Today's arraignment was difficult for us beyond what we had imagined, and there are no words to express the anguish we feel as Danielle's parents and her greatest admirers. But today was an important step forward in hopefully finding our daughter and making sure that this doesn't happen to any other innocent child.

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Van Dams Respond To Westerfield Arraignment

First we want to thank the police and their investigators for getting us to this point. We have confidence that the prosecutors will demonstrate the same level of commitment in bringing about justice in this case.

We also want to express our deepest gratitude to the thousands of volunteers who have already helped. You are an amazing community of people, and we love you.

We have been asked again and again how are we feeling, all we can answer is, that we miss Danielle desperately and that the pain of her absence is absolutely unbearable. This makes finding Danielle the single most important priority, for us as her parents, but also our community of mothers and fathers and daughters and sons who would want the same. So we ask that you adopt Danielle as one of your own, and step forward to volunteer this weekend to help search for her.

We are working with Diane Hoffman, director of Danielle Search Center, to launch one of our most aggressive search efforts to date, this Saturday and Sunday. We ask that the news media continue to help us get the word out, as you have for the past 25 days. You have played a crucial role, and we thank you.