I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like for a mother whose child was kidnapped.
It’s believed kidnappings don’t occur often.
“It doesn’t happen very often, but they’re certainly the cases that capture our attention because they strike at our worst fears,” Robert Lowery, a vice president at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) told Reuters.
The FBI doesn’t actually track confirmed kidnappings.
While hundreds of thousands of juveniles are reported missing to the FBI each year, about 95 percent of cases are of kids who run away. About .01 percent are reported as being abducted.
There are about 350 people under the age of 21 who are abducted by strangers each year.
Parents are the most likely culprit.
It’s more common for a child to be abducted by a non-custodial parent.
This type of abduction occurred about 2,359 times in 2017, and a U.S. Department of Justice study from 2022 found that 99.8 percent of children that were reported missing in these cases were found alive.
This was thankfully the case for a 3-year-old boy Noah who police say was taken by his 35-year-old father.
Noah wasn’t the only one he took.
Jacob Clare is accused of kidnapping his son after a scheduled visit in Tennessee, in addition to kidnapping his 16-year-old niece with who he is reported to have had an inappropriate relationship.
The teen was initially deemed as a runaway after her mother reported her missing since she is believed to have gone with Jacob Clare willingly.
She was then classified as an Endangered Missing child and an Amber Alert was issued for her as well.
“It’s been a complete and total nightmare. There were moments where I thought I was never going to get him back,” Noah’s mom told Inside Edition.
FOX 5 San Diego reports that Noah was found in San Clemente, California after Good Samaritan Julia Bonin spotted Noah, his dad, and his 16-year-old cousin walking near Doheny State Park in Dana Point.
At first, she didn’t think anything of it but the more she thought about it she knew she had to drop her son off at school and go back.
“I dropped him off at school and turned around and headed back north,” Bonin said, “and (I parked) and got out of my car and took a photo and called dispatch and reported what it was,” she told the news outlet.
A few minutes later she learned that the two children were found safe and that Jacob Clare was taken into custody.
“I just want to say to everybody to trust your instincts, your gut, because I almost didn’t act upon it,” Bonin told NewsChannel5 Nashville.
Jacob Clare was later charged with various kidnapping counts, as well as other sex crimes.
A woman who claimed to be Jacob Clare’s “spiritual advisor” was also charged with aiding Jacob Clare in his plans.
The kidnapping isn’t what went viral.
It was the story about his reunion with his mother. The video of Noah returning to his mother was viewed more than 1.6 million times on Inside Edition’s YouTube page alone.
There’s nothing like a mother’s love.
The video shows Noah running down a hallway into his mother’s arms as she cries.
She just sits on the floor with him and hugs him. She, obviously, couldn’t have been more relieved to have her son back and safe in her arms.
“It was the second-best moment of my life. The first being the moment he was born,” Noah’s mom said.
Watch the touching moment in the video below!
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