Lost children: The 60 boys and girls who have vanished

Actually on the Missing childrens website the number of children missing in the UK alone is now up to 135 as this article was written in 2006....

What are the police doing to trace them? Have they given up on them all??

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/lost-children-the-60-boys-and-girls-who-have-vanished-423023.html

One disappears every five minutes. So how many are lost in Britain right now? The scandal is that nobody knows

By Cole Moreton
Sunday, 5 November 2006

A child goes missing every five minutes, according to one estimate. Others suggest that up to 130,000 disappear every year. Some children are just testing the boundaries. Some are on the run from abuse. Some have been thrown out of their homes. Some have been taken by a father, mother or other family member. Some have just got lost. A few have been taken by a stranger. But the really shocking thing is that nobody knows how many.

The estimates are based on samples. They include boys and girls who run away from home for a night or two, maybe two or three times a year. More than 95 per cent of lost children are found or return within two days, says Inspector Ravi Pillai of the Police National Missing Persons Bureau. But when he is asked how many children are missing right now, at this moment, the inspector shakes his head. "I couldn't tell you."

That seems astonishing. If he doesn't know, then who does? "Nobody." Why not? For a start, local police forces have different methods of recording missing persons. They don't talk to each other easily, which is why the bureau exists. The police national computer says about 5,000 people are missing at any one time, but here's the crunch: there is nobody to say how many of them are children. The information is there on the computer. The police can match a name or description to any other individual quickly, as part of an impressive response to a high-risk disappearance that can include helicopters with heat-seeking equipment and news flashes on local television. But nobody is collating and analysing the data to get an overall picture of how many children go missing, where and why.

"We know there is a real need and we are making that case, but it is also very resource intensive," says Inspector Pillai. "Burglary and murder have a higher priority than us."

Once a child has been missing for a fortnight (or much sooner if the case is high profile) their details are passed to Inspector Pillai's unit at New Scotland Yard. On his wall there is a picture of an American cop in a hamburger joint leaning over to listen to a mop-headed boy, whose stick and handkerchief suggest he has run away from home. The bureau borrowed an American idea to set up www.missingkids.org.uk, which currently shows 69 (135 now) faces. Some of them are not reproduced above for legal reasons. The results are remarkable: about 75 per cent of the children whose images appear are "recovered" in one way or another. That could mean a happy reunion with their families. Or it could mean a body has been been found.

"The majority are alive, and we are satisfied we do not need to intervene any further," says Inspector Pillai as we walk down the corridor to meet his colleagues. "What do you expect the bureau to look like?" he asks with a smile, prompting thoughts of rows of gleaming computers staffed by busy workers. "Here we are." The reality is six desks in a corner of a poorly-lit, open-plan room overlooking St James's Park station. Pinned to the wall are the pictures of lost children.

Alan Blackburn has been working here since the bureau opened in 1994. He gives an example of the kind of work they do: "If a person goes missing in Yorkshire and a body is washed up in Kent those two forces will have sent us the details separately, and we can make the match." On his desk are framed photographs of his own children. Does it not affect him, dealing daily with heart-rending details of disappearance? "I try not to think about it, but it did sink in when we met Donna Davidson and other relatives earlier this week at the launch of the van scheme, and they were in tears."

Davinia Darch, the team manager, interrupts. "The thing to remember is that less than 3 per cent of these children have been abducted by strangers. It is much rarer than it can seem." Alan agrees. "That is comforting."

I can only say......BLOODY HELL!!!

eddie wrote:I can only say......BLOODY HELL!!!

I can only say NO WORDS :dont know:

Ambersuz wrote:Actually on the Missing childrens website the number of children missing in the UK alone is now up to 135 as this article was written in 2006....

What are the police doing to trace them? Have they given up on them all??

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/lost-children-the-60-boys-and-girls-who-have-vanished-423023.html

One disappears every five minutes. So how many are lost in Britain right now? The scandal is that nobody knows

By Cole Moreton
Sunday, 5 November 2006

A child goes missing every five minutes, according to one estimate. Others suggest that up to 130,000 disappear every year. Some children are just testing the boundaries. Some are on the run from abuse. Some have been thrown out of their homes. Some have been taken by a father, mother or other family member. Some have just got lost. A few have been taken by a stranger. But the really shocking thing is that nobody knows how many.

The estimates are based on samples. They include boys and girls who run away from home for a night or two, maybe two or three times a year. More than 95 per cent of lost children are found or return within two days, says Inspector Ravi Pillai of the Police National Missing Persons Bureau. But when he is asked how many children are missing right now, at this moment, the inspector shakes his head. "I couldn't tell you."

That seems astonishing. If he doesn't know, then who does? "Nobody." Why not? For a start, local police forces have different methods of recording missing persons. They don't talk to each other easily, which is why the bureau exists. The police national computer says about 5,000 people are missing at any one time, but here's the crunch: there is nobody to say how many of them are children. The information is there on the computer. The police can match a name or description to any other individual quickly, as part of an impressive response to a high-risk disappearance that can include helicopters with heat-seeking equipment and news flashes on local television. But nobody is collating and analysing the data to get an overall picture of how many children go missing, where and why.

"We know there is a real need and we are making that case, but it is also very resource intensive," says Inspector Pillai. "Burglary and murder have a higher priority than us."

Once a child has been missing for a fortnight (or much sooner if the case is high profile) their details are passed to Inspector Pillai's unit at New Scotland Yard. On his wall there is a picture of an American cop in a hamburger joint leaning over to listen to a mop-headed boy, whose stick and handkerchief suggest he has run away from home. The bureau borrowed an American idea to set up www.missingkids.org.uk, which currently shows 69 (135 now) faces. Some of them are not reproduced above for legal reasons. The results are remarkable: about 75 per cent of the children whose images appear are "recovered" in one way or another. That could mean a happy reunion with their families. Or it could mean a body has been been found.

"The majority are alive, and we are satisfied we do not need to intervene any further," says Inspector Pillai as we walk down the corridor to meet his colleagues. "What do you expect the bureau to look like?" he asks with a smile, prompting thoughts of rows of gleaming computers staffed by busy workers. "Here we are." The reality is six desks in a corner of a poorly-lit, open-plan room overlooking St James's Park station. Pinned to the wall are the pictures of lost children.

Alan Blackburn has been working here since the bureau opened in 1994. He gives an example of the kind of work they do: "If a person goes missing in Yorkshire and a body is washed up in Kent those two forces will have sent us the details separately, and we can make the match." On his desk are framed photographs of his own children. Does it not affect him, dealing daily with heart-rending details of disappearance? "I try not to think about it, but it did sink in when we met Donna Davidson and other relatives earlier this week at the launch of the van scheme, and they were in tears."

Davinia Darch, the team manager, interrupts. "The thing to remember is that less than 3 per cent of these children have been abducted by strangers. It is much rarer than it can seem." Alan agrees. "That is comforting."

How can so many children just disappear ?.....why don't we have a tv channel devoted to showing the faces of these children ? - why don't we have a paper devoted to printing the faces of these children.......two simple but very effective ways of getting these children's faces into the public domain on a daily basis ? .....of course we are talking money for "advertising" - this could be where the famous and powerful people could put their influence and cash where it counts for so much .....ie, the general public would be familiar with seeing these children's faces and would spot them if they saw them out and about in public.....so much more could be acheived in finding missing children if only we had the right people involved in wanting to do something about it.....