Royce Osbourne, in a skeleton mask, marches in a protest for hurricane victims' rights in New Orleans December 10, 200. Protesters feared they would receive federal funds to rebuild their homes. REUTERS/Lee Celano
Posted on 12/11/2005 6:02:00 AM PST by Libloather
Katrina is gone -- and so are many kids
Team pursues difficult search for more than 1,300 missing children
TINA SUSMAN
Newsday
Posted on Sun, Dec. 11, 2005
Royce Osbourne, in a skeleton mask, marches in a protest for hurricane victims' rights in New Orleans December 10, 200. Protesters feared they would receive federal funds to rebuild their homes. REUTERS/Lee Celano
NEW ORLEANS - Three months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast, the fate of more than 1,300 children remains unknown.
Until a few days ago, Lil Joe and Kolenik Williams, brothers from New Orleans, were among the lost.
A teenage sister living in Baton Rouge when Katrina hit called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children several weeks after the Aug. 29 storm, saying she had not heard from them or from their mother, Nicole Williams.
That left two investigators working for the center to pursue the only lead they had one recent afternoon -- the children's father, an inmate in New Orleans' storm-battered jail.
The father, Joseph Jackson, shook his head as Paul Burke and Bill Gleason pressed for information -- friends' names, relatives' locations, a grandmother's phone number.
Like so many leads, this one was a bust.
The hundreds of missing children could be anywhere, one of the most anguishing and challenging consequences of the flight from Katrina.
In the evacuations after New Orleans flooded, families were scattered across 48 states. Those overseeing evacuations, in their rush to clear people from the city, often separated families as they pressed them onto buses, helicopters and planes, which then went in different directions.
Documentation proving custody of children or other family ties was destroyed or lost. Access to phones and computers was minimal. Shelters had no coordinated system for feeding evacuees' names, birth dates and other information into a national database.
On top of that, many families were severely splintered even before the hurricane.
All of this has created a labyrinthine nightmare for investigators such as Burke and Gleason, who can spend hours a day roaming the mangled streets of New Orleans in search of information that could reunite children with their families.
Burke, a retired Alaska state trooper, and Gleason, a retired Los Angeles homicide detective, are members of Team Adam, a unit of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The group, comprising retired law enforcement officers from across the country, serves as a quick-reaction force when children vanish.
By mid-November, the center's Katrina-related caseload was down to about 1,320.
Two of Nicole Williams' children live with her mother in Texas. Another, a 17-year-old with a baby of her own, lives in Baton Rouge. Only 6-year-old Joseph, known as Lil Joe, and 1-year-old Kolenik were living with their mother in New Orleans.
The key to finding them was to find Nicole Williams, and one way to find her was to find their father.
As Burke and Gleason drove to check on another case, Burke's phone rang and he let out a "whoop!" Nicole Williams' mother had been found in Texas, and she had provided a new phone number for her daughter.
The next day, Nov. 16, the case was declared resolved.
Nicole Williams, Lil Joe and Kolenik had survived the hurricane and floods by holing up in a high-rise building. When the water receded, Williams led the children to the convention center. There, they boarded an evacuation bus to Houston, spent time in a shelter, and in November got vouchers that enabled them to rent an apartment.
Throughout all of this, Williams, in a recent phone interview, said she had tried to contact relatives but that the constant moving, the lack of a phone, and the family's already scattered circumstances made it difficult.
Tip From Pakistan
Jane Warburton, of the International Rescue Committee, blamed assumptions by everyone that the United States' first-world technology, such as e-mail, would overcome any problems.
Without it, people were at a loss, she said.
She offered the earthquake in Pakistan as an example of how things could work:
When injured children were separated from their families to be flown elsewhere for medical treatment, their names were simply scrawled on their skin.
I'm still wondering where all the parolees went...
They'll be found right next to the 20,000 dead bodies, alive and well.
What the hell is 'Hurricane Victim Rights'?
For the children, this is all very sad...rather like the lives they lead prior to the hurricane. I wonder if anyone is considering advising some of these "parents" to clean up their dog vomit lives, quit breeding like bunnies and develop a little sense of responsibilty to others rather than just thinking about satisfying their own "needs".
She waited several weeks to start looking for them??? The way some of these kids behave, it wouldn't surprise me if the parent(s) didn't even look for them.
Gue$$ -
Viole Washington of New Orleans, face to camera, receives a hug from a supporter Njere Alghanee from Atlanta, Ga., in front of New Orleans City Hall, during a hurricane survivors march, Saturday Dec. 10, 2005 in New Orleans. Katrina survivors from New Orleans and the Gulf South and their supporters from around the U.S. assembled at the birthplace of Jazz, Congo Square and marched to the city hall to present a Declaration of the People . (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki)
I'll bet most are with their single mom and living the good welfare life in some other city. The "mom" just hasn't gotten around to looking for the rest of the family.
I would suspect that these missing kids were on the welfare roles and that they never existed, just like the New Orleans cops that never existed. They are for the purpose of scamming taxpayers money.
"Holy cow, man. Have you no shame? You are talking about cute cuddly bunnies like they are some kind of mind numbed heathens."
In Greece we make a wonderful stew, "stifado", out of bunnies! :)
I hope so too. Do you think it might be that the kids left with the adults who were caring for them before Katrina and those adults haven't thought to check in about the kids? I'm thinking along the lines of kids who were being raised by say, a Grandma or an Aunt instead of living with their Mom?
I'm guessing there's not a national data base of kids who are in school where missing school age children could be found by cross checking names. Thinking out loud here...don't kids have to have a birth certificate and shot record when they either start school or change schools. Mine is 29 years old and it's been awhile since I dealt with changing schools and such.
I guess the receiving towns/cities didn't keep records of refugee families they helped. I sure hope these children are just misplaced instead of being victims of the storm.
Where daddy?
Eh? They are worried that they will get money?
BINGO!
.....I'll bet most are with their single mom and living the good welfare life in some other city.....
My bet would be they're living on welfare with granma in some other city. The mom took the opportunity to shuck the kids while she had the chance.
Exactly what I was thinking. I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial number are "phantom dependents."
Then there are situations like the one in the article, where an extended family had not resumed contact (if they ever had it) with all the members, but honestly, how "Missing" can children be if they've been with their mother the whole time?
And she's busy goin to the clubs trying to build up that welfare blanket again...
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