Action Against Abduction, formerly known as Parents and Abducted Children Together (PACT), is an international

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

organisation which specialises in fighting

international child abduction The term international child abduction is generally synonymous with international parental kidnapping, child snatching, and child stealing. In private international law the term usually refers to the illegal removal of children from their h ...

and in helping law enforcement agencies find

missing children A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, o ...

Establishment and overview

Action Against Abduction was established as PACT by Catherine Meyer in 1999. 10 October 2007, PACT and the National Missing Persons Bureau launched Missing Children TV, a TV channel showing photographs and information on some of the 100,000 children that go missing every year. Electronics Health Media (EHM) screened the channel in various hospital waiting rooms around the country. In 2012, PACT helped produce a website called "Missingkids", allowing law enforcement to disseminate photographs and descriptions of missing children alongside details of the circumstances of their disappearance. In 2014, PACT produced the British Child Abduction Hub, an information repository allowing for information related to child abduction to be spread publicly via a "Child Rescue Alert", similar in concept to the American Amber Alert. The organization's name was changed to Action Against Abduction in 2015.

Partnerships

Over the years, PACT has partnered with various organizations to raise public awareness of the plight of missing and abducted children. British grocery chain

Tesco Tesco plc () is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in the United Kingdom at its head offices in Welwyn Garden City, England. The company was founded by Jack Cohen (businessman), Sir Jack Cohen in ...

has partnered with PACT since 2000 by displaying posters of missing children in select stores. In 2006, engineering and management services corporation

Emcor EMCOR Group, Inc., headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, provides mechanical and electrical construction, industrial and energy infrastructure, and building services in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has over 100 operating subsidiar ...

partnered with PACT by placing posters of missing children in the rear windows of some of their vehicles. In March 2009, Emcor announced that four children featured on their posters had been found.

Documentary and research papers

PACT has produced a documentary entitled ''Victims of Another War'' that examines the damaging impact on three adults of their abduction as children. PACT has also produced a number of reports and research papers dealing with abduction and child protection services: * ''Every Five Minutes'' (2005), which examined available data to try to establish the number of missing children in the UK. * ''A Postcode Lottery'' (2006), which discussed the services rendered by various child protection agencies in the UK. * ''Beyond Every Five Minutes'' (2007). * ''Taken'' (2013), which examined the extent of child abduction in the UK. * In February 2015, PACT released a report examining the number of child abductions and kidnappings reported to police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland from 2012 to 2014.

Financial controversy

In May 2011, PACT's finances were called into question by the Mandrake gossip column of the ''

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

''. PACT replied to these accusations in a letter to the Telegraph.

References

External links