it’s every parent’s nightmare, your child has gone missing. Watch this video from John Walsh, the founder of America’s Most Wanted and The Center for Missing and a Exploited Children. He gives you the tools and knowledge you need to know and what to do BEFORE you’re child disappears. If that nightmare comes true it will be the single most important too you’ll need to find your child. Hopefully you’ll never need it.
Adam Walsh’s family still celebrates his birthday every year. The boy was only 6 years old when he was abducted and murdered in 1981. “I was lucky to have that little boy for six years,” his father, John Walsh, exclusively told Closer Weekly in the magazine’s latest issue, on newsstands now. “He was a beautiful little boy. He made me a better man.”
To honor his son’s legacy, John became a victims’ rights advocate and hosted the reality show America’s Most Wanted from 1988 until 2012. The show was credited with catching nearly 1,500 dangerous fugitives. Now, John’s coming out of retirement to host a new series,In Pursuit, and he’s teaming up with his 34-year-old son, Callahan, who cohosts the show.
“I grew up with my parents telling me, ‘We need to make sure that your brother Adam didn’t die in vain,’” Callahan exclusively told Closer at a recent event for In Pursuit at the Paley Center for Media in NYC. “We try to do that every day.”
John went through dark times after Adam was kidnapped at a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida. “When he was found dead, I spiraled into hell,” John recalled. “I was suicidal. I kept saying, ‘I can’t stand this pain. I need to get off this planet.’”
But he drew on an inner strength he had learned from his father, a decorated World War II bomber pilot who died at age 54. “On his deathbed, he told me, ‘Evil prevails when good men do nothing,’” John remembered. That’s when he realized he needed to something about it. “Good men need to hunt down the bad men,” the host learned from his father, whom he said “was a great role model” to him.
John and his wife of 47 years, Revé, cofounded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which has assisted in recovering more than 280,000 kids. And with America’s Most Wanted, “I watched my father saddle up every week and catch some of the worst criminals this nation has,” Callahan said. “I understood from an early age that my parents fight back.”
That battle continues with In Pursuit, which asks viewers to share tips and help track down fugitives from the law. “I’m asking people to do what I’ve done all my life,” John said. “We want justice.”
For more on your favorite celebs, pick up the latest issue of Closer Weekly, on newsstands now — and be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more exclusive news!
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Alienated parents share unanswered texts to their kids and it’s crushing
by:Alexandra Carlton
Being prevented from seeing or communicating with your child is a special kind of hell – but a parent’s love never dies.
Imagine if you were unable to see or speak to your own young child.
You may know where they live. You may have a phone number or email address or social media handle for them.
But because they live with a hostile parent who controls their contact – your efforts to communicate disappear into a black hole of despair.
Alienated parents, also known as ‘targeted parents’ are distinct from estranged parents, who have a rift in their relationship with a child for a legitimate reason such as abuse, neglect or infidelity.
Alienated children have been caught in high-conflict separations where they have been forced to choose a side, and are aligned, both physically and emotionally, with one parent, rejecting the other.
Reaching out to an alienated child: ‘Never give up’
For loving parents, yearning for child who is alive but cut off from them is a special kind of agony – a pain some have described as “a living death”.
Almost all targeted parents continue to reach out to their children by whatever means available, as a way to let their children know that they haven’t given up. Amanda Sillars, who runs alienated support group The Eeny Meeny Miney Mo Foundation, calls these communication attempts “breadcrumbs of love”.
I asked a dozen alienated parents to share some of these “breadcrumbs of love” – messages of unbreakable love that went unanswered.
The responses are beyond heartbreaking:
This mum sent thousands of unanswered messages to her sons over the years before discovering their phone had been cut off. Source: Alex Carlton
Parents never give up – no matter what. Source: Alex Carlton
What does parental alienation look like?
Never assume that a parent who doesn’t see their child has done something wrong.
In some cases there may be court orders that mandate that the child must see both parents, but the alienating parent defies them with impunity.
Sometimes there may be no court orders but the alienating parent has successfully ‘turned’ a child against their mother or father, resulting in the child taking one parents’ side in an effort to reduce the conflict between the parents.
In almost all cases, the alienated child had a loving, normal and secure relationship with the parent they no longer see before the alienation happened – even if their demeanour towards the targeted parent has become hostile.
What does the research say?
There is little Australian data available about parental alienation but according to a study from published in the Children and Youth Services Review, at least 22 million American parents may be a victim of this terrible form of abuse.
It’s thought to affect both mothers and father equally. It can be a difficult concept to understand, even for professionals. Research about it is minimal and there is little consensus about appropriate remedies.
It is recognised in courts in the US, Canada and the UK – and increasingly in Australia – but more research is needed to find out why it happens, what the effects are on children and parents and the what the legal and therapeutic communities can do to help those it affects. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has some information here.
If you are a parent who is alienated from their child or a child who is alienated from a parent, The Eenie Meenie Miney Mo Foundation has some excellent resources that may help.
Most of all, stay strong. And never give up.
How to reach out to your alienated child
Amanda Sillars urges targeted parents to keep trying to contact their children, even if they receive no response, as they may one day be the ‘breadcrumbs’ that their children can follow to reconnect and reunite with the parent they love and terribly miss.
“Often the children read the messages but they don’t want to be caught responding,” she explains. “You might not see the positive outcomes for months or years – but your kids may one day have an opportunity, away from the house or on holidays, to try and reach out. Don’t give up.”
She offers some excellent tips for parents trying to communicate with their alienated child here.
Tips for reaching out to an alienated child
- Speak with love and kindness
- Always stay calm and never react
- Focus forward
- Don’t bombard them with communications even though you may be excited to get a break through
- Expect crumbs in communication – anything more is a bonus
- No response is not always a bad thing
- Be the best version of you
- Avoid dark and heavy conversations
- Show your children that you are interested in them
- Ask them about school, activities or hobbies they may be involved in, friendships they have and so on
- Avoid talking about the situation
- Remember: actions speak louder than words
- Don’t make promises you cannot fulfil
