How to Report a Kidnapping

Call local law enforcement. If your child has been taken from you by the child’s other parent without your consent, contact your local law enforcement agency immediately. Emotions can escalate during custody disputes between parents, and desperate parents sometimes resort to unlawfully taking the child, fleeing, and going into hiding.^[4] You will need to work with law enforcement to locate the child and secure the safe return of your child. To make a report, call 911 or contact the agency directly.

• Ask to file a missing person’s report and to have the victim’s name entered into the National Crime Information Center database.^[5]
• You might not want to file criminal charges against the parent before the child has been returned.^[6] The threat of criminal charges might cause the parent to take more extreme action to avoid prosecution.

Provide details about the child. The police will want to know as much information as you can provide about the child’s appearance, so that police or the public can more readily identify the child in public. Be prepared to provide:

• Recent photographs;
• What he or she was last seen wearing;
• Any other toys or clothing the parent or child might have taken;
• Medical conditions; and
• Other features, such as height, weight, hairstyle, eye color, glasses, birthmarks, scars, tattoos, braces, and piercings.

Provide details about the parent. Police and the public will need help identifying the parent who kidnapped the child. Provide as much of the following as you can:

• Recent photographs of the parent;
• Other names or aliases the parent has used;
• A description of his or her vehicle;
• Details about your custody dispute, including any threats the parent made;
• Names and addresses of the parent’s friends and family, or other places he or she might take the child; and
• Any other identifying information you can think of.

Contact friends and family. Ask the police if they want to you to refrain from calling or contacting the parent’s friends and family. If the police do not object, contact everyone who might be in contact with the parent, alert them of the situation, and ask them to call the police if the parent visits or communicates with them.

Contact local law enforcement. Each year, thousands of children are kidnapped by a parent and removed from the United States.^[7] Once a parent escapes the country with a child, it becomes much more difficult to locate the parent and return the child to the U.S. In addition, U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not screen outbound travelers, so the parent and child are unlikely to be stopped before they leave the country.

• Ask to file a missing person’s report and to have the victim’s name entered into the National Crime Information Center database.^[8]
• You might not want to file criminal charges against the parent before the child has been returned.^[9] The threat of criminal charges might cause the parent to take more extreme action to avoid prosecution.

Tell the police of your fear of an international abduction. If you suspect that the parent might flee the country with the child, advise law enforcement of this possibility. You might be particularly suspicious of this possibility if the parent has ever discussed or threatened leaving the United States, if he or she has ties to a foreign country, or if the parent is in possession of the child’s passport. The police will contact the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center. The Targeting Center will post a bulletin alerting agencies of the possibility of an international abduction.