Take Root, a non-profit organization established on a grant from the United States Department of Justice, was the first missing-child organization to be founded by former

abducted children Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor (a child under the age of legal adulthood) from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians. The term ''child abduction'' includes two lega ...

. Founded in 2003 as a program under the auspices of the Association of Missing & Exploited Children's Organizations and independently incorporated as a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...

in 2005, Take Root had over five hundred former abducted children participate in its ground-breaking peer support program for former abducted children, creating an unprecedented knowledge and database used by its Child Abduction Studies branch to develop multidisciplinary training, case consultation, and policy recommendations. The agency's mission is to "insert the voice of the primary victim into public and policy discussions on child abduction, using the collected wisdom of former victims to improve America's missing-child response." Their tags-line are "beyond recovering missing-children; to helping missing-children recover" and, "where missing children are seen and heard." Take Root was the brain child of Melissa "Liss" Haviv, a Fulbright Scholar in cultural anthropology touted by NPR as a leading expert in the victimology of long term child abduction

References

*Belzman, Josh
"Victims of Family Abduction Speak Out"
MSNBC.com, May 14. *Feeg, Veronica, "What is Not Part of the Child Abduction News Story?", Journal of Pediatric Nursing (Jannetti) 33 (1), Jan-Feb 2007. *Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention, What About Me? Coping With the Abduction of a Brother or Sister (published 2007). *Hammer, Nancy

USA Today, Sept 2003. *Pressley, Sue Ann

The Washington Post, June 6, 2006:A01. *Halloran, Liz
"When the Missing Return Recovery is Long Too"
NPR, May 15, 2013 Children's charities based in the United States {{US-philanthropy-org-stub

See also

References