PACT

Parents & Abducted Children Together

Who is PACT?

Parents & Abducted Children Together (PACT) was founded in 2000 by Lady (Catherine) Meyer. We are registered in
the UK and the US, and are an associate of the US-based International Center for Missing & Exploited Children,
co-founded by Catherine Meyer in 1998.

Our mission is the protection and retrieval of children who go missing for whatever reason.
We campaign, we research and we make policy. PACT has been a driving force behind major changes to policy and
practice in the UK, France and the US.

How are we different?

PACT plays a unique role in tackling the growing problem of missing children, at home and abroad. We concentrate
our efforts on reforming systems and policies that do not adequately protect children. Unlike most other charities, we
do not take government money because we wish to remain an independent voice. While we can quantify number of
children rescued as a result of, for e.g. the Child Rescue Alert, our focus is on the cause, not the symptom. No other
charity in our field employs the same mix of advocacy, action and research. No other charity, especially of our size, has
done more to raise public awareness about missing children or to prompt changes in legislation and practice.

What do we do?

Policy and Research

PACT sits on the Home Office Strategic Oversight Group (SOG), which coordinates policies related to missing persons,
and on the Steering Group, which drew up the first comprehensive guide for the UK police on the investigation of
missing persons, including children.

PACT understands that good policy decisions can only be based on good research. This is why we regularly produce
and fund documentaries and reports that highlight the desperate need for coordination of services, centralised data
collection, and the need for better laws to protect children.

Missing children
PACT’s other major strand of action is working with the government, the police and other NGOs to improve the way in
which missing children’s cases are handled so that they can be rapidly located and retrieved unharmed.

Specifically, we:
- Press for comprehensive adoption by all UK police forces of the Missingkids Website (www.missingkids.co.uk), a
state-of-the-art tool to find missing children worldwide.
- Find corporate partners such as Tesco to help fund/display these posters.
- Press for the usage by all UK police forces of the Child Rescue Alert System, a protocol originally developed in the
US with a proven track record of saving children in serious danger.
- Fund the printing and display of posters and pamphlets downloaded from this website.

Parental child abduction across borders

As a pioneer in this field, PACT offers an unparalleled source of expertise on international parental child abduction. We
campaign for more rigorous implementation of the Hague Convention; press British government departments to act
more vigorously on behalf of parents whose children have been illegally taken abroad; organise seminars; and
generally raise awareness of a growing, but little-known, problem through newspaper articles, legal reviews, and
interviews. Although we are not a helpline, we are in a position to advise left-behind parents and children on their
legal rights.

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Achievements

PACT’s most recent major achievement has been the January 2010 decision by the UK government to place
responsibility for all aspects of missing children under one roof: the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, or
CEOP. This is the culmination of a 10-year campaign by PACT to create a national centre to tackle the problem of
missing children and to have missing children treated as a problem distinct from missing adults. Our other
achievements include:

National and international lobbying:

- 2009: Brought together at a groundbreaking meeting all interested parties, including government departments,
police agencies, MPs and NGOs, to discuss the way forward on the basis of The Current Landscape.
- 2006: Pressed the Home Secretary to create the Strategic Oversight Group, of which PACT is a founding member.
- 2005: Played a major role in enacting new legislation in the EU on mutual recognition of custody/access orders.
- 2004: Successfully pressed the French government to introduce the Child Rescue Alert, which has so far led to the
rescue of 16 children in grave danger.
- Instigated several House of Commons adjournment debates and Parliamentary questions to demand more
aggressive government action on behalf of missing and abducted children.
- Persuaded Prime Minister Blair, Presidents Clinton and Bush and President Chirac to make representations on behalf
of PACT to the German government.
- 1999-2001: Presented evidence to the Belgian Senate and the US Congress which led to several concurrent
resolutions calling for the proper enforcement of the Hague Convention.
- 2000 - Date: Gave advice to over 250 victim parents and helped them with their case.
- 2000: Successfully pressed the Hague Convention member states to agree to a Guide to Good Practice on
its implementation.

Publishing groundbreaking reports:

- 2009: Funded and commissioned The Current Landscape, a study carried out by The Brand Union, a WPP company,
to review the “missing” landscape and come forward with options for the creation of a National Centre in the UK.
- 2007: Beyond Every Five Minutes, which set out a blueprint for action on missing and abducted children based on
the creation of a specialist national centre, and helped lead to the January 2010 decision to move responsibility for
missing and exploited children to CEOP.
- 2006: A Postcode Lottery, which mapped out for the first time the role of different agencies in the UK, the services
they provided to missing children, and the enormous variations in quality and coverage between different parts
of the UK.
- 2005: Every Five Minutes, which, after examining in depth the defects in UK data collection on missing children,
concluded that it was impossible to say how many children went missing each year and why (the figure varied
between 100,000 and 180,000).

Campaigning and getting others involved:

- 2005: Produced “Victims of Another War”, a film documentary on the long-term effect of abduction on children which
has been distributed worldwide.
- 2002-present: Launched multiple national campaigns to help the police find missing children with the backing of
companies such as Tesco Plc, EMCOR Group UK, ASDA and UK Media Group, resulting in over 354 missing children
being recovered safely.
- 1998: Co-chaired in Washington, D.C. the first international conference on the effectiveness of the Hague Convention
on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

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PACT Objectives

Substantially reduce the number of children who go missing.

Retrieve children who go missing through expanded use of the Child Rescue Alert and the poster campaign.

Ensure the new arrangements under CEOP are locked in with a new government.

Educate policy/law-makers of the long-term harm done to children, forcibly separated from
one of their parents.

Tesco National Campaign Launch Speech before 900 students

Financial Information

Total Income: £28,445

Total charitable expenditure: £80,916
Governance costs: £3,491
Fundraising costs: £3,233

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 Parents & Abducted Children Together

Project 1 - National Centre for Missing Children

The Need: Based on four years of research and consultation (see our various publications), PACT has revealed that, to
our shame in 21st century Britain, not only is it impossible to find out accurately how many children go missing every
year, or why, but that service provision is inadequate and geographically uneven. This is because too many government
departments are involved, meaning that none takes overall responsibility. There is both duplication of effort and poor
coordination between and within police forces, social services, Whitehall departments, and the voluntary sector. As a
result, children who go missing are put needlessly at risk.

For almost a decade PACT has been campaigning for radical reform of this incoherent and ineffective system. We have
always believed that the answer is to bring together all the resources of the public, private and voluntary sectors. The
Government’s announcement in a White Paper of 11 January 2010 that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection
Agency (CEOP) will take on this strategic role has been a huge victory.

This is a turning point for PACT and we must catch the moment.

So, the challenge now is to ensure that CEOP’s expanded remit will be confirmed by a new government after the
general election, given bureaucratic resistance from some quarters. This will require lobbying new Ministers to pass the
necessary legislation as soon as possible.

Benefits:
- The creation of a national centre responsible for all aspects of missing and exploited children; i.e. a one-stop shop
bringing under one roof law enforcement, child protection specialists and NGOs to coordinate policies; offer
assistance; provide training; and establish international partnerships better to protect children.

- The acceptance that missing children should be treated as a discrete problem, separate from that of missing adults.

- The recognition that CEOP, with its remarkable success in fighting child exploitation, is the logical organisation to
take on this expanded role. (In only 3 years of existence, CEOP has rescued 515 children, arrested 821 suspected
offenders, and dismantled 205 high-risk sex offender networks and developed the leading UK internet safety website).

Finances:
CEOP’s assessment is that it will take until the beginning of 2012 to complete the legislative and organisational process
necessary to discharge its expanded remit. Since the current board and senior management may be replaced as part of
this process, it will be essential for PACT, as the driving force behind the reform, to provide continuity and to ensure that
the White Paper is fully implemented.

PACT will have to:

Contribute to the drafting of the legislation and to the various protocols establishing CEOP’s governance and
relationships with the voluntary sector (we have already been invited);

Finance the recruitment of a new PACT staffer to be located at CEOP (we have been asked to provide one and
plan to recruit this person as soon as possible; i.e. before the full legislative and organisational process has
been completed);

Build support for CEOP’s expanded remit, which will require rebranding and repositioning. We are already in
tri-partite discussion with them and the Brand Union.

PACT calculates that this will require funding for a period of two years.
Year 1: £65,000
Year 2: £45,000

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Project 2 - Develop & Implement a Campaign to bring our Children Home

The Need:
About 130,000 children go missing in the UK every year. That is one Every Five Minutes (see PACT’s report of the same
name, 2005). 76% of children murdered by their abductors were killed within three hours (143 children murdered in
UK last year). That is why it is imperative for the police to respond quickly, including by enrolling the public’s help as
soon as possible.

The Project:
The police Missingkids Website (www.missingkids.com) and its associated poster campaigns are therefore
indispensable to an urgent and properly targeted first response. They enable police forces instantly to upload and
disseminate photographs of, and information on, missing children and any adults known to have been with them whey
they disappeared. The technology includes age progression that has been successful in retrieving children years after
their abduction. The website has already been introduced into 16 countries, with national sites linked and over 3,500
missing children featured worldwide. PACT has played a lead role in introducing it to UK police forces. But in the UK it
is still not as widely used as it should be (i.e. some forces fail to enter cases). This is in turn leads to public ignorance
of the website and its diminished effectiveness compared with the US. PACT now wants to launch a major campaign
to generate greater police use, and public awareness, of the site.

Benefits:
In the US, 98% of children featured on the national site have been found thanks to someone recognising the child. It
has 2.8 million hits a day. It is also the source of a massive nation-wide poster campaign depicting missing children.
This is the result of the website’s universal adoption by US law-enforcement agencies who give powerful backing to
the poster campaign. The aim must be to achieve similar levels of police commitment and of public awareness to the
benefit of British children. Even with the UK’s relatively sparse coverage, to date 354 children have been found
unharmed.

Case studies:
A member of staff at Tesco, where PACT has arranged for the display of posters at stores nation-wide, recognised a
featured child and gave information to the police, leading to her rapid recovery unharmed. This is a typical case.

Though Ben Needham, who was abducted in Greece several years ago, has not yet been found, age progression
techniques applied to his photograph as a small child gives realistic hope to his family that if he is still alive, he may
one day be recovered.

Missingkids Website Ben Needham Age progression photograph

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Project 2 - Continued

Finances:

Project 2 Cost

Mail drop which has proved very successful in the US:

- Design and artwork - £1,000 (one off)

- Production and printing of full colour flyer to be distributed in - £5,500 (one off)
Metropolitan area(estimate 1 million)
- Distribution through the Royal Mail Postal Service - £15,700
(£ 7,200 distribution+ £8,500 handling charge) Total: £31,900

Advertising on London black cabs which is the most

successful form of promotion:

- Design and artwork - £500 (one off)

- Cost for 1,000 seats - £45,000 (3 months)
Total: £45,500

Advertise on 1,000,000 taxi receipts

- Design and artwork - £500

- Cost per 20 taxi pads £10 (each pad has 50 receipts)s - £10,000
Total: £12,500

London Bus tickets

- Design and artwork -£500

- Cost for 1 million tickets -£5,000
Total: £5,500

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Our People

Founder: Lady Meyer

Catherine Meyer decided several years ago to use her tragic experience to raise the profile of
parental child abduction across frontiers as an issue that requires urgent international
attention. She has written two books about her experience, given over 250 newspaper and
radio interviews and had over 50 television appearances in the US, the UK, France, Germany
and Holland, including Barbara Walters’ 20/20, The View, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, 60
minutes... In 1999, she received the Adam Walsh Rainbow Award for her outstanding
contribution to children's causes. She is married to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British
Ambassador to the United States and has two sons from a previous marriage.

Patrons: Cherie Blair, QC Laura Bush

Honorary chairs
Potential celebrity support for Charity Day

The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, The Honorable Dr. Henry Kissinger, Sir David Veness, Michael York,
US Secretary of State former US Secretary of State UN Undersecretary General OBE, British Film and Theatre Actor
for Safety and Security
Trustees

Ernest Allen, President and CEO, NCMEC and ICMEC

Mark Bergman, Partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Whaton & Garrison Law Firm
Barbara Taylor Bradford, OBE, Best selling author
Anne Bujon de l’Estang, Wife of the former French Ambassador to the United States
Sir Christopher Meyer, Former Ambassador to the United States
Adrian Oldfield, Senior Manager IT, Ernst & Young LLP
David Warner, Solicitor