The missing children panic (1979 - mid 1980s) was a moral panic concerning child abduction and murder by strangers in the United States.[1][2][3][4] The event was triggered after the abduction of Etan Patz in 1979 and the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh in 1981,[2] with subsequent media reports exaggerating and misrepresenting child abduction statistics.[5][2] The panic popularized the misleading claim that 1.5 million children per year disappeared or were abducted in the United States,[1][6][7][4] introduced the stranger danger narrative into public discourse[6][7] and intensified tropes relating to the sexual predation and murder of boys by homosexuals in American culture, especially after the publicization of gay serial killers Ottis Toole, John Wayne Gacy and Randy Kraft.[2][3]
Amid the event, a nationwide campaign against child abduction in the United States led to U.S. president Ronald Reagan signing the Missing Children Act (1982) and the Missing Children's Assistance Act (1984), that founded the national system for recording missing persons in 1982 and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 1984.[1][5]
The panic also led to the production of multiple child sexual abuse-themed movies, documentaries and TV shows, including Adam (1983), Something about Amelia (1984), Kids Don't Tell (1985), The Atlanta Child Murders (1985), Children of the Night (1985), When the Bough Breaks (1986) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the last of which featured fictional child molester character Freddy Krueger. It also popularized the usage of milk cartoons to publicize cases of missing children. Public interest on the topic of missing children started to decrease after 1985.
- ^ a b c Critcher, Chas (2008). "Moral Panic Analysis: Past, Present and Future". Sociology Compass. 2 (4): 1127–1144. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00122.x. ISSN 1751-9020.
- ^ a b c d Mokrzycki, Paul (2013). "A Flower Smashed by a Rock: Race, Gender, and Innocence in American Missing Children Cases, 1978–present". The Neoamericanist. 7 (1).
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
:4was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Best, Joel (1987). "Rhetoric in Claims-Making: Constructing the Missing Children Problem". Social Problems. 34 (2): 101–121. doi:10.2307/800710.
- ^ a b Mokrzycki Renfro, Paul (2016). "Keeping Children Safe is Good Business: The Enterprise of Child Safety in the Age of Reagan". Enterprise & Society. 17 (1): 151–187. doi:10.1017/eso.2015.65. ISSN 1467-2227.
- ^ a b Wodda, Aimee (2018-10-23). "Stranger Danger!". Journal of Family Strengths. 18 (1). doi:10.58464/2168-670X.1384. ISSN 2168-670X.
- ^ a b Conrad, Joann (1998-12-31). "Stranger danger: defending innocence, denying responsibility". Contemporary Legend. 1: 55–96. ISSN 0963-8334.