Services Act. However, there are gaps. That legislation
requires a report to us. It doesn't outline the information
that needs to be provided, such as a photo, or recovery
information, or ongoing collaboration. Additionally, the need
for some type of centralized reporting. Thankfully, this is
already included in the most recent version of the Frederick
Douglass Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act,
which we had the chance to provide input to. So thank you very
much for that.
Chairwoman Maloney. OK. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. And now I will recognize myself for
five minutes. And, again, I want to thank Ms. Foster and Mr.
Wilkinson for sharing your stories.
The Senate has recently announced a compromise to
reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, which passed the
House last year. Ms. Charley, I would like to start with you.
The VAWA reauthorization compromise includes closing
jurisdictional gaps on tribal lands. What would this mean for
the communities you help serve?
Ms. Charley. Thank you for that question. Right now, the
majority of tribes throughout the United States are not able to
prosecute non-native offenders. What that means is someone who
is not tribal can come onto tribal land, commit these crimes,
and not be held accountable through the tribal judicial system.
What the new iteration of VAWA does is allow tribes to have
expansive jurisdiction on some of these issues, including
trafficking, and stalking, and sexual violence. It is through
the Violence Against Women Act and the Tribal Law and Order Act
that we seek justice for our own communities.
Ms. Kelly. And it also includes housing protection, safe
housing, and economic security provisions for survivors. So how
might these provisions help women leave their abusive partners
before the average 7th attempt to leave?
Ms. Charley. Sure. So we know that women and victims of
violence are able to leave their circumstances when they have
resources, when they are well resourced. So all of these
provisions within the Violence Against Women Act go to directly
support our survivors with wraparound services.
Ms. Kelly. The Ashanti Alert Act was passed in 2018 to
close the loophole for young persons over the age of 17, young
missing persons who are too old to have an AMBER Alert issued.
In the HBO documentary, Black and Missing, there were several
heartbreaking moments when family members were forced to wait a
certain amount of time before a missing person alert could go
out. Sometimes families were told their loved one was not
covered by existing alert provisions, such as if they are
classified as a runaway and not a missing person. Ms. Wilson,
you touched on this in your opening statement. Why is it that
black girls and other girls of color are more frequently
classified as runaways than missing persons?
Ms. Wilson. Thank you for that question. We believe that
they are classified as runaways because their lives don't seem
to matter as valuable as others, and we are trying to change
that narrative. To know that 9 out of 10 young women or girls
that are reported missing are classified as a runaway is really
an injustice to them and their families. And because of that,
they are not getting the AMBER Alert, and they are not getting
any media coverage at all. And you saw Kennedy High's case in
the docu-series where she was actually a victim of sex
trafficking, but law enforcement classified her as a runaway.
Ms. Kelly. And if you can elaborate on why such alerts are
crucial to the search for a missing person and what impacts
their effectiveness.
Ms. Wilson. OK. Well, time is of the essence. If we can get
this information out through alerts instantaneously, then the
public can be involved and be vigilant in searching for the
missing loved one. As time goes off, valuable clues are lost,
and it becomes harder and harder to find that missing
individual.
Ms. Kelly. Finally, I would like to ask about my Protect
Black Women and Girls Act. My bill would establish an
interagency task force that would, first, examine the
conditions and experiences of black women and girls in
education, economic development, healthcare, labor and
employment, housing justice, and civil rights. Second, it would
promote community-based methods for mitigating and addressing
harm and ensuring accountability; and third, study societal
effects on black women and girls. Ms. Wilson, what would you
hope to see come out of this interagency task force, and where
do you think it should start?
Ms. Wilson. Well, it can start in so many places. There are
so many issues or reasons why people of color reported missing
are going missing: economics and, you know, housing. There are
so many systemic issues. I think that we can just pick one
really and just delve deeper into it, but it is also about
education and having the resources needed within our community
so that we can protect those that are most vulnerable.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. And, Mr. Bischoff, I would ask you to
answer as quickly as possible.
Mr. Bischoff. I am sorry, ma'am. Can you please repeat the
question one more time?
Ms. Kelly. What do you hope to see come out of the
interagency task force, and where do you think it should start?
Mr. Bischoff. The solving of missing child cases,
specifically, it all has to deal with collaboration. Any time
we can have legislation go forward where there is open
collaboration between the key components to focus on finding
the missing child, once we accomplish that and we have the
right people talking, we have good results in the end, most
often.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. My time is up, and I would like to
recognize Mr. Mfume.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to
thank you also for your work on the bill that you just
mentioned that is before the U.S. Congress on missing girls and
women. It is absolutely critical that this legislation gets
passed, and I appreciate your leadership and your sponsorship
in that regard. I also want to thank Chairman Raskin. Jamie,
you know we are all unified in wishing you a quick recovery and
having you back here again but thank you as the chair of this
subcommittee for helping to convene us so that we could have
this discussion today. And, of course, Chairwoman Maloney,
thank you as chair of the full committee.
Like everyone else, my heart goes out to the witnesses, to
those who have testified, to those who have lost family
members. This whole notion of black, brown, multiracial,
indigenous girls, women, and children is an issue that I think
that the American public does not understand the full scope,
width, and breadth of. We hear about it, we are shocked, it
haunts us, and then the next day in the news cycle there is
another story, but not the story about the missing person, a
story about something else, and we go on. And, again, that
magnitude and that scope is not particularly captured.
As a father and a grandfather, I have absolutely no idea,
Ms. Foster or Mr. Wilkinson, what either of you have gone
through. You know, we try, as those not affected, to remember
or to put ourselves in your shoes, and we think we can, but,
honestly, we really cannot. We have no idea. And for me, it was
always my worst nightmare watching my own sons grow up,
believing one day that something could happen to them, or my
granddaughters, that something could, in fact, happen to them.
We thought, many of us when we were shocked in 1979 with
the Atlanta child murders that nothing like this could happen
in our country. And they weren't just child murders. They were
children who were missing, also who were not reported. It was a
horrible set of events like the events that we stumble onto in
the news every now and then where some deranged person has
decided to go out onto the streets and to kill women of the
streets, and to dismember them, and to move on, and many of
them had multiple victims. And oftentimes we don't find out
about it until it is too late, way, way down the road. So I
think those sort of disappearances and those sort of murders
call our attention, I think, back to why this is so very
important.
And, Mr. Wilkinson, in your case, believe me, I first heard
about this in 2017. I saw the appearance that you did two years
later on The View with respect to your daughter, Akia. I know
that four weeks ago, the state's attorney in the city made an
arrest. Like you, I am wondering also if there is enough
evidence there for a conviction. And, you know, I don't want to
say it was a blessing, but it is certainly an opportunity for
me. I wasn't in the Congress in 2017. As you know, my
predecessor, Elijah, was here, and I am just glad to be here
now to be able to followup on this. Years ago, when, as a
Member of Congress in 1994, we passed the Violence Against
Women Act, many of us thought after having voted for that, that
we had taken a giant step forward, and we had. The fact that it
is still unauthorized or not reauthorized for this year pains
me, and I think it pains a lot of other people.
So I do have to say something about the news media here,
and I don't expect any of you to indict them, but, you know, I
have real problems with what I don't see in the news. Years
ago, when I was a kid, there were three stations, you know. If
you didn't get it there, you didn't get it, but now we that
have a plethora of stations, dozens and dozens reporting the
news, and a news cycle. It is not just 9 to 5, but 24 hours. I
can't for the life of me understand why situations of missing
women and missing children are not more reported in all of that
time block than they are now. And I agree with the witnesses
that that sort of reporting puts pressure back on local
officials to do all that they can and to use their resources.
And so if newsrooms, and news directors, and assignment
editors, and others hear us, the plea today is please use your
resources to help publicize these cases that are happening all
over the country against people who are defenseless so that
your pressure on law enforcement and others, but particularly
making the public aware, will go a long way to help us getting
to where we need to be.
And law enforcement, I believe, like you have said and I am
going to repeat since I am out of time now, that there has got
to be a prioritization of cases, that there has got to be a
shorter response time, that there has got to be an effort, a
deliberate, intentional effort, in the first 48 hours to use
all available resources at your disposal to be able to put
pressure on the perpetrators and to help push us toward solving
many of these crimes.
Madam Chair, I would yield back. I didn't have questions,
but I had a comment, and I appreciate the opportunity to be
able to express it.
Ms. Norton. [Presiding.] The gentleman yields back, and
those were important comments that we needed to hear.
My question is for Ms. Foster. First, I want to thank you
so much for your presence at this hearing and to let you know
that you have all of our sympathies. It is hard for any of us
to imagine what you have been going through, so I am going to
ask you some questions about your experience which will
enlighten us and make us know what we should do. And I ask you
to answer as much or as little as you feel comfortable with.
Ms. Foster, what happened when you realized that your daughter
was missing, especially when you spoke to law enforcement? Did
they give you any guidance about what you were supposed to do
as a family member with someone missing? What happened first
when you realized she was missing, and what was the reaction or
the guidance of law enforcement?
Ms. Foster. Well, the first thing that I imagined was
children missing or kidnapping, in my mind, and it sounds like
something that you would hear on the news or see in a movie,
but those headlines in my mind became reality on May 2, 2016.
And I endured the longest hours of my life waiting, hoping, and
praying for my children, for their safe return. I was in shock,
and I reached out to law enforcement, and the communication
between law enforcement and myself was little to none. And
trying to get word out that an abduction had occurred became
difficult because the resources on the reservation were none,
and so I had to reach out to social media on Facebook and make
a report or post that my children had been abducted.
Ms. Norton. It must have been especially hard trying to
navigate the jurisdictional issues between tribal enforcement
and local area enforcement. How did that impact your case?
Ms. Foster. It impacted it a lot because when I needed help
with the resources, they weren't available for my family on the
reservation. The Navajo Nation had been given twice the
opportunity to implement an AMBER Alert system, and they failed
to do so, so that caused a strain on the search for a quick
search for my children when we put that first word out to law
enforcement. I felt like that the commitment for public safety
on the reservation wasn't there, and I was in a cry for help at
that time when I needed help and there was none.
Ms. Norton. Well, now, how did the media treat your case?
Did Ashlynne get any attention from the media either in print
or on television?
Ms. Foster. Yes. I was very grateful for the response that
I received from social media. Family and friends reached out
and shared my message, and they reached out to law enforcement
off reservation. They called 9-1-1. We do have 9-1-1 calls that
are from law enforcement off reservation that we had an
emergency and that we needed help, we had missing children.
Unfortunately, due to jurisdictional laws, outside agencies
were not able to help us until they received that OK from law
enforcement on reservation. And, unfortunately, we didn't
receive that help until 12 hours after the abduction of my
children.
Ms. Norton. Finally, have you considered any laws that
might be changed or added that could have been of assistance to
you?
Ms. Foster. At the time, I think when you are a parent and
this kind of a shock hits you, it is something that we never
ever hoped that we would have to experience, and myself, like
many other families, were not prepared for the events that had
unfolded so suddenly. And I thought of the need for public
safety, and I felt that I needed to have the justice system
redone to make it a safer place for our communities. We lacked
an AMBER Alert on Indian Country, and I voiced my concern and
started grassroots efforts to get one established. And I just
felt a great need to voice my concerns for the immediate
problems that we face on indigenous country that affect our
women and girls.
Ms. Norton. Oh my goodness. Thank you for being so open and
helpful to this committee.
The next five minutes to Representative Ocasio-Cortez.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much, and thank you to all
of our witnesses here today for shedding light on such an
important issue. We have a crisis of missing and murdered
indigenous and black women in the United States. Today I want
to discuss part of this crisis that is all too often overlooked
but whose evidence shows that there is a very meaningful
connection here: the correlation between fossil fuel extraction
sites and abductions and murders of indigenous women across the
United States. We are very lucky to have Ms. Angel Charley here
with us today to start that conversation.
Ms. Charley let's start at the top. Can you draw a brief
and introductory picture of how fossil fuel extraction efforts
expose indigenous women to physical and often sexual violence?
Why is it that oil, gas, and fossil fuel extraction sites have
such a high correlation of violence and abduction against
native women?
Ms. Charley. Thank you for that question. The fossil fuel
industry creates man camps or temporary settlements that often
exist right outside the borderlands of indigenous communities.
As I stated earlier, many tribes do not have tribal
jurisdiction over non-native offenders, which a majority of
these oil workers are. We know that when these man camps or
temporary establishments are created, that there is an increase
in violence and, particularly, sexual violence against our
native women.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So when there is an in fossil fuel
extraction-sites that is placed on a reservation, and those oil
company workers go to the reservation and have that site, if
they commit a crime and commit violence against indigenous
women, you are saying that they essentially escape jurisdiction
from having a clear path to accountability because of where
these sites are happening. Is that correct?
Ms. Charley. That is correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Wow. Ms. Charley, am I right to
understand that companies building these oil pipelines are
often ruthless in their resistance against protesters and
sometimes even encouraging violence against them?
Ms. Charley. That is correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And we are seeing some of this getting
backed up with state legislatures, especially after Standing
Rock and other places, authorizing and almost legalizing the
use of violence against fossil fuel protesters, correct?
Ms. Charley. That is correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And is it correct that these companies
often work directly with local police departments to subdue
protests in this matter, sometimes going so far as to pay local
police departments directly for their overtime?
Ms. Charley. Yes.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So what we are seeing here is that local
police departments on fossil fuel extraction-sites that are
placed strategically on reservations and native lands, those
fossil fuel companies pay local police departments to protect
their extraction-sites, even when workers are raping and
murdering indigenous women?
Ms. Charley. Yes.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Can you tell us how this collaboration
between law enforcement and fossil fuel companies puts
indigenous women, in particular, at heightened risk of
abduction and murder?
Ms. Charley. This is a continuation of state violence
against indigenous women.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Ms. Charley. I know this is a
very difficult topic to discuss, and I thank you so much for
your testimony today, and I think what we see here is that the
data speaks for itself. Just this February, pipeline workers
associated with the development of Line 3 were arrested for sex
trafficking. The ACLU of North Dakota also reported that 411
missing, murdered, and indigenous people were kidnapped or
murdered in states affiliated with pipeline projects, and that
10 percent of these cases occurred in counties where the
Keystone Pipeline alone is proposed to be built.
Ms. Charley, in your testimony, you stated that the root
inaction that families face is the devaluation of indigenous
lives since the onset of colonization, so I want to end by
turning it over to you. What would you say is the most
important thing that can be done now to address the problem of
missing and murdered indigenous women?
Ms. Charley. Tribal nations need to be able to fully
prosecute the crimes which happen in our communities. We need
VAWA legislation passed. We need extractive industries out of
our communities. We know that what happens to our land happens
to our women and happens to our bodies. It is an injustice on
the part of the U.S. Government to have these institutions
unregulated in our communities.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you very much.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much for those important
questions and the responses. I recognize myself for five
minutes.
Every person who goes missing is a tragedy, but there is a
notable difference in the way law enforcement tends to treat
white women and women of color. This question is for Ms.
Wilson. Black and brown women are often viewed as somehow
responsible for their situations while white women are viewed
as vulnerable victims. For example, disappearances of black and
brown adults are frequently associated with criminal activity,
and black and brown kids are seen as runaways. So, Ms. Wilson,
why, in your view, are black women and girls treated so
differently by law enforcement, and how does this disparate
treatment affect black communities? First, why are they treated
differently, then how does that kind of disparate treatment
affect black communities and the disproportionate rates we see
of missing black and brown girls?
Ms. Wilson. Well, thank you for that question. We notice,
and we hear this from families all the time, that black and
brown girls are not seen as victims, and, oftentimes, they are
adultified. So the perception is that whatever happens to them,
they deserve it, and because they come from a poor or
impoverished, marginalized community, that sort of deviant
behavior is acceptable, and that is what happens there. And the
Black and Missing Foundation, we are trying to change that
narrative, that these are mothers, and daughters, and sisters,
and grandparents that are missing at an alarming rate. And,
again, classifying a missing person or a child as a runaway,
you know, no one seems to care because they are getting what
they deserve because they left home voluntarily, but we really
need to look at the underlying issues. Why are these children,
these girls leaving home? What is happening in the home, and,
ultimately, what are they running away to because we know that
many of them are lured into sex trafficking.
Ms. Norton. Oh my. Mr. Wilkinson, you have my sympathies as
well for the loss of your daughter. I can't say enough about
that. And I know this is tough, but I would like to ask about
your experience with law enforcement when she went missing. How
did law enforcement treat your daughter's case?
Mr. Wilkinson. From the onset of my daughter's case, it
seemed to me to be joking, not saying that they were not doing
their jobs. However, in the unfortunate demise of my daughter,
her case was not reported until four days later after she was
expected to have gone missing, which added an additional trauma
and maybe additional support in finding her.
Ms. Norton. How come it took four days?
Mr. Wilkinson. She wasn't reported missing until four days
after she was suspected of gone missing by her family. She went
missing on May 3, but she wasn't reported missing until May 7
because she wasn't able to be contacted, but it wasn't until
her baby shower when she didn't show up that she was reported
missing. But then again, and even after she was reported
missing, the police seemingly didn't get involved until a month
later when her child--her unborn son is what we believe now--
was not found to be born in any hospital. And that is when the
Baltimore City Police Department, they actually calculated that
foul play had been involved in her missing status. So four days
on top of a month calculated, that 48 hours or 72 reporting
period was already out the window.
The lack of judgment, again, as Ms. Wilson has already
stated, that our loved ones are considered runaways was thrown
at us as well. So people of color are getting it on both sides
of the fence, law enforcement and judicial system. And in this
case, in my daughter's case, a five-year stint to find her, to
find the person that did this to her, has just exacerbated our
frustrations.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Wilkinson, for being so open
with us.
I recognize Mr. Mfume for five minutes.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you again, Madam Chair. Mr. Wilkinson, I
don't want to belabor this. I realize that both with you and
Ms. Foster, reliving these moments and memories is not the best
thing, but I have to tell you that I am really deeply troubled
by the fact that your daughter, Akia--and I want to call her
name and I hope that others continue to call her name--didn't
show up for her own baby shower. There is a report that she is
missing, and law enforcement doesn't take it seriously until 30
days or so after that because she was pregnant and because
there was no proof of a baby being born in a hospital in a
certain radius. Then it became, I am led to believe, something
that they were involved in. Is that right?
Mr. Wilkinson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mfume. OK. This is why I said earlier that this hearing
is so very important because we who are here, and those of you
who are there, and the others who are participating and
watching, we have got to keep reminding people again of the
breadth and the scope of this problem in our country. Ms.
Charley, I would like to ask if you would share with the
committee any similarities or any differences that your
coalition has identified in the media's treatment of missing
indigenous women.
Ms. Charley. Thank you for that question. In my testimony
earlier, I shared the experience of a mother who I met with
last week. Her daughter is actively missing. She is receiving
phone calls weekly from the investigating detective. What she
continues to do is get out in public and advocate for herself
at rallies. It is communities. The missing and murdered
indigenous women crisis is a grassroots movement, meaning
people are in the streets marching. They are holding their own
rallies or pulling together media efforts on our own, and this
is where the stories are told. Media is not coming to our
communities and asking these questions. We are seeking these
opportunities and demanding them.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you. And Madam Chair, in the time left, I
would like to ask Mr. Bischoff if he would take a moment to
comment on this whole issue of family and peer support for
families that are experiencing missing or exploited children.
And if you could talk a bit about what the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children is doing or offering in that
regard, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Bischoff. Yes, sir. Thank you and thank you for the
question. We have an entire Family Advocacy Division who works
with the parents, with the family of the missing child, and
working to ensure that the environment that the child is
returned home to hopefully safely, hopefully quickly, is
appropriate and the family is set up for reunification,
especially in the time of long-term missing child cases. Some
of our cases that our Family Advocacy Division is working to
support are, at times, long-term missing children where there
has been a period of time between the last time the family had
seen the child and today. So they work with the family to
ensure that the family has the right things to say and the
right support services to carry on.
Another area that we have is our Team Hope, which is a
group of volunteers, parents who have suffered either formally
or currently a missing or an exploited child, and they engage
with the family as well because they can speak on the same
level. They know the emotions. They know the strains that the
family is going through, and they can help the family work
through these emotions, once again, to keep the family together
because the family is going to be the most important, second to
the child, to make sure that the child returns to a good
environment and the family stays together.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much, Mr. Bischoff. Madam Chair,
I am just sitting here kind of frustrated having served in this
body for 10 years and then leaving for 24 and coming back and
seeing that so many of the issues that plagued this Congress in
this country are still with us and unresolved. So, again, I
want to commend Chairman Raskin and all the members of this
subcommittee who are absolutely devoted to trying to find a way
to make sure that that sort of thing is not replicated or
duplicated 10, 15, 20 years down the road by pushing this
Congress to do whatever we can in our power after hearing this
testimony to make real changes. I yield back. Thank you very
much.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Mfume, and thank you for that
historical perspective as well.
Finally, I want to recognize Mr. Raskin to close out of
this hearing for his five minutes.
Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you very much, Congresswoman
Norton, and, Congressman Mfume, thank you for those very
stirring and moving words that you just gave us, both on the
historical perspective, as Ms. Norton says, but also about what
this means to fathers, and mothers, and families. Mr.
Wilkinson's testimony is absolutely searing as is Ms. Foster's,
and it is an excruciating thing to contemplate from the
standpoint of mothers, and fathers, and brothers, and sisters,
and other family members.
But Mr. Mfume reminds us that, you know, this is not like a
peripheral issue. It is so often treated as kind of a marginal
thing. It is like a detail, and this is why we have organized
political society. You know, if you read the social contract
philosophers, like Hobbes, and Locke, and Rousseau, the whole
idea is that we enter into a civil society because our bodies,
our property, our families will be safer and more secure than
we would be just out in a state of nature. And yet the social
contract is not working if we are losing hundreds of thousands
of women and girls every year, and if that has a
disproportionate effect on minority communities, then it is
that much more of a rupture of the basic social contract. If
Mr. Wilkinson is still with us, I just wanted to ask him one
question, which is, does he see grounds for optimism in terms
of society, those of us in government, addressing this problem
meaningfully.
Mr. Wilkinson. I do. However, my concern is that it is not
happening fast enough. The resources that are needed are not
being provided fast enough, that the people on this panel are
not seeing the results fast enough, that our black and
indigenous people or women of color are being violated faster
than the resolution can be presented to it. So yes, but no in
the same statement.
Mr. Raskin. All right. Well, we will take that with some
cautious optimism that things are moving the right direction
but far too slowly, and we all need to redouble our efforts
both to galvanize national attention to the problem and then to
make these legislative changes we have been talking about
today. I thank you, Ms. Norton--Madam Chair--for filling in
there, and I thank all of our witnesses today for participating
in a really important hearing. I yield back.
Ms. Norton. Well, thank you, Chairman Raskin. All of us are
hoping for you. You are looking good, so I think that is a good
sign, at least from here.
In closing, I want to thank our panelists for their very
important remarks. They have been very helpful to the
committee. I want to commend my colleagues for their
participation and their important questions in this
conversation.
With that and without objection, all members will have five
legislative days within which to submit additional written
questions for the witnesses to the chair, which will be
forwarded to the witnesses for their response. I ask our
witnesses to please respond as quickly as possible.
Ms. Norton. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:29 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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