The state takes a child from her family. It says it’s keeping her safe. Then it loses her. In Georgia, according to a bipartisan U.S. Senate investigation, 1,790 children were reported missing from the state’s foster care system between 2018 and 2022. More than 410 of them were identified as likely sex trafficking victims. When the state loses children, predators don’t.

This is the Father’s Advocacy Network podcast. I’m Adam Neuerburg. Today’s episode is about the most extreme failure of the foster care system, and the one least discussed. Children who were taken into state care for their protection, who then go missing, and who end up in the hands of traffickers. This is not a fringe story. It’s a pattern, and it runs through state after state.

Let’s start in Georgia. In 2023, a bipartisan Senate investigation, led by Senator Jon Ossoff, with Senator Marsha Blackburn as ranking member, looked at Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services. Here’s what it found. 1,790 children reported missing from Georgia’s child welfare care between 2018 and 2022, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. More than 410 of those missing children identified as likely sex trafficking victims. That’s over 20 percent. And in 84 percent of the cases that were reviewed, the agency failed to properly assess risk and safety.

84 percent. Let that sink in. This is the agency that walks into family homes and judges whether parents are keeping their kids safe. And when the children were in its own care, it failed to properly assess their safety in more than 8 out of 10 of the cases reviewed. And here’s what you need to understand. These aren’t just kids who ran away. Missing is not a clerical category. Missing is a safety failure.

So how did the agency respond? According to the report, when confronted with the findings, the agency’s attorneys pushed back. They alleged misstatements and omissions. They suggested the Senate probe created a, quote, political impression. And they pointed to their internal policies and a dedicated missing children unit. Policies on paper. That’s always the answer. But a system can have every policy in the world and still fail in real life. And even one missing child who ends up trafficked is already too many. Here, we’re talking about more than 410. That’s not a partisan talking point. That’s a public safety crisis.

Now zoom out to the national picture, because Georgia is not the exception. An estimated 60 to 70 percent of identified child sex trafficking victims have a history in the child welfare system. That estimate comes from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the FBI, and multiple state-level analyses.

Say that out loud. Most identified child trafficking victims came through the very system that claims to protect children. Why are foster youth targeted? Because the system has already set them up. They’re carrying deep trauma that traffickers know how to exploit. They’ve been pulled away from stable adults and their support networks. They’re moved from placement to placement, which makes them easier to lose track of. And some are running from placements that lack training, stability, or support. A Fulton County prosecutor put it plainly. Quote. If youth are running away from care, what are they running from?

That question should be asked in every courtroom in America. Because the system loves to frame a missing foster child as a runaway. As the kid’s problem. But if children keep fleeing your care, maybe the problem is your care. Our research identifies a set of failures built into the structure itself. Group homes and congregate care settings have been repeatedly linked to trafficking recruitment, with kids often unsupervised at critical hours. Youth who age out at 18 without stable housing, a job, or family connections face dramatically elevated trafficking risk. The system’s clock runs out. A predator’s doesn’t. And when a foster child goes missing, the response is often bureaucratic instead of urgent. Many states lack standardized, immediate trafficking-risk protocols for missing foster youth. A spreadsheet may say case closed. A file may say efforts made. And the child is still missing.

This is not one state’s problem. In Connecticut, a 2017 state review found that 86 percent of child sex trafficking victims identified by the state had prior involvement with child welfare. In Florida, the state’s Department of Children and Families reported that of the nearly 1,000 children reported missing from care in one year, the vast majority had been victims of trafficking or at risk for it. In Los Angeles County, the county’s child welfare department found that more than half of commercially sexually exploited children in the county were current or former foster youth. And nationwide, of the more than 25,000 runaways reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2022, one in six were likely child sex trafficking victims. And according to the report, the majority had been in the care of social services or foster care.

Now let’s go to Missouri, because Missouri shows you exactly how a system loses children, step by step, in the government’s own findings. In 2019 alone, 978 children went missing at some point from Missouri foster care. That’s roughly 1 in 20 children in the state’s custody. Over a two and a half year period, from July 2018 to December 2020, there were 1,780 missing episodes. And the average missing episode lasted 37 days. 37 days. More than a month, on average, for every missing episode of a child in the state’s custody. In August 2019, federal agents joined a Department of Justice operation to help locate children missing from Missouri foster care. What they found triggered an investigation by the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Not into one case. Into patterns of failure across the whole state system. The inspector general looked at 59 cases in detail. 49 of those children had known risk factors for going missing. Only 7 case files showed evidence the child got services to reduce that risk.

49 children with warning signs. 7 with help. The warning signs were documented. The intervention wasn’t. It gets worse. About half of the reviewed files had no evidence that Missouri reported the children as missing to law enforcement or to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And in 36 of the 59 cases, case managers did not notify juvenile officers, courts, or parents that the child was missing.

If you’re a parent listening right now, hear that. The state took custody of these children. And in 36 of the 59 cases reviewed, the case managers didn’t tell juvenile officers, courts, or parents that the child was gone. Of the 41 children who came back into care, 13 had no evidence of required health and safety checks. For roughly 1 in 3, case managers didn’t document any assessment of what the child had been through while missing, including possible trafficking. And what had some of them been through? Several children used drugs while missing. Others became pregnant. At least one child was sex-trafficked across four states while missing from Missouri foster care.

And then the most damning finding of all. Missouri officials acknowledged to federal investigators that they could not rely on their own case-management system to accurately identify which children were actually missing. The system reportedly couldn’t tell the difference between a child whose whereabouts were truly unknown, and a child in an unauthorized but known placement. In plain English, the state could not always answer the most basic question there is. Where is the child?

And Missouri is just one window. The broader federal watchdog report found more than 110,000 missing-child episodes nationwide during the 2018 to 2020 study period.

So what should accountability look like? Not performative reform. Real, measurable, public accountability. Public reporting of how many foster youth go missing, and how long it takes to find them. Independent audits of placement quality and runaway prevention. Immediate trafficking-risk screening the moment a child is reported missing. Clear consequences when safety obligations are repeatedly not met. And survivor testimony treated as evidence, not as an inconvenience. Notice what’s not on that list. More money. More staff. Bigger budgets. This isn’t about resources. Missouri couldn’t reliably tell you which of its children were missing. Georgia’s agency answered a Senate investigation, in part, by pointing to its own policies. The problem is power without accountability. And remember where this starts. When the system removes a child from a family, it takes on responsibility for that child’s safety. Our research ties trafficking to the same patterns behind so many other failures: unnecessary removals driven by poverty, higher abuse rates inside the system, and billions spent without accountability. When the state takes a child, and then loses that child, and a predator finds them, the system has failed at the most fundamental level there is.

If your child is in foster care right now, here’s what you can do. This isn’t legal advice. FAN is not a law firm. But these steps can help you protect your child. One. Ask, in writing, to be notified right away if your child is ever missing from their placement. Missouri’s own case files show parents often weren’t told. Make the request part of the record. Two. Document everything. Every visit, every call, every placement change, with names, dates and times. Get the full names of your caseworker and their supervisor. Three. Request your child’s case records, including placement history and any missing episode reports. Frequent moves are a warning sign. Know where your child is, and how often they’re being moved. Four. If your child has run from a placement, ask what they were running from, and whether a safety and trafficking assessment was done when they came back. Ask for that in writing. Five. Put every request to your attorney in writing, especially about placement safety, and keep copies. And you don’t have to fight this alone. Go to fathers advocacy network dot com slash case help.

The full research report, with the Senate findings, the inspector general’s Missouri findings, and every source we used, is at fathers advocacy network dot com, in our foster care research section. If this episode shook you, share it. Send it to anyone who thinks removing a child automatically makes that child safe. And follow the show, so you don’t miss the next one. I’m Adam Neuerburg. This is the Father’s Advocacy Network. Let the silenced speak.