Many Families of Missing Women of Color Fend for Themselves to Find Justice

Tens of thousands of women and girls — many of them Black, Latina or Indigenous —are reported missing each year, but without media coverage and the police resources that usually follow, it often falls to families to search for their loved ones, reports the New York Times. More than a third of the women and girls reported missing last year in the United States were Black, and the lack of attention to their cases has prompted some people to create organizations and websites dedicated to sharing posters of every missing woman of color, one by one, until they are found.

Police say that they take every missing person’s report seriously but that a large number of cases involve girls or women who have deliberately disappeared and do not want to be found. Callahan Walsh, a child advocate at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said girls were often coaxed online and encouraged to leave home on their own, leaving the police to dismiss them as runaways.  Although Black children make up 14 percent of the nation’s children, they account for 31 percent of the center’s missing children reports. More than 70,000 Black girls under the age of 18 were reported missing last year, according to the National Crime Information Center. Overall, about 88 percent of the people of all races who were reported missing last year were later found, returned home, or the report was found to be invalid, according to the national crime center.