Missing children panic

[5][2] The panic popularized the misleading claim that 1.5 million children per year disappeared or were abducted in the United States,[1][6][7][4] introduced the stranger danger narrative into public discourse[6][7] and intensified tropes relating to the sexual predation and murder of boys by homosexuals in American culture, especially after the publicization of gay serial killers Ottis Toole, John Wayne Gacy and Randy Kraft.

The same phenomenon happened in parallel in the United Kingdom, where sensational media coverage of the topic led the public to assume that child abduction and murder rates were increasing in Britain as well.

[1][5] Public anxiety and news media reports about child abductions, which mainly focused on young boys being kidnapped and sexually assaulted by adult males, fueled the trope of "predatory homosexuals" in the 1980s, especially after gay serial killer Ottis Elwood Toole confessed to murdering Walsh in 1983.

[2] Amid multiple televised reports of missing children cases, the 1980s saw an increase of TV news programs styled after the tabloid press, as well as true-crime shows that often failed to distinguish facts from fiction.

In 1984, Nightmare on Elm Street was released, featuring fictional character Freddy Krueger, a demonic child molester who resurrected after being killed by a group of vigilantes.

[3] In 1983, a TV docudrama titled Adam, which documented Walsh family's activism for increasing child abduction awareness, reached an estimated audience of 38-50 million people in October of the same year before airing again in 1984.