I was fortunate to be involved in the agency that merged with the Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children, founded by John and Revé Walsh in 1981. It was great to be involved right from the beginning and to continue to be part of the phenomenal organization that is now the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. I often tell people this is my “hearts’ work.” I can’t imagine doing anything else, and it’s gratifying to see our progress measured in recoveries, awareness, and technology.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) mission is to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them. We are the national clearinghouse providing the resources, focus and information needed to find missing children, prevent crimes against them and help bring perpetrators to justice.
It’s great to know that what we do at NCMEC really does make a difference in people’s lives. To know we’ve helped recover a missing child, or we’ve provided solace and guidance to a searching family, that’s incredible. In my position, I also get to influence how we teach children about safety and help make adults aware of their responsibilities in keeping kids safer. It truly is a team effort, and I believe prevention is an absolutely critical part of our mission. We have to do everything we can to stop the crimes before they happen, to make sure children have proper supervision and have guidance, so they can make safer choices in their lives online and offline. And, it’s great to be in a group of kids and see it when they get the message.
We work closely with law enforcement, educators, legislators, corporate affiliates, and the public and provide training and presentations on the issue of missing & exploited children. We realize the challenges parents and guardians face in keeping their kids safer in the real world and on the Internet, and we provide tools and resources they can use to help accomplish this. Our web site is user friendly and chock full of helpful information, including publications about sex offenders, legislation, and child safety issues affecting people in their daily lives. We give people an opportunity to be involved in a number of ways from volunteering, to downloading safety information, or signing up to be a missing child photo partner.
The software, other than nonprofit specific applications, that we find most helpful are:
• Web biased software that allows members of a department to share documents regardless of where the user is located
• VPN software that allows law enforcement to enter our network to view information collected by analyst in the exploited child unit via a secure connection
• Adobe Photoshop that allows our imaging specialist to age progress children in active missing children cases
• Internet faxing software– allows us to mass fax posters of missing children
• Microsoft Access – as all of front end(s) (what the user sees) of our in-house applications (i.e. case management application, simple leads, call center application) are written in access
• Network monitoring and security software that enables the IT department to run a secure network (we don’t like to say our network is very secure or anything like that as hackers could see this as a challenge).
There’s a particular case I call my “miracle” case. A 12 year old child was abducted from her bicycle in 1992, and I was instrumental in working with law enforcement and helping get her case on AMERICA’S MOST WANTED. As a direct result, her abductor saw her on the program and released her. She was returned safely to her family. I’ll never forget her, nor will I ever forget the feeling I had when I was told she was found alive. And, we keep getting better in our efforts to find missing children, working with law enforcement and the community, using the wonders of technology, from disseminating fliers to Amber Alerts. The recovery rate at NCMEC has grown from 62% in 1990 to 96.3% today. That’s a number we’re proud of, but we’re also working hard to increase it.
Nancy A McBride has been with the Adam Walsh Center since its inception in 1981, serving as Guardian ad Litem coordinator, and program coordinator, in which she supervised all the programs of the Center, including the child safety education program, “Safety with Strangers”, Fingerprinting of children, the Court Monitor Project and Legislative Advocacy. She also acted as administrative assistant to John Walsh. After successfully assisting on five major television productions, including ADAM and HBO’s HOW TO RAISE A STREET SMART CHILD, Ms.
McBride left the Center to become regional trainer with HBO in Atlanta, Georgia, 1987. Ms. McBride returned in 1990 as executive director of the Florida Branch of the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, after the merger of the Center with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) headquartered outside Washington, DC in Alexandria, Virginia. The Adam Walsh Center became the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children/Florida Branch in 1995. She is the National Safety Director for NCMEC and authors many of the child safety publications, including Know the Rules…When Your Child is Flying Unaccompanied, For Child Safety in Amusement or Theme Parks, For Child Safety in Youth Sports, After School Safety for Children Who Are Home Alone, and New Neighborhood Safety Tips.
She is a frequent lecturer on the issues of child safety and exploitation. She is often a guest on television and radio programs dealing with child exploitation and has been widely quoted in print medium, including, TIME, December 27, 1993, and GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, May 1996, and USA TODAY, February 10, 2004. The publication, Child Safety in Youth Sports, authored by Ms. McBride, was adapted for a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED cover story, “Who’s Coaching Your Kid? The frightening truth about child molestation in youth sports,” September 13, 1999. Her article Child Safety is More Than a Slogan dispelling the “stranger-danger” myth has been widely distributed.
