National Missing Children’s Day 2018

Help Us Find Them

Today, on National Missing Children’s Day, we would like you to look at the faces of the children on this page—some who went missing years ago and some more recently—and reach out to law enforcement if you have any information that might lead to the recovery of any of these kids.

Children continue to face dangerous threats these days from online predators, human traffickers, kidnappers, and other criminals who want to harm them. At the end of 2017, the Bureau’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Persons File contained more than 32,000 records of youngsters under the age of 18.

But missing kids can be found, and those responsible for taking them can be brought to justice. Earlier this year, a man abducted a 4-year-old South Carolina girl from her mother. The child, through law enforcement efforts and the assistance of alert citizens, was safely recovered and returned to her mother. The man was ultimately arrested and federally charged with kidnapping, and he’s also facing charges in state court.  

In addition to our efforts to publicize, investigate, and offer assistance to our local and state partners when kids go missing, the FBI also has programs in place to arrest child predators and to recover missing and endangered children, including our Innocence Lost Initiative, Innocent Images National Initiative, the annual Operation Cross Country, Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Teams, Victim Services Division, Child Exploitation Task Forces, International Crimes Against Children Task Forces, and a number of community outreach programs that help educate parents and children about safety measures they can follow. We also partner with organizations like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

All of this is an effort to help protect our nation’s most precious resource—our kids.

Note: The children pictured here may have been located since this information was posted. Please check our Kidnappings & Missing Persons webpage for up-to-date information on them and on additional missing children and other persons.