Current Research - Child abduction and child kidnapping

It is an astonishing fact that in this day and age we do not know exactly how many children are abducted or kidnapped each year in the UK or in what circumstances.

To remedy this lamentable situation, PACT and the police agency, CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre), have joined forces to develop the first ever national profile of child abduction in the UK.  This study forms part of a programme of work commissioned by the charity Parents and Abducted Children Together (PACT) to examine the incidence and nature of incidents in which children are taken without consent from their parents or guardians, and to develop proposals for improving the multi-agency response.

The project has four objectives:

1. To examine the number of abductions and kidnappings of children which have occurred in 2011 within the UK.
2. To establish the number of different types of abduction and kidnapping offences committed against children in 2011, and provide further available information on the circumstances of these events.
3. To provide recommendations for future data collection on child abduction, kidnapping and more serious offences that would contribute to an effective assessment of trends in child abduction incidents.
4. To identify any immediate policy and practice issues in the response to child abduction and kidnapping.

The results will be published jointly by PACT and CEOP.

We very much hope that you will find your way to helping us fund this project that can result only in the better protection of one of the most vulnerable sections of our society – children.  Every pound you give will enable us to achieve our goals.