Roman Rokos still speaks with resentment about the police’s apparent apathy toward his son’s disappearance nearly two years ago.

"They didn’t take my information seriously, I think," Rokos said, noting he had sought help from the authorities numerous times after his ex-girlfriend made off with their 5-year-old, Jan.

Sensing that no help was forthcoming, Rokos began his own search, traveling the country every weekend for nearly half a year and spending 250,000 Kč ($13,000) of his own money to look for his only child.

"The only people who took interest were journalists. ? But there wasn’t much [public] response, because when the media asked police for information, they said more or less nothing," he said, adding that his own investigation generated more leads than the police’s.

Stats

152 Unresolved cases

Warning signs

Sources: Police data as cited by Our Child Foundation, Interior Ministry

On Dec. 28, 2007, more than six months after Rokos first reported Jan’s abduction, police stumbled upon the boy’s lifeless body in the trunk of a car during a random patrol at a cow farm near Most, north Bohemia. Jan’s mother, Antonie Stašková, and her boyfriend Pavel Grepl were arrested and convicted of stabbing the child to death.

As the Interior Ministry launched an early warning system May 25 to prevent such tragedies, police have released alarming new statistics that indicate a rise in missing children and teenagers throughout the country.

In 2008 alone, police recorded a staggering 9,274 cases of missing children aged 18 and under, an increase of 578 from the year before. In the first five months of this year, 3,631 cases have been reported.

The names and photographs on the police online database of unresolved cases figure in the hundreds - among them, 8-year-old Justin Balog, a bespectacled, brown-eyed boy who was reported missing in February; Elena Balogová, a lanky 9-year-old with a crooked smile who disappeared the same month; and 13-year-old Kristýna Coudercová, who vanished in April.

Although the Interior Ministry stresses that police statistics include repeat instances of teenage runaways, the figures are nonetheless disconcerting to nongovernmental experts.

In neighboring Germany, for example, experts estimate 1,000 to 1,500 children are reported missing each year. While it is difficult to make a direct comparison, given that each country collects its data differently, the Czech Republic’s figures still appear to be disproportionately high, said Christiane Hirts, director for the German-based Committee for Missing Children Europe.

But Jitka Gjuričová, director of crime prevention at the Interior Ministry, said the vast majority of missing children in the Czech Republic are located within days. Most of these cases involve teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18 who run away from institutional, state-run children’s homes.

The number of cases involving children "who are really in danger" is actually extremely low, she said, noting the ministry’s new early warning system targets only those missing children whose health or life is deemed at risk.

The system, called the National Coordination Mechanism, requires police to alert broadcasters and news servers to immediately publicize information whenever a child disappears under potentially threatening circumstances. It also requires police psychologists to offer support to missing children’s families and to the children themselves when found.

However, the system was launched without a key component that would have alerted mobile phone users about missing children through SMS text messages.

Gjuričová said this component was delayed due to concerns from the Office for the Protection of Personal Data (ÚOOÚ) over the protection of sensitive information. She added the Interior Ministry and ÚOOÚ are now resolving those concerns, and she expected the text messaging component could be active by next year.

Community effort

Gjuričová said she anticipated that the police would only need to activate the new system in fewer than 10 cases per year, since it focuses only on children who police deem are seriously at risk. That includes children who are under the age 15 who might be victims of accidents due to their young age, as well as those who have no access to life-supporting medicine, are physically or psychologically disabled or are abducted.

Missing children and teenagers who don’t fall within those parameters also face significant dangers, said Monika Šimůnková of the Prague-based NGO Our Child Foundation, adding that teenagers who run away from institutional homes are particularly vulnerable to drug use and prostitution.

"They are much more at risk ? of being victims of sexual abuse, exploitation and pornography," she said.

If teenage runaways from institutional care make up the majority of missing children cases, she said, more should be done to address why - whether they run away from potential mistreatment or suffer from psychological or social problems. "If the numbers are so high, a discussion should start about what to do with this problem and how to solve the reasons for it," she said.

Šimůnková also suggested that part of the reason behind the police’s high statistics could also be explained by an increase in parental abductions as the number of international marriages and relationships grows.

Compared with other countries, the Czech public seems to have a much more subdued response to missing children, she said, and part of that problem might be that people don’t know what to do.

"When a child is missing in Belgium, the whole public is aware of and involved in it," Šimůnková said. "In this country, after [Jan Rokos] died ? it’s considered a little like, ’It happened. It is terrible, but what can we do?’ And that’s all. ? It’s more of a system issue. The public is not so involved in the process as it could and should be."

Once the Interior Ministry implements the mobile text message alerts, she said, she hopes the general public will become more engaged in finding missing children.

For Roman Rokos, however, the public attention to his son’s case came far too late.

Had the ministry’s new system been in place when Jan was missing, Rokos believes his son’s life could have been saved. Still, he said, the system "is not as good as it can be," as there needs to be even more public and police involvement in searches.

"It’s a start, but it needs to be a full-on effort," he said.

- Martina Čermáková and Sarah Borufka contributed to this report.

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