MINNEAPOLIS — Patty Wetterling keeps a scrapbook of news clippings about abducted children being reunited with their families years later. It’s a source of hope for Wetterling, whose son, Jacob, was abducted nearly 20 years ago in central Minnesota.
Soon, Wetterling will add another child’s story to her book: Jaycee Lee Dugard’s.
“My heart’s smiling,” Wetterling said of reports that Du gard had been reunited with her family in California 18 years after she was abducted at age 11. “It doesn’t happen often enough, but we always have hope in our hearts that it will.”
Dugard’s case and others like it show families whose children have been missing for years that such reunions are possible.
More than 58,000 children are taken in nonfamily abductions every year in the U.S., according to Justice Department estimates. Most of those cases are resolved within 24 hours, while an estimated 115 children are victims of a real kidnapping — where they are held, taken a long distance, killed or kept.
Wetterling and some other parents of missing children think their loved ones still could be out there, just like Dugard. They also know it’s unlikely abducted children will seek help, becoming dependent on their captors.
“These kids don’t just come forward on their own; they’re most often discovered,” said Wetterling, of St. Joseph, Minn., who has become a nationally known advocate for missing and exploited children. “They build a life. They’re told lies. They do what they need to survive. We need to do what we can to find them.” The Associated Press
