Missing child case 'awakened America'

NEW YORK.  April 22. KAZINFROM More than 30 years ago, 6-year-old Etan Patz vanished from a Manhattan street on his way to a school bus stop. His parents never saw him again.

The case -- lately reopened by police -- riveted millions. It also changed the country, Kazinform has learned from CNN.

"It awakened America," said Ernie Allen, president and chief executive officer of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "It was the beginning of a missing children's movement."

The Patz case was the first of several high-profile cases that catapulted concern about missing children to the forefront of national consciousness.

Just weeks after Etan disappeared in May 1979, an attacker abducted the first of more than 20 children to be kidnapped and killed in Atlanta, stirring fear until police arrested a suspect two years later.

 

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