Mike Brooks: Hope for missing boy

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(CNN) -- Cases of kidnapped and missing children have dominated the headlines this summer. Family abductions and domestic kidnappings are among the major categories cited by the law enforcement officials who break these cases. CNN's Law Enforcement Analyst Mike Brooks talked to CNN Anchor Leon Harris about the stories behind these statistics and specifically about the case of missing California 9-year-old Nicholas Michael Farber.

Brooks is a 26-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department, Washington D.C., where he retired as a detective in the Intelligence Branch. He was assigned for the last six years of his service to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. After retiring from the D.C. Police Department, he worked as a senior instructor with the Security Specialties Division of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, before joining Delta Air Lines as a staff manager in the Corporate Security Department. There he has been involved in developing industry standards for training of flight personnel in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks.

HARRIS: Have you heard anything new about this case?

BROOKS: No, nothing absolutely new. They are still looking for the mother, the child's still missing. Most likely, there is a possibility they probably still may be in the area, but that is unknown.

HARRIS: Let me ask you about the mother. News coming out about restraining orders, a number of them, being issued against her, one by this boy's father. You say these kind of things do factor into these domestic cases quite a bit.

BROOKS: Quite a bit. Many times -- in this particular case, she had two restraining orders on her. That would lead me to believe maybe there was some violence in the relationship ... If there was a relationship, and a custody dispute and the husband or the wife gives a restraining order, sometimes that exacerbates the situation. But in this particular case she may be the one who was egging him on. It's hard to say. But I still think she's probably involved in the kidnapping of this child.

HARRIS: We've talked about these cases, but there is a difference in this one. Now that this domestic angle has been introduced. How does that make the investigation process different, or does it?

BROOKS: It doesn't make it any different. It's still is a crime. Whether she's doing it by herself or with someone else, it's still a crime. And law enforcement are going to treat it as a kidnapping, whether it be a family member, a friend, you know, her accomplices, they're still criminals, and they're going to lock them up.

HARRIS: Accomplices is a key word here. We have not had a case this summer yet where there have been accomplices involved at all. Does that complicate the process of the investigation, if we're talking about a case where someone has actually hired someone to abduct a child?

BROOKS: Sometimes that can lead you to more clues, more leads, because a lot of people like to run their mouth. People get out and they talk about it, and someone else knows something, someone else knows that they're involved in this, and it may lead them to arrests and help solve the case.

HARRIS: How would you classify this? We've been talking about child abductions by strangers. How would you classify one that ... maybe the parent is involved [in] or it may be a family matter, but the execution of the abduction itself is being done by a stranger here.

BROOKS: Yes, well, if she's involved, and it sounds like she most likely is, that would be classified as a family abduction. You know, even though it sounds like a fairly dysfunctional family at best, it still will be classified as a family abduction. You look at the numbers. Family abductions, 354,100. You know, that's amazing. You figure, every year there are 840,000 missing persons. In 2001, 840,279. That is a combination of adults and juveniles, and 85 percent to 95 percent of them were juveniles under the age of 18. So that's almost an average of 2,000 people, kids missing every day that the parents felt was serious enough that they called the police. That's an amazing number to me.

HARRIS: Now, again, though, we have been saying and trying to remind folks, that even though his has been in the headlines quite a bit, the actual numbers for abductions by strangers is actually down a bit. But let me ask you this, for those who may be in throes right now of custody problems. If you are a father or mother in a case, what kind of a -- are there any kind of signs you might be looking for to whether or not it might happen or might be coming down the road.

BROOKS: There are a number of different signs. The best thing is to keep communication open between the parents, one parent to another, and the children. You know, the children are the victims here. They are the ones who are the real victims. They are the ones who are going to suffer the most trauma down the road, and the long- lasting effects it has on the kids, it's just unbelievable.

HARRIS: And statistically, any idea about how many cases actually get resolved and child returned unharmed?

BROOKS: The majority of them, usually the kids are returned unharmed, because you know, again, the parents don't want to hurt the children. They want the children.

HARRIS: Mike Brooks, our law enforcement analyst.