Wiesbaden (dpa / lhe) - In Hesse, 122 children under the age of 14 are currently missing. Nationwide, the number is around 1,600, said the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on Tuesday in Wiesbaden on request. In the cases that have not yet been clarified, in addition to permanent runaways, child abductions and unaccompanied refugee children who have disappeared from their accommodation are also recorded. Overall, the proportion of children's fates that cannot be clarified even after a long time is very small.
With a Day of Missing Children this Wednesday (May 25th), information about preventive care options is to be provided. In Germany, the day has been taken up by the "Missing Children Initiative" since 2003. Only recently did the case of an eleven-year-old from northern Bavaria cause a stir, who had been reported missing and was picked up by the police in Berlin a day later.
According to BKA information, an average of around 15,700 children and young people have been reported missing over the course of the year. The clearance rate is around 97 percent. When children and young people disappear, there are various reasons for this, such as problems at school or with their parents, as well as lovesickness. Or parents fought over custody. The oldest case of a child still missing in the BKA file dates from 1964.
According to the BKA, the police receive around 200 to 300 new searches for missing persons every day - children, young people and adults - and around the same number of searches can be deleted at the same time. Experience has shown that half of the missing person reports are dealt with within the first week. Only in three percent of the cases would people be missing for more than a year.
