By Jordan Farrell
Reporters and well-meaning media people ask my Aunt Jonnie to describe Bethany all the time, and I know that it hurts her because she’s starting to forget. She hardly had any time with Bethany. It’s been longer now that Bethany has been missing than the time she spent with her mother. Bethany would be 36 years old this year, and she was 11 years old when she went missing. That’s 25 years that have passed without her.
So she tells them what she remembers, and I can tell that she wishes she had more to say. She tells them about how she desperately called the hospital where Bethany was born, asking them to send her a copy of her toe prints so that she could try to remember what her baby’s toes looked like. And every time she describes another heartbreaking instance of trying to remember instead of actually remembering, I can picture an eraser slowly erasing the image of Bethany in her mind.
When people ask me, I tell them I was only 7 years old when Bethany went missing. I don’t remember much about her, just that she was real and she was here, and that I had a new roommate and potentially a new friend when she and Aunt Jonnie moved in with us in 2001. Mostly what I remember is the shock of hearing about her disappearance that night in March, and feeling for the first time, at 7 years old, that feeling of wishing I could turn back time. Back to before we found out she was gone. The same desperate feeling of reaching out and not grasping, as the time and the memory just slip away.
I try to collect memories of Bethany to share online, to humanize her to the general public. But it’s hard when they’re so sparse. There will never be enough memories of Bethany. I don’t know why one of the things I remember most is Bethany’s lip gloss container with craft glitter mixed in, that my Aunt Jonnie gave me sometime after Bethany disappeared. I kept it for so many years, until a house fire took all my old belongings. I remember holding the Ricky Martin necklace that Jonnie told me was hers. I’m pretty sure it just said “Ricky Martin” in a scrolling gold font.
I remember writing about Bethany in my journal, saying something like, “Well, I guess she’s never coming home.” My brother found it shortly after and yelled at me for ever writing something like that, and I’m sure I cried.
I remember feeling jealous of Bethany when she moved in with us, because she was the same age as our family friend, a girl I looked up to, and that girl was way more interested in hanging out with Bethany than with a 7-year-old now that Bethany was around. And then I remember feeling guilty for ever feeling jealous.
And now I remember the stories I’ve been told about Bethany. It’s hard to tell if they were my memories or the memories of others, so ingrained that I think I can see them in my mind’s eye.
Bethany was not a statistic. She was my cousin. She was so much more to so many other people, and she still is.
On March 4, 2001, Bethany disappeared. She was eleven years old. She has never come home.
Twenty-five years later, I still wake up some mornings and think about the conversations I never got to have with her. The things I wish I’d known. The things I wish somebody had told me. But most of all, I think about how devastating it would feel to be her mother.
June is Internet Safety Month. It’s also Children’s Awareness Month. And I want to talk to you, parent to parent, about what those words mean to me, and what I need you to do with them.
The World Is Different Now. The Danger Isn’t.
In 2001, we weren’t having conversations about online predators the way we need to today. Social media didn’t exist the way it does now. The idea that a stranger could reach your child through a screen in your own living room, through a game, an app, a message, wasn’t something most parents were prepared for.
It is now.
NCMEC received 1.4 million reports of online enticement of children in 2025 alone. That’s a 156% increase from the year before. The FBI estimates that 500,000 predators are active online every single day, and more than half of the children they target are between the ages of 12 and 15.
I’m not telling you this to scare you. I’m telling you this because I know, and my family knows, what it feels like to not have the information you needed, when you needed it most. And we refuse to just stand by while it happens to another family.
Four Things Every Parent Needs to Do Right Now
1. Know your child’s digital footprint — and know it well.
Everything your child does online leaves a trail. Every app, every account, every photo they post, every game they play. Predators use public social media profiles to find children by way of photos that show a school name on a backpack, a location tag on an Instagram post, or a profile that lists their age and city. Go through every device in your house today. Know what’s on it. Know who your child is talking to. Keep computers and phones in shared spaces, not bedrooms. This is not an invasion of privacy. This is parenting.
2. Move past “stranger danger” — teach “tricky people.”
We were raised on stranger danger. The truth is, that framework doesn’t hold up. In the vast majority of cases, the person who hurts a child is not a stranger, because it’s someone they already know and trust. Online, it’s worse: predators are skilled at building fake relationships. They befriend children over days and weeks, earn their trust, and then use it against them.
Teach your child to recognize tricky behavior instead. Safe adults don’t ask children to keep secrets from their parents. Safe adults don’t offer gifts or special attention to get a child alone. Safe adults don’t make children feel like they’ll be in trouble if they tell. If any adult, online or in person, asks your child to keep something secret from you, that is a red flag. Period.
3. Make sure your child has a “Safe Adult” — and knows who it is.
A trusted adult and a safe adult are not the same thing. Children sometimes trust adults who later hurt them. What we want is for our children to identify at least two or three people in their lives, ideally outside of immediate family, who they know they can go to if something feels wrong. Someone who won’t panic. Someone who will listen and believe them. Someone who will help them tell.
Sit down with your child and do this together. Put a name and a phone number to every finger on one hand. Make it concrete. Make it something they remember.
4. Keep the door open — even when it’s hard.
This is the one that matters most. Children go silent when they are more afraid of the consequence than the danger. When they think they’ll lose their phone, get grounded, or disappoint you, they stay quiet. And that silence is exactly what a predator counts on.
Have regular, honest conversations about what your child sees and does online, but don’t have interrogations. Have conversations. Let them know, clearly and often: if something ever happens that scares you or makes you uncomfortable, you will not be in trouble for telling me. I will always believe you. I will always help you.
Say those words out loud. Repeat them. They matter more than any parental control software on the market.
We’re Building Something So You Don’t Have to Do This Alone.
The Bethany Markowski Foundation exists because Bethany never got to come home. Because her family, our family, had to learn to navigate a world that wasn’t built to support us.
We are building free child safety resources for Tennessee families so that no parent has to walk into a conversation with their child unprepared, and no family has to face the aftermath of the unthinkable without somewhere to turn.
Later this year, we’re launching a free video course series for parents and caregivers, built on the best evidence-based safety frameworks available, designed to be practical, trauma-informed, and accessible to every family, regardless of income or background.
We’re not there yet. We’re in the building phase right now, and working hard behind the scenes to secure the funding that makes these programs possible. But we will get there. And when we do, we want you to be the first to know.
A Quiet Ask
We don’t want your pity. We want your attention because your child is still here, and the window to have these conversations is right now.
The last thing Bethany ever said to her mother was “I love you.”
She has spent 25 years doing everything she can to make sure Bethany’s name is never forgotten and her story means something. This foundation is that. These resources are that. Every parent who reads this and goes home and talks to their child tonight is a product of that.
If this reached you, share it. There is a parent in your circle who needs to read this today.
If you want to support the work we’re doing, you can donate at givebutter.com/gptnQ8. Every dollar we raise goes directly toward building the free resources Tennessee families deserve.
And if you want to stay connected, follow us, sign up for our email list, and be part of what we’re building.
Bethany deserved a safer world. So do your children. Let’s build it together.
— Jordan Farrell, Bethany’s cousin | Secretary, The Bethany Markowski Foundation
