This article is designed to address definitional and conceptual difficulties associated with the understanding of family abductions. A typology of family abduction events is proposed that (a) will contribute to a clearer and more unified definition of the phenomenon itself; (b) reflects and accommodates the full continuum of events—indeed, allows for the view of family abductions as a continuum, varying in degrees of seriousness yet with underlying commonalities; (c) is based on characteristics of the event itself and not of the participants in the event or of its outcomes; and (d) is useful in predicting variations in characteristics of events.
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