Associated Press
The needs of a missing 5-year-old girl who authorities began looking for two years after she was last seen were not prioritized from the time she was an infant in Massachusetts until her father was awarded custody of her in New Hampshire, the head of Massachusetts' Office of the Child Advocate said in a report released Wednesday. Harmony Montgomery, who's last known sighting was in 2019 while in the custody of her father, suffered from a ripple effect of "miscalculations of risk and unequal weight placed on parents' rights versus a child's wellbeing," said Maria Mossaides, head of the Office of the Child Advocate. Montgomery, still the subject of a search, was born in Massachusetts in 2014 to unmarried parents who were no longer together and had a history of substance abuse, according to the report by the independent agency.