Frequently Asked Questions

Missing and exploited children statistics are available in resources from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Statistics section of the Office of Justice Program's Missing Children Special Feature.

For additional information, visit the Child and Youth Victimization section of our website and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website.

If you have not yet contacted law enforcement officials to report your missing child, please do so immediately. Ask them about the issuance of an AMBER Alert. Through AMBER Alert, law enforcement agencies and broadcasters activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child abduction cases. Request that law enforcement put out a Be On the Look Out (BOLO) bulletin. Ask them about involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the search for your child.

Additional helpful information for families about what to do when a child is missing is available in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention report, When Your Child is Missing: A Family Survival Guide and the Missing and Exploited Children page. Also contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 800–843–5678 and view their Missing-Child, Emergency-Response, Quick-Reference Guide for Families.

Also visit the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) website. NamUs is a clearinghouse for missing persons and unidentified decedent records. This free online system can be searched by law enforcement officials, other allied professionals, and the general public to solve these cases. To enter a missing persons report into the NamUs database, visit the registration page.

Information on the phenomenon known as the "cycle of violence," in which a childhood history of physical abuse may lead the survivor to be more likely to commit violence in later years, is available in the National Institute of Justice resources:

• Pathways Between Child Maltreatment and Adult Criminal Involvement
• Effects of Child Maltreatment, Cumulative Victimization Experiences, and Proximal Life Stress on Adult Crime and Antisocial Behavior
• An Update on the Cycle of Violence
• Childhood Victimization: Early Adversity, Later Psychopathology

To learn more, visit the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence, a series of publications funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Select OVC publications and products are available in hardcopy and can be ordered from the Office of Justice Programs. You can search for and order available OVC resources via the Office of Justice Programs Publication Listing page. While these resources are free, shipping and handling fees may apply. View the Shopping Cart Help for more information.

Meeting the Needs of Underserved Victims (Video and Guidebook) is now available as part of the OVC resource Gaining Insight, Taking Action: Basic Skills for Serving Victims, NCJ 232780. This 55-minute DVD and Companion Guidebook provides access to three videos and companion guides that were originally released as part of the 2005 National Victim Assistance Academy curriculum:

• Listen to My Story: Communicating With Victims of Crime
• Meeting the Needs of Underserved Victims
• Substance Abuse and Victimization.

The Gaining Insight, Taking Action: Basic Skills for Serving Victims DVD and Companion Guide is available to order through the Shopping Cart section of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service website.

The Listen to My Story: Communicating with Victims of Crime (Video and Guidebook) is now available as part of the OVC resource Gaining Insight, Taking Action: Basic Skills for Serving Victims, NCJ 232780. This 55-minute DVD and Companion Guidebook provides access to three videos and companion guides that were originally released as part of the 2005 National Victim Assistance Academy curriculum:

• Listen to My Story: Communicating With Victims of Crime
• Meeting the Needs of Underserved Victims
• Substance Abuse and Victimization.

The Gaining Insight, Taking Action: Basic Skills for Serving Victims DVD and Companion Guide is available to order through the Shopping Cart section of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service website.

The Substance Abuse and Victimization (Video and Guidebook) is now available as part of the OVC resource Gaining Insight, Taking Action: Basic Skills for Serving Victims, NCJ 232780. This 55-minute DVD and Companion Guidebook provides access to three videos and companion guides that were originally released as part of the 2005 National Victim Assistance Academy curriculum:

• Listen to My Story: Communicating With Victims of Crime
• Meeting the Needs of Underserved Victims
• Substance Abuse and Victimization.

The Gaining Insight, Taking Action: Basic Skills for Serving Victims DVD and Companion Guide is available to order through the Shopping Cart section of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service website.

Information on police response to victims with disabilities is available in the OVC Victims with Disabilities: Collaborative, Multidisciplinary First Response (DVD and Guidebook). For additional information, visit the Victims with Disabilities section of our website.

According to 2019 data, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children assisted law enforcement in 29,000 cases of missing children and less than 1 percent of those cases were nonfamily abductions.

Also see the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: Nonfamily Abducted Children: National Estimates and Characteristics

Information about drug-facilitated sexual assault can be found in Drug-Facilitated Rape: Looking for the Missing Pieces, an article in the National Institute of Justice Journal.

Additional information about drug-facilitated rape/sexual assaults is available in the National Institute of Justice-sponsored resource Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study.