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The Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) specifically requires compensation to crime victims and survivors of criminal violence for certain expenses resulting from physical injury from a compensable crime as defined by the state.
VOCA places priority on violent crime, but it does not prohibit coverage of nonviolent crimes. States may choose to broaden the range of compensable crimes to include those involving threats of injury or economic crime where victims are traumatized but not physically injured. Please keep in mind that eligibility requirements are left up to the state.
The U.S. Department of State's Children's Passport Issuance Alert Program works to prevent international parental child abduction. The program allows parents to register their U.S. citizen children under the age of 18. If a passport application is submitted for that registered child, the U.S. Department of State will contact and alert the parent(s).
Missing and exploited children statistics are available in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual NCIC Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics reports and in the Statistics section of the Office of Justice Program's Missing Children Special Feature.
If you have not yet contacted law enforcement officials to report your missing child, please do so immediately. Ask them about the issuing an AMBER Alert.
Through the AMBER Alert system, 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.
Finally, 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.
Contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline by calling 888-373-7888 (toll free), texting BeFree (233733), or using the Human Trafficking Hotline Web Chat to report a tip; connect with anti-trafficking services in your area; or request training and technical assistance, general information, or specific anti-trafficking resources.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline is available to answer calls and texts from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. It is operated and implemented by Polaris Project and funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) defines dating violence as violence committed by a person who is or has been in a social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the victim; and where the existence of such a relationship shall be determined based on a consideration of the following factors—
the length of the relationship,
the type of relationship, and
the frequency of interaction between the persons involved in the relationship.