Monique Lessan
President and Director of Investigation at Eye Investigate, a Private Investigator International Services
S: How have the Internet, media, and publicity changed the way missing children are found nowadays?
ML: Well, first of all, a lot of people once their child goes missing they sign up with the National Center of Missing & Exploited children. They set up the pictures of the kids and the propitiator, if they have the picture if it’s a parent-child abduction, they put it on the site, they match it with the missing report from the sheriff’s department or police department and see which child is missing. Well, that is one of the ways helping find kids, but one of the problems of the Internet is that a lot of kids go missing because of the Internet because they get lured by somebody from another country or somebody who is trying to chat with a child. But the parent can actually track the kid through the Internet. So yeah, Internet has really brought the world closer to each other.
S: Are there regional variations with how cases are handled?
ML: Well first let me explain to you the several types of missing children. There’s a missing child which is a parental child abduction by a parent from another country and if they go missing and at that point Haig Convention or Haig Treaty, come handy, because only 60 countries are part of the Haig Convention and they can actually help the parent that is left behind get their child back legally because the respecter documents from America for example. But if a child goes missing by a perpetrator, for example a pedophile, that would be a kidnapping, and is usually local, usually right in that country, the child is not usually found alive. It could be from four years old all the way till teenager, in those kinds of salutations the child is within seventy two hours if he or she is not found is either found dead or never found alive you know ever, they may never find the body. And then there is a third kind, where the child is usually a little older, like maybe a teenager 14, 15, 16, 17 even, and they are lured by people in other countries like sex-traffickers and they usually go to another country to study, to get a job as a model, or to just want to travel to see the world. So they meet people over sees and once they go over international borders, they are gone, their passport is taken away and they never come back and those kids are usually sold to sex-traffickers.
S: How prevalent are missing children today?
ML: Worse than ever, absolutely, because the use from the Internet has made it much easier for kids to go missing. A lot of kids follow older people who present themselves as younger over the internet but they do not know them until they meet them and by the time they meet them, they befriend them, its too late. A lot of them go missing that way. And a missing children by a stranger, pedophile, is not as prevalent in Sonoma county, where I live, but where you live in Florida is very prevalent, is one of the biggest hops in the United States is Florida, because they can easily take them over to the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico. Whenever you are next to a border-line to other places those are the places that missing children go faster and never come back. Parental-child abductions are more prevalent. Missing children by strangers and sex-traffickers there are more sex-traffickers than missing kids that go missing by serial killers for example and they die, they never come back. Also, there are kids that get killed by their own parents, like moms. Specially mothers after pregnancy they get very depressed, they kill their kid.
S: Are there many kids found alive?
ML: It depends in parental child abductions, yes, kids are mostly all found. Kids that go missing younger than twelve years old after seventy two hours they are not found alive but those older than twelve years either run-away or they disappear by the hands of the sex-traffickers.
S: What is your opinion on the Milk Carton Campaign?
ML: The Milk Carton Campaign is good, is just that a lot of people do not pay attention to the pictures on the milk cartons, they just do not. It is an old fashion way of doing it, I know for a fact that even if the pictures of kids are not milk cartons, people just drink the milk and throw away the box. Unless, just recently that same morning they saw the kid in the grocery store and they can relate the picture to the person they saw. I particularly do not find kids that way.
S: What do you think is the most effective way to let people know about missing kids?
ML: Education, through school, through projects, like the one you are doing. That is one of the biggest ways: you teach people like your age so you can teach your peers, I think that is the most effective way. And the way that I do it is that I speak in different venues, like in front of high schools or clubs, chamber of commerce, about missing children, because it seems people are not realizing what is going on. They are not aware of this subject, so we have to wake people up, especially the parents.
ML: Well, first of all, a lot of people once their child goes missing they sign up with the National Center of Missing & Exploited children. They set up the pictures of the kids and the propitiator, if they have the picture if it’s a parent-child abduction, they put it on the site, they match it with the missing report from the sheriff’s department or police department and see which child is missing. Well, that is one of the ways helping find kids, but one of the problems of the Internet is that a lot of kids go missing because of the Internet because they get lured by somebody from another country or somebody who is trying to chat with a child. But the parent can actually track the kid through the Internet. So yeah, Internet has really brought the world closer to each other.
S: Are there regional variations with how cases are handled?
ML: Well first let me explain to you the several types of missing children. There’s a missing child which is a parental child abduction by a parent from another country and if they go missing and at that point Haig Convention or Haig Treaty, come handy, because only 60 countries are part of the Haig Convention and they can actually help the parent that is left behind get their child back legally because the respecter documents from America for example. But if a child goes missing by a perpetrator, for example a pedophile, that would be a kidnapping, and is usually local, usually right in that country, the child is not usually found alive. It could be from four years old all the way till teenager, in those kinds of salutations the child is within seventy two hours if he or she is not found is either found dead or never found alive you know ever, they may never find the body. And then there is a third kind, where the child is usually a little older, like maybe a teenager 14, 15, 16, 17 even, and they are lured by people in other countries like sex-traffickers and they usually go to another country to study, to get a job as a model, or to just want to travel to see the world. So they meet people over sees and once they go over international borders, they are gone, their passport is taken away and they never come back and those kids are usually sold to sex-traffickers.
S: How prevalent are missing children today?
ML: Worse than ever, absolutely, because the use from the Internet has made it much easier for kids to go missing. A lot of kids follow older people who present themselves as younger over the internet but they do not know them until they meet them and by the time they meet them, they befriend them, its too late. A lot of them go missing that way. And a missing children by a stranger, pedophile, is not as prevalent in Sonoma county, where I live, but where you live in Florida is very prevalent, is one of the biggest hops in the United States is Florida, because they can easily take them over to the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico. Whenever you are next to a border-line to other places those are the places that missing children go faster and never come back. Parental-child abductions are more prevalent. Missing children by strangers and sex-traffickers there are more sex-traffickers than missing kids that go missing by serial killers for example and they die, they never come back. Also, there are kids that get killed by their own parents, like moms. Specially mothers after pregnancy they get very depressed, they kill their kid.
S: Are there many kids found alive?
ML: It depends in parental child abductions, yes, kids are mostly all found. Kids that go missing younger than twelve years old after seventy two hours they are not found alive but those older than twelve years either run-away or they disappear by the hands of the sex-traffickers.
S: What is your opinion on the Milk Carton Campaign?
ML: The Milk Carton Campaign is good, is just that a lot of people do not pay attention to the pictures on the milk cartons, they just do not. It is an old fashion way of doing it, I know for a fact that even if the pictures of kids are not milk cartons, people just drink the milk and throw away the box. Unless, just recently that same morning they saw the kid in the grocery store and they can relate the picture to the person they saw. I particularly do not find kids that way.
S: What do you think is the most effective way to let people know about missing kids?
ML: Education, through school, through projects, like the one you are doing. That is one of the biggest ways: you teach people like your age so you can teach your peers, I think that is the most effective way. And the way that I do it is that I speak in different venues, like in front of high schools or clubs, chamber of commerce, about missing children, because it seems people are not realizing what is going on. They are not aware of this subject, so we have to wake people up, especially the parents.