In 2019 NCMEC assisted law enforcement and families with more than 29,000 cases of missing children.

Case type:

• 91 percent endangered runaways.
•  4 percent family abductions.
•  4 percent critically missing young adults, ages 18 to 20.
•  Less than 1 percent nonfamily abductions.
•  1 percent lost, injured or otherwise missing children.

Of the nearly 26,300 runaways reported to NCMEC in 2019, 1 in 6 were likely victims of child sex trafficking.

NCMEC also participates in the AMBER Alert Program, a voluntary partnership between broadcasters, transportation agencies, law enforcement agencies, and the wireless industry to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child abduction cases. NCMEC serves as the secondary distributor of these alerts and, to date, 1,000 children have been successfully recovered as a result of the AMBER Alert program, including 75 recoveries credited to the wireless emergency alert program.¹

NCMEC’s forensic artists have age-progressed more than 7,000 images of long-term missing children and created more than 595 facial reconstructions for unidentified deceased children. NCMEC is currently assisting with more than 691 cases of unidentified children’s remains, and so far has assisted in 159 identifications.

Team Adam, which provides rapid, on-site assistance in cases of critically missing children, has deployed more than 1,200 times.² The program was named after Adam Walsh, the abducted and murdered son of NCMEC co-founders John and Revé Walsh.

Team Adam also provides technical assistance and outreach regarding long-term missing child cases and has assisted families, communities, criminal justice, and forensic professionals more than 10,900 times.³

NCMEC has analyzed more than 17,600 attempted child abductions to identify trends and help develop safety tips for families.

NCMEC operates the CyberTipline, a national mechanism for the public and electronic service providers to report instances of suspected child sexual exploitation.

In 2019 the CyberTipline received more than 16.9 million reports, most of which related to:

• Apparent child sexual abuse material.
• Online enticement, including “sextortion.”
• Child sex trafficking.
• Child sexual molestation.

150,667 of those reports were from the public and 16.9 million were from electronic service providers. 

 For a full chart of the number of reports from ESPs in 2019 click here.

Since its inception, the CyberTipline has received more than 74 million reports.⁴

To further NCMEC’s mission and help reduce proliferation, NCMEC has sent more than 336,000 notifications to electronic service providers regarding publicly accessible websites (URLs) on which suspected child sexual abuse material appeared.⁵

NCMEC’s Child Victim Identification Program, which helps to locate and rescue child victims in abusive images, has reviewed more than 315 million images and videos.⁶

In 2019, reports to the CyberTipline included 69.1 million files with 27,788,328 images, 41,280,816 videos, and 89,053 other files.

Law enforcement has identified more than 19,000 child victims.

NCMEC has assisted with more than 173,000 requests related to helping locate noncompliant sex offenders.⁷

^{In 2019, NCMEC responded to more than 10,700 reports regarding possible child sex trafficking.}