SPECIAL REPORT: inside SA's crisis of missing children

A total of 16,000 children have gone missing since the turn of the millennium, but new research says the police database is confusing and unreliable, making it difficult to understand and analyse the scale of the problem.

A source in the police family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit said: “The situation around missing children for the entire country is dire.”

The issue was catapulted back into the headlines this week by the discovery in Durban of what is believed to be the body of nine-year-old Miguel Louw, more than a month after he disappeared.

The anguish of Miguel’s mother, Raylene, is replicated in thousands of homes across the country, and now Missing Children SA has revived dozens of cold cases in an attempt to draw attention to the crisis.

Read the full story in the Sunday Times.