PACT - Every Five Minutes

EVERY FIVE MINUTES A CHILD GOES MISSING

It is a shocking statistic. Yet, it is almost certainly an underestimate. We can’t be sure because there are no reliable national statistics to tell us. In the UK, we are better informed on the number of stray dogs taken into care each year.

In a study published today, the charity Parents and Abducted Children Together (PACT) exposes, comprehensively and meticulously, the manifold gaps in our information on children who disappear.

PACT’s study shows that, in the absence of a national system for recording the disappearance of children, grasping the true extent of the problem is nigh-on impossible. One crude estimate, based on reports made to the police, is that about 100,000 children go missing each and every year. But we do not know for sure. We do not know how many have been abducted; how many have been thrown out of their homes; how many have simply run away; or what happens to them while they are missing.

A number of detailed case studies also demonstrate that such statistics, as do exist, are both confused and fragmented. There is not even agreement among researchers on what constitutes ‘missing’ or, even, a ‘child’.

"It's an absolute scandal that there are no nationally gathered statistics on missing children," says Lady (Catherine) Meyer, founder of PACT. "Without reliable data, we cannot know the extent or nature of the problem, which makes it impossible to create policies to protect our children.”

Having exposed the problem, PACT’s study makes detailed proposals for tackling it. These are drawn, in part, from the experience of the United States, where for twenty years research and policy have been far in advance of the UK. The American experience shows that effective measures to protect children can be taken only when there are reliable, regular and nationally coordinated statistics with clear definitions of the different circumstances in which children go missing. This also clears the way for the necessary cooperation between police, government agencies and non-governmental organisations.

PACT firmly believes that, as in the US, it falls to the government, specifically the Home Office, to remedy this deplorable situation and to put in place a national statistical framework that enables us to grasp clearly the scale and nature of the problem of Britain’s missing children. Only then will we be in a position to devise strong policies to protect those that are most vulnerable.

PRESS BRIEFING for the release of the new PACT report 'Every Five Minutes'
Monday 31 October, 2005 at 6.30 pm
Vintners' Hall, Upper Thames Street, London EC4

Further information, please contact Teresa Selwyn on 020 7627 3699
tselwyn@pact-online.org

Note to the Editor:

* PACT is a non-profit organisation registered in the UK and the US. Its mission is to fight parental child abduction across borders and to help the Police locate and retrieve missing children

* PACT’s Patrons are Cherie Blair and Laura Bush

* PACT was founded by Lady (Catherine) Meyer, the wife of Sir Christopher Meyer, the British Ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003 and now the Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission.