For the Lost Blog

I receive quite a bit of e-mail relating to the For the Lost site. There are suggestions, thanks, tips, and of course communications from the families of the missing.

Last week I received a communication that asked me to remove four children from my recovered photo gallery. I complied; although this case had been a family abduction it had never been on the actual site and it was possible it was due to some sort of misunderstanding.

Then I receive a missing child poster alert from NCMEC. The same four children were involved. This was not something I wanted to see. What made it worse was the article I later found on the Websleuths boards.

Police Issue Amber Alert for Four Children

Needless to say, I will be putting them up again when they are found, and not taking them down. And yes, the mother accused of abducting them was the person who wrote me. Who has already taken them three times. The sheer audacity of someone writing me to take down her kids’ photos a week before she abducts them again is almost funny.

Tayna Brown to receive five years probation

The father of two girls who were abducted by their mother in 2005 reacted with outrage Tuesday to the punishment she received.

Or more precisely, the lack of punishment.

“Five years probation? C’mon,” Chuck Brown said Tuesday, after the no-jail sentencing of his former wife, Tanya Diane Brown.

Tanya Brown, who hid five abducted children for three years in a remote mountain home near Tehachapi, was sentenced Tuesday to five years probation with no jail time.

Sadly, this is all too common in family abduction cases. Even though the children are now far behind in school and didn’t get medical care while they were gone, the abducting parent usually gets away with a slap on the wrist. It is a tragic effect of the school of thought that the kid is with a parent and is therefore all right.