WATERVILLE – Ayla Reynolds’ name has become known across the country in the week since the 20-month-old girl disappeared from her home on Violette Avenue.

As the search for the toddler continues, Maine law enforcement officials and the people close to Ayla continue to face questions from the media.

News outlets from the Sacramento Bee in California to the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, have picked up the story. Relatives of Ayla have appeared on network and cable television news to discuss the search and the circumstances of the case.

Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland said media inquiries have come from all over the country, with the Waterville Police Department in charge of disseminating information to reporters through email.

“Anytime there’s a missing child, there’s a lot of interest,” McCausland said.

The possibility that Ayla was abducted — one of many scenarios that police aren’t ruling out — has rankled the public, said Michael Rocque, an adjunct instructor in the University of Maine’s sociology department.

“There really can’t be a more vulnerable victim than a 20-month-old,” he said.

Rocque said Ayla’s age and the safety of Waterville, relative to other places in the U.S., may have driven national media attention toward the case.

“The ones that get attention happen in middle-class areas where it is, ostensibly, safe,” Rocque said. “The community has sort of pressed the issue, and that has made it into a news story, whereas in inner cities there may not be a community to advocate for the victim.”

In many missing-child cases, a phenomenon known as “moral panic” can set in, said James Cook, an assistant professor of social science at the University of Maine at Augusta. He describes that as an intensity of feeling in a population in response to an issue that appears to be a larger societal problem.

“When a missing-child case comes up, it tends to spread,” Cook said. “We respond to those and tend to think of them as broader social phenomenons, even when they aren’t.”

Trista Reynolds, Ayla’s mother, appeared Friday on NBC’s “Today” show. She said 24-year-old Justin DiPietro, the child’s father, who reported her missing Dec. 17, is somewhat at fault.

“I trusted him to keep her safe,” Reynolds said on the show, “and now she is missing and I don’t know where she is. I blame him right now. He did not protect her the way he was supposed to.”

Reynolds, 23, who is staying in South Portland, has said she and DiPietro never had a committed relationship.

Nancy Grace, the tough-talking former prosecutor with a self-titled show on HLN, discussed Ayla’s case for two full episodes this week, featuring interviews with family members.

Much of Grace’s focus has been on DiPietro. While noting that he hasn’t been identified as a suspect, she has called some of his actions into question.

Waterville police have said that when Ayla disappeared, she was wearing a soft splint on her left arm, which she broke in an accidental fall a few weeks ago.

On Monday, Trista Reynolds told Grace that DiPietro had said Ayla broke her arm when he fell on her while holding her and walking up “two or three little steps.”

She said DiPietro waited “almost 24 hours to bring her to the emergency room.”

Kennebec Journal Staff Writer Michael Shepherd can be contacted at 621-5662 or at:

mshepherd@mainetoday.com