TEHRAN -- Hundreds of children go missing in the United States every day. U.S. police stations receive daily reports of missing children and young adults. Many are never seen again.

Some 85 percent of the missing are under the age of 17. Every 18 seconds one child goes missing in the U.S., forcing desperate parents to turn to the authorities for help according to the Fox News network.

The report said that about 700,000 children go missing in the U.S. annually. Most of them are runaways but about 300,000 have been kidnapped.

These children are often irreparably damaged both physically and psychologically.

Family problems are a major contributing factor to the missing children phenomenon, which sometimes even results in the children being murdered.

The problem has become so bad in the United States that the U.S. Congress has established a national center to search for missing children.