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The Association of Chief Police Officers

New Campaign to Find Missing Children Launched
13 March 2002

The charity PACT (Parents & Abducted Children Together) has today launched a new, high profile campaign in the UK to help the police find missing children. Initially, this will involve posters of missing children being displayed in Tesco supermarket stores up and down the country.

Lady Meyer, founder and CEO of PACT, said: "Last year approximately 40,000 children went missing in the UK. Of those, 1,300 children were still missing two weeks after being reported to the police — and almost half had been abducted. This is a tragic and harrowing state of affairs. The police are doing a great job in finding lost children, but the public can do more to help them. We announce today that Tesco is to put posters of missing children in their 750 stores throughout the UK. Experience shows that posters are one of the most effective ways of helping the public to help the police locate and retrieve missing children. And with Tesco's 12 million customers per week, this is a great start to what will become a major campaign."

The poster campaign, which advertises both a freephone number and the Website, will be formally launched at the new Tesco flagship store in Kensington at 1000hrs today.

Notes to editors:

• Media enquiries to: support@pact-online.org.
• Members of the public can contact the special missing kids hotline on 0808 100 8777.
• In 1994 Charles Wang (Chairman of Computer Associates) launched a police Website dedicated to reuniting children with their families. The UK version of the Website http://uk.missingkids.com (supported by the Home Office and ACPO) was introduced a few years ago and all ACPO regions now use it.
• PACT is a non-profit organisation registered in the UK and the US. Its mission is to fight parental child abduction across borders and help the police locate and retrieve missing children.
• PACT was founded by Lady (Catherine) Meyer, the wife of the British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Christopher Meyer, whose own two sons were abducted to Germany in 1994.

According to the Home Office and Police National Missing Persons Bureau:

• Around 40,000 children are reported missing every year
• This is more than 100 children every day, on average
• Last year, in England and Wales, 1,300 children were still missing two weeks after being reported to the Police
• 750 of these children were from the Metropolitan area
• 40% were victims of parental abduction