Hello! (Link to PACT)October 2007
Catherine Meyer, Founder of PACT (Parents and Children Together)
Imagine this: you are on a summer holiday in Portugal, staying in a nice family resort with your three young children. The accommodation and facilities are exactly as you dreamed of – friendly and relaxed, with your own private villa, an intimate restaurant, a swimming pool, and lots of activities for you and your children. In fact, it’s been a perfect stay. Sadly, it is now drawing to its end. You will soon be returning home, sun-tanned and relaxed, ready to go back to work.
Then, in an instant, your whole world collapses and your life will never be the same again.
Your four-year-old daughter vanishes. Her bed is empty. She has disappeared without trace. You are in a state of panic. You call the police. They act immediately. They take away photos and her details. In a matter of minutes, all the country’s police forces have been alerted. Television and radio programmes are interrupted. Her picture is flashed across screens. Alerts appear on the electronic notice boards of motorways. Text messages are sent out to all mobile ‘phone subscribers. Border posts and airports are notified, as are Interpol, Europol and foreign police forces.
This is how what is known as the Amber Alert System works. It is what should have happened in the case of Madeleine McCann. It is what could have happened. But it did not. No alerts were put out. No borders were checked. No airports notified. Madeleine disappeared into thin air – and her case is by no means unique. Every year in Europe thousands of children go missing or are abducted. Most of them are found and returned home safely, but too many are not. Some are taken abroad and never seen again. Yet, in a Europe which boasts of ever-closer union and the increasing irrelevance of national frontiers, there are no European protocols, no common policies, no electronic infrastructure – no Amber Alert to ensure a rapid, automatic response from the police and public alike.
This is a shocking state of affairs, when the system has been tried and tested successfully for years in America.
It is fashionable nowadays to criticise the United States. But, truth be told, we have much to learn from them about protecting children. The handling in America of Madeleine’s disappearance would have been utterly different, maximising the chances of her being found alive and well. Over ten years ago, the American authorities introduced the Amber Alert System. It all began in 1996 when 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas, and then brutally murdered. Her tragic death had such a profound impact on her community and throughout Texas that it prompted local police forces and broadcasters to develop an early warning system to help find abducted children. AMBER stands for America's Missing Broadcast Emergency Response. It is also a tribute to Amber Hagerman.
The Amber Alert System was soon adopted across the nation. By 2006 it had saved the lives of over 200 children. A typical case was that of a two-year-old boy kidnapped by his babysitter. An Amber Alert was issued. A motorist saw the Alert on an electronic highway sign, spotted the kidnapper's vehicle, and notified the police. The child was safely recovered. In another case a 10 month-old girl was abducted by her mother’s ex-boyfriend after a violent confrontation. An Amber Alert was issued. When the abductor heard it on the radio, he got scared and let the child go unharmed.
At least we are making some progress in Britain (even though, to our shame, we still have inadequate official statistics on how many children go missing each year, and why). The Sussex Police recently pioneered a British version of AMBER, which they called Child Rescue Alert. It has now been adopted nationally. As a result several children have been rescued. In France, where, thanks to the advocacy of PACT, the system was introduced two years ago, there have been several successes. Even while I was on holiday there this summer, a little boy was rescued from the clutches of a sexual predator. But take-up in Europe is low.
One of PACT’s core missions is to work with the police to raise awareness of the Child Rescue Alert and the Missingkids website (
http://www.missingkids.co.uk). This is because the first few hours of a child’s disappearance will usually decide whether it lives or dies. The website, which was originally created in the United States, can be accessed by the public. It allows the police instantly to disseminate to other police forces at home and abroad photographs of, and information on, missing and abducted children and adults known to be with them when they disappeared. Posters of the missing children can be downloaded and distributed. In this way the public can be of real help to the police. In the US the website gets 2.8 millions hits a day. One in six children featured on the site is rescued thanks to someone recognising the child and tipping off the police. The website is mostly used for long-term missing as the technology includes age progression techniques which have been successful in identifying and retrieving children years after their disappearance.
Over the years PACT has launched a series of campaigns to get the website and the posters better known and better distributed. Business has given us enormous support: Clear Channel Communications, Tesco, Emcor, each of whom has given us in their different ways free space for our posters. Just last week we launched a new campaign with Electronic Health Media (EHM) who have agreed to put pictures of missing children on the TV network they supply to hospitals and surgeries in the hope that someone will recognise that child’s photograph and call the police with information.
PACT is soon to publish its third report in a series, which addresses the absence of reliable statistics on missing children in the UK. We will be making recommendations for remedying this lamentable situation, which severely undermines not only policymaking, but also effective, practical support to families and children themselves.
Kate and Gerry McCann did not have the Amber or Child Alert system to help them in their hour of desperate need. Those who have been quick to criticise them for seeking the attention of the media should remember that at the outset they had only their own resources to fall back on. Whatever the ultimate fate of little Madeleine, we must put to good use the vast publicity, which has ensued. The issue of missing and abducted children is on the map as it has never been before. Governments must act and take their heads out of the sand. In Britain we need reliable and comprehensive data on how many children go missing each year. Across Europe as a whole, governments must put in place without delay an alert system like the one which works so well in America. To do any less is to betray the children of Europe. It is the very least we can do to find a silver lining in the tragedy of Madeleine McCann.
For more information or if you would like to support our campaigns, please visit our website:
http://www.pact-online.org© Catherine Meyer, Founder of PACT (Parents and Children Together)
