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When a child goes missing every two minutes, every second counts

Anastasia Balezdrova

250,000 children are reported missing in Europe every year. That is one child every two minutes. The data is scary and the options to improve the ways for dealing with missing children as well as to take preventive measures against the phenomenon have led to the gathering in Athens of representatives of police services and non-profit organizations for child protection.

The conference on "When every minute counts..." was held on the occasion of the International Missing Children’s Day, 25 May, under the auspices of the Greek Presidency of the European Union. "In Greece there are no cases of kidnapping children for a ransom or of sexual exploitation but that does not mean that the problem of missing children is not serious," said Kostas Giannopoulos, Director of "The Smile of the Child" organization that coordinates Amber Alert Hellas action system in the cases of missing children in Greece.

Last year, the European telephone number for missing children 116 000 received 7,138 calls, 5,487 of which provided information on a missing child and requested actions for his or her detection (in 14.5% of calls), 20% provided information on a missing child and 65.5%
requested information on the organization's activities in connection with the cases of missing children.

In 2013, the organization responded to 160 requests to assist in the finding of a missing child, claimed by parents or the police. In 70% of cases, the missing children were teenagers and in 74%, they were children aged between 13 and 18 years. 87 out of 118 children were girls and 74% of the total were of Greek origin.

According to Kostas Giannopoulos, the data fully reflect the situation in Greece. "Very often the families themselves do not pay the necessary attention, believing that in the majority of the cases the girls are missing of their own free will. This is wrong. Just recently, we had an incident on an island in the Ionian Sea. A girl was missing from her home after having quarrelled with her ​​mother. The parents thought that there was no need to immediately report her missing because they did not consider the situation to be serious. When they reported her missing, it was too late as the child was found hanged in a field."

He appealed to parents to give up their inclination of not informing the authorities when their children are missing from home. "We waste valuable time in this way," said Giannopoulos. At the same time, he advised them to pay more attention to their children, referring to another recent case of a teenager who committed suicide on the day when the university admission examinations started. "Initially we thought that his action was due to the pressure relating to the preparation for the exams but it turned out that the child was a victim of school violence."

At the European level, 50% of cases of missing children are also associated with teenagers who run away from home. "In 36% of cases the children are victims of abduction by a parent, 10% of cases are associated with lost and injured children or with children missing for other reasons, 2% with missing unaccompanied immigrants and another 2% with kidnappings by criminals or third parties," said Secretary General of the European Federation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children "Missing Children Europe" Delphine Moralis.

Representatives of police services from the UK and France and of non-profit organizations from Belgium presented their experience in the search for missing children. All agreed on the appeal that when a child is missing, his or her relatives should not waste even a second. According to them, the children are usually found within the first three days after they are missing, which is why they should immediately inform the police or the relevant non-profit organization in the country to initiate the search.