[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 26 (Thursday, March 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      MISSION TO FIND THE MISSING

 Mr. DURENBERGER. Mr. President, an article appeared in the 
Washington Post today about grassroots organizations that have sprung 
up to search for missing children and prevent child abductions. The 
article caught my eye because it was accompanied by a picture of a dear 
friend of mine--a friend that I feel I know very well even though I 
have never had the privilege of meeting him.
  Three weeks ago today, my friend turned 16 years old. His name is 
Jacob Wetterling, and he was abducted from St. Joseph, MN, by an armed 
stranger when he was 11 years old. No one has heard from Jacob or his 
abductor since that day. But we all continue to hope and pray for 
Jacob's safe return to us.
  Jacob's parents, Jerry and Patty Wetterling, have been incredible 
examples of the power of hope. They labored to set up the Jacob 
Wetterling Foundation, an organization dedicated to preventing and 
responding to child abductions. Patty spends countless hours traveling 
to speak to kids and adults about child protection. Her advocacy for 
kids has been felt throughout Minnesota and nationwide.
  Patty's efforts to pass a State child protection law in Minnesota led 
me to introduce Federal legislation in 1991, which I named the Jacob 
Wetterling bill. This legislation would require those convicted of a 
sexual offense against a child to register a current address with law 
enforcement officials, for a period of 10 years after being released.
  This legislation was passed in 1991, and again in 1993, as a 
provision in the Senate crime bill. It was also passed at the end of 
last year by the House of Representatives as a separate bill. Since 
both the House and Senate have now overwhelmingly spoken their support, 
I hope that we can move toward swift enactment of the Jacob Wetterling 
bill.
  Mr. President, I ask that the article that appeared in the Post this 
morning be printed at the conclusion of my remarks.
  Anyone with information about Jacob's case, or any other missing 
child, should contact the Jacob Wetterling Foundation at 1-800-325-
HOPE. May we all keep hope alive in our hearts for Jacob and America's 
kids.
  The article follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 10, 1994]

      Grass-Roots Crusaders Embrace a Mission To Find the Missing

               (By Christine Spolar and Barbara Vobejda)

       Less than 10 hours after Polly Klass was dragged from her 
     home last October, the people of Petaluma, Calif., were 
     already learning how to make the 12-year-old girl the 
     nation's most wanted child.
       As a radio station blared the news that she had been 
     abducted--taken from her bedroom by a knife-wielding 
     stranger--neighbors drove to the police station, to her 
     school and to a local printer's office to offer their help. 
     By mid-morning, hundreds of posters were printed and dozens 
     of people had abandoned their Saturday chores to distribute 
     them.
       Before a full day had passed, national groups concerned 
     with missing children sent representatives. By the next day, 
     a volunteer search troop had spread across the little 
     Northern California town and into the foothills of Sonoma 
     County, By midweek, volunteers began cutting back on their 
     work hours to spend time at a make-shift research center, to 
     mail out fliers and punch information into computer bulletin 
     boards.
       ``None of us had ever done anything like this before,'' 
     said Leslie Ronsheimer, who worked in a local dental office 
     and called patients she knew to help. ``We didn't always know 
     what we were doing--but we kept calling and people kept 
     giving.''
       This frenzy of activity embodied the most sophisticated of 
     what has become a common response in child abductions, a 
     grass-roots crusade dedicated to one cause: finding the 
     missing child. No longer do parents and neighbors wait 
     patiently for police to bring home news. Now, dozens of times 
     a year when a child is kidnapped, a neighborhood enterprise 
     springs to life, blanketing the community with information, 
     raising money, prodding police and setting up hot lines.
       Such groups have become a phenomenon--part sleuthing, part 
     marketing, part community healing. In some cases, they are 
     encouraged and supported by police investigators. In others, 
     there is a mutual distrust, frustration that police seem to 
     be moving too slowly, anger that volunteers are trying to 
     take matters into their own hands.
       But even when police officials are exasperated, they 
     acknowledge that these community groups have generated 
     renewed public interest in a relatively infrequent, but 
     horrifying problem.
       ``If there's any legacy from this . . . it was a wake-up 
     call for a lot of people,'' said Joanne Gardner, a California 
     video director who helped search for Polly Klaas.
       The day after the kidnapping, Gardner arrived with her 
     laptop computer after watching news broadcasts that showed 
     chaos among the volunteers. She riffled her Rolodex, calling 
     the press and celebrities to ask that they publicize Polly's 
     abduction. By day's end, Gardner was the media coordinator.
       Others gave what they could: A community center donated 
     tables and chairs. Pacific Bell, which intended to install 
     one phone line, kept workers there until 11 lines were up and 
     running. Local businesses donated computers, office supplies 
     and fax machines for volunteers to trade and track search 
     tips.
       Cases like that of Polly Klaas--known as ``stereotypical'' 
     abductions by strangers--happen about 200 to 300 times a 
     year, according to a Justice Department study. They make up a 
     small portion of the more than 100,000 American children 
     abducted each year, the vast majority by a family member.
       The neighborhood committees formed in the aftermath of 
     abductions have often flourished, then faded away. But dozens 
     of these and other groups with similar missions--at least 60 
     and perhaps many more--have continued, creating a network of 
     local groups that rally when news of a missing child 
     surfaces.
       When 12-year-old Sara Anne Wood disappeared last August in 
     upstate New York, hundreds of volunteers poured into a local 
     church to print and distribute posters, raise money and 
     answer phones. Months later, after a suspect told police 
     where they could find the girl's body, her parent shifted the 
     focus of their volunteer effort to search for other missing 
     children.
       Friends and neighbors who organized around the 1989 
     abduction of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling in St. Joseph, 
     Minn., still search for the boy, but have widened their focus 
     to prevention, educating parents and children about safety.
       Patty Wetterling, Jacob's mother, spends a great deal of 
     time talking with the parents of other missing children, 
     advising them on a wide range of subjects including how to 
     organize search efforts and basic do's and don'ts: Don't use 
     frantic energy after your child disappears to clean every 
     inch of the house, for example. The child's clothes and 
     hairbrush may be needed for hair analysis, and for tracking 
     dogs who can pick up a scent.
       But does all of this poster-printing, phone-calling and 
     networking help find missing children?
       In many cases, like those of Polly Klaas, Sara Anne Wood 
     and Jacob Wetterling, it has not. It did not when 5-year-old 
     Melissa Brannen disappeared in Lorton in December 1989.
       Most children abducted by strangers have not been found 
     alive--of the 1,543 cases complied over about 10 years by the 
     National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 393 were 
     found alive, 211 were found dead and the rest are still 
     missing.
       Still, the intense volunteer efforts have had an effect. 
     The congressional testimony of John and Reve Walsh, whose son 
     Adam was kidnapped and murdered 13 years ago in Florida, 
     helped pass legislation creating the national center, which 
     serves as a central repository for information and helps 
     local police in missing-children cases.
       Experts say neighborhood watches and other types of citizen 
     activism have reduced crime in some communities. And 
     volunteer efforts have helped parents relatives and neighbors 
     work through their sense of outrage and victimization.
       ``It helps parents deal with their kids' fears; it helps 
     parents deal with their own fears,'' said Patty Wetterling. 
     In Petaluma, many who volunteered found they could not walk 
     away from the crime that, as one volunteer said, ``crossed 
     the line.''
       ``This wasn't a carjacking or an abduction from a mall, the 
     kind of crime, as a parent, you can think: `Oh, that couldn't 
     happen to me,' '' said Gardner, a single mother of a 14-year-
     old daughter. ``This crime was the bogyman come true. It 
     said: No matter what you do as a parent, your child wasn't 
     safe.''
       The Polly Klaas volunteer effort, which evolved into a 
     foundation, was a remarkable coalition of talent. Real estate 
     salesmen who knew the territory headed search teams. Lawyers 
     became map makers and delivery truck drivers. Gary French, an 
     out-of-work computer analyst, developed an unprecedented 
     network to put Polly's image and information about her 
     abduction on line with four different national computer 
     links.
       As Gardner said, the group ``shamelessly courted the 
     media,'' calling ``America's Most Wanted,'' the ``Today'' 
     show, any national broadcast that could show Polly's face to 
     the public. The publicity brought out the good and the bad in 
     people. Movie actress Winona Ryder, who grew up in Petaluma, 
     offered a $200,000 reward for Polly's return and spent days 
     volunteering.
       Others among the hundreds who showed up at the local search 
     center weren't as altruistic. In the first few weeks of the 
     search, about a dozen people who said they were psychics 
     approached the volunteers with visions. Marc Klaas, Polly's 
     father, said the volunteer group felt compelled to follow up 
     all those tips.
       ``I really have no belief in those but it's all we had,'' 
     Klaas said. ``I've since come to the conclusion that psychics 
     are predators themselves.''
       The volunteers also found themselves in conflict with the 
     official investigators. The FBI, which was in charge of the 
     investigation, approached the case methodically, not readily 
     accepting the family's story that a total stranger had taken 
     Polly away. But the volunteers never doubted the story and 
     many felt annoyed at the delay as the FBI investigated family 
     members.
       Then the FBI got riled when the volunteer group, frustrated 
     that police had not followed up on a tip, interviewed a man 
     and passed the information on to another police agency in 
     Northern California.
       Kelby Jones, who headed the volunteer search effort, said 
     he was told that he could face obstruction of justice charges 
     for that mistake.
       ``We tried to go as far as we could go,'' Jones said. ``I 
     think in the case of that tip, we unintentionally embarrassed 
     the FBI because we were following up something they should 
     have already done.''
       The result of that tension, however, was a police decision 
     to provide daily updates to the volunteers.
       ``With these cases, you have to take law enforcement off 
     the pedestal and sit down at a desk with them and work on 
     something that's happened in your community,'' said French, 
     the computer expert.
       Mark J. Mershon, the FBI agent who headed the Klaas 
     investigation, said the volunteer group was sometimes 
     ``misguided'' but well-intentioned.
       ``As far as how this community galvanized, I've never seen 
     anything like it,'' said Mershon, a 19-year veteran of the 
     bureau.
       The woman who found clothing on her property linking Polly 
     and a suspect benefited from the tenacity of the volunteers. 
     ``I think if there had not been the intense community 
     investigation and intense media interest, she would have 
     probably ignored [the clothing] or wrinkled her nose and 
     threw it out,'' Mershon said.
       Eventually, the Klaas Foundation, the police and the FBI 
     formed a strong alliance. The FBI in San Francisco is 
     creating a special task force to address child kidnapping and 
     molestation and both the law enforcement agencies and the 
     community are using what they learned from the abduction.
       Two weeks ago, a small child was reported missing around 
     midnight by a distraught mother from Petaluma. The police 
     responded quickly and alerted officials from the Klaas 
     Foundation. A teletype was issued. FBI agents and volunteers 
     were on the scene within two hours.
       Then the effort had an abrupt happy ending. The woman found 
     that her child was being cared for by a family friend, police 
     said.
       The Klaas Foundation is working on a reaction plan to share 
     with other communities, an educational program for schools 
     and tougher criminal legislation. Marc Klaas was in 
     Washington recently to testify before Congress on proposals 
     to revise prison sentencing for serious offenders.
       The new efforts are part of an evolution for the Klaas 
     Foundation. It is shifting from a crisis-management group to 
     an institution in the community. Last month, it hired its 
     first paid employee, an executive director who once guided 
     Sonoma County's Special Olympics program.
       ``It's good to have a fresh face and new energy,'' French 
     said. ``Because this was draining for all of us.''

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