Child abduction or Child theft is the abduction or kidnapping of a child (or baby) by an older person.

Several distinct forms of child abduction exist:

• A parent removes or retains a child from the other parent's care (often in the course of or after divorce proceedings).
• A stranger removes a child for criminal purposes:
  • for child sexual abuse, torture, or murder
  • for extortion, to elicit a ransom from the child's caretakers
• A stranger removes a child, with the intent to rear the child as their own

While cases have been reported from antiquity, this phenomenon has recently taken on greater awareness as a result of movies and television series (example: Without a Trace) depictions of the premise of people who remove children from strangers to bring up as their own often after the death of their own child.

Abductions by strangers

Perhaps the most feared (although, ironically, the least common) kind of abduction is removal by a stranger. The stereotypical version of stranger abduction is the classic form of "kidnapping," exemplified by the Lindbergh kidnapping, in which the child is detained, transported some distance, held for ransom or with intent to keep the child permanently. These instances are, however, rare.