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Six-year old Etan Patz is last seen by his family while on his way to school in New York City. His father, a photographer, creates missing posters that give national exposure to the issue and serve as a catalyst to creating and distributing missing children’s posters nationally.
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An arrest is made ending the murder spree of 29 children and young adults in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Adam Walsh, 6-year-old son of John and Reve Walsh, is abducted from a Florida shopping mall and later found murdered.
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The Walshes establish the Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children in Florida to act as a resource for other families of missing children.
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The Missing Children Act allows law enforcement to enter missing child cases into a special file within the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center.
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The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is officially opened by President Ronald Reagan on June 13, 1984.
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The national 24-hour Missing Children’s Hotline 1-800-THE-LOST is established at NCMEC to provide resources for families, law enforcement, and other professionals.
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The Missing Children’s Assistance Act establishes a national resource center and clearinghouse for missing and exploited children, and NCMEC is designated to fulfill this role.
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ADVO creates the America’s Looking for its Missing Children program which distributed 85 million photos of missing children into homes across America each week.
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NCMEC Creates the Child Pornography Tipline to support the U.S. Customs Service.
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NCMEC launches cutting-edge age-progression technology.
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The Florida-based Adam Walsh Center and its branches merge with NCMEC.
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The National Child Search Assistance Act of 1990 mandates law enforcement to eliminate waiting periods before taking a missing child report. It also requires these cases be immediately entered into the FBI’s NCIC database and specifically names NCMEC as the liaison with law enforcement on these cases.
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NCMEC recovery rate of missing children is 62%.
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Code Adam, a program to help parents find missing children who become separated from their parents in retail stores, is created.
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NCMEC enters into a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Departments of State and Justice to manage cases of international child abduction.
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The one millionth call is received by NCMEC’s National Missing Children Hotline.
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An Executive Order is signed by President Bill Clinton directing every federal building to display a bulletin board with posters of missing children provided by NCMEC.
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Computer Associates and its CEO, Charles Wang, Create New Website for NCMEC, www.missingkids.com.
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NCMEC establishes the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.
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The CyberTipline, the “911 for the Internet,” is established by the U.S. Congress at NCMEC to handle reports of suspected child sexual exploitation, www.cybertipline.com
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The first AMBER Alert recovery is of a 2-month old baby in Arlington, Texas.
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NCMEC’s role as the nation’s clearinghouse on missing and exploited-child issues is formalized into law through the Missing, Exploited, and Runaway Children Protection Act.
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First White House Conference on Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children is held hosted by President and Mrs. George W. Bush.
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Worth Magazine names NCMEC “one of America’s 100 Best Charities.”
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The CyberTipline receives the 100,000th report of child sexual exploitation.
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The PROTECT Act of 2003 creates a national AMBER Alert Program, creates NCMEC’s CyberTipline by statute, and strengthens law enforcement’s ability to punish violent criminals who prey upon children.
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Congress requests NCMEC serve as the hub for the National Fingerprint-Based Background Screening Project for youth-service organizations.
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Team Adam is created as a rapid response system, using retired law enforcement officers who are dispatched quickly to the scene of the most serious cases to provide advice and assistance to local law enforcement.
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The 100th child is recovered as a direct result of an AMBER Alert.
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NCMEC recovery rate of missing children is 94%.
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NCMEC receives the 2 millionth call to the National Missing Children Hotline.
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An AMBER Alert plan is adopted in the last of 50 U.S. states.
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Wireless AMBER Alerts are created via Text Messages.
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The CyberTipline takes its 300,000th child sexual-exploitation report.
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Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, NCMEC establishes a special Katrina hotline which handles 34,000 calls, dispatches its Team Adam to shelters in four states, and reunites 5,192 dislocated children with their families.
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NCMEC reunites 4-year-old Cortez Stewart, the last of 5,192 children separated from their families after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with her family.
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The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 creates a national sex offender public database, new registration requirements for convicted sex offenders, and a uniform national system for tracking and locating missing or noncompliant sex offenders.
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The CyberTipline takes its 400,000th child sexual-exploitation report.
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NCMEC recovery rate of missing children is 96%.
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The CyberTipline receives its 500,000th report of suspected child sexual exploitation.
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NCMEC experiences the largest number of recoveries of missing children in the history of NCMEC. The recovery rate of missing children increases to 97%.
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The Child Victim Identification Program reviews and analyzes its 20 millionth image of child pornography.