Elizabeth Smart’s Advice for Preventing Child Kidnappings: Building Support Networks

Elizabeth Smart, who survived a 9-month kidnapping at age 14, offers advice on staying safe and how family and friends can identify and address “red flags.” According to data from multiple sources including Child Crime Prevention & Safety Center, the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and FBI statistics, hundreds of thousands of young children have fallen victim to kidnapping in the United States alone. In fact, a child goes missing or is abducted every 40 seconds on average. About 840,00 people go missing annually, with approximately 85%-90% estimated as being children. These are stories of individuals who were captured at young ages but eventually found their way back to their families days, weeks, months and years after they disappeared. Many former kidnapping victims now share their experiences through advocacy work around missing children. Melissa Highsmith was reunited with her family in November 2022 over half a century since she initially vanished following an encounter at age five while watching television during which a babysitter claimed to be going out but instead left without any notice. In light of this, Smart suggests that individuals should have a plan before meeting someone they’ve never encountered and communicate their movements with trusted family members or friends as part of building support networks for enhanced safety measures. Similar scenarios also applied to other missing persons like Jaycee Dugard who was held captive by Philip Garrido and his wife Nancy in California from 1991 until her rescue at age 29, Carlina White taken from Harlem Hospital when she was only nineteen days old by Ann Pettway but reunited with Joy White after twenty-three years, Kara Robinson Chamberlain kidnapped by serial killer Richard Evonitz in Florida during a playdate gone wrong, and Alicia “Kozak” Kozackiewicz whose online predator case is among the earliest of its kind. Shawn Hornbeck was also abducted at age eleven while riding his bike but he got lucky with help from Ben Ownby’s neighbors leading to both boys’ rescue by police in Missouri, which became known as “The Missouri Miracle.” Today Smart, now married and a mother of three children, is an inspirational speaker whose mobile application titled ‘Guardian, co-founded along Portland-based tech company Q5id helps locate missing persons nationwide. Meanwhile, Jaycee Dugard wrote her memoir “A Stolen Life” in 2011 while Chamberlain continues to share stories as a host on the podcast “Survivor’s Guide To True Crime” and starred in documentaries like “Escaping Captivity: The Kara Robinson Story.”