McCanns Support Charities’ Call on Home Office

Kate and Gerry McCann have joined two leading UK charities involved in missing people and child abductions in calling on the Home Office to improve the quality of information on abducted children.

Missing People (as part of its initiative ‘Get Together Week’) and PACT (Parents and Abducted Children Together) have written to Tony McNulty MP (Minister of State at the Home Office) to highlight the serious limitations in the department’s annual statistical series Crime in England and Wales.

The charities point out that as the Home Office statistics are the only source of publicly available information on child abduction, they have two major weaknesses. First, they fail to make the vital distinction between different types of child abduction, e.g. by strangers or parents, or attempted or completed abductions. Second, in cases where abductions lead to more serious crimes such as sexual assault or murder, only the latter are recorded.

Paul Tuohy, Chief Executive of Missing People said: “The count of child abduction offences currently tells us nothing about the number of abductions of children which result in more serious offences, such as assault, sexual assault and murder. Missing People and PACT are asking the Home Office to attach a ‘flag of abduction’ to indicate where the taking of a child has led to assault or murder.”

“More information is needed to reassure people about the nature of child abduction offences and the actual risk (especially from strangers) involved, particularly when the Home Office says it is committed to ‘help people feel safer in their homes and local communities’[i].”

Lady Catherine Meyer, founder and Chief Executive of PACT, said: “How can we possibly protect our children, and devise effective policies to tackle child abduction, if we do not know the scale and nature of the problem? In a country like Britain which professes to put children’s welfare at the forefront of its concerns, this is simply not good enough.”

Lending their support, Kate and Gerry McCann said: "Over the past 112 days we have learnt so much about child abduction and missing children. We believe that it is important that records covering child abduction offences in England and Wales need to be clear and easy to understand so the public can know the true scale of child abduction offences. We would like to see the UK lead the way in Europe in making information about child abductions accessible."

To make a donation to Missing People click here, for more information about PACT visit www.pact-online.org.

The official Bring Madeleine Home site is www.bringmadeleinehome.com, where details of the ‘Don’t You Forgot About Me’ YouTube partnership can also be found.

Click here for Missing People TV.

ENDS.

Media Enquiries:

Missing People - Communications team – media@missingpeople.org.uk / 020 8392 4513 or 07872600178.

PACT – support@pact-online.org / 020 7627 3699