Browse content similar to 23/06/2013. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Welcome to Reporters. From here at reporters to bring you the best | :00:32. | :00:39. | |
missing children, we had a special issue on looking at the issue | :00:39. | :00:45. | |
around the world. Coming up - every parent's worst nightmare. We meet | :00:45. | :00:49. | |
the parents of Katrice Lee who has been missing for 30 years. We had | :00:49. | :00:55. | |
no support. Do you believe that the system failed you and your family? | :00:55. | :01:04. | |
Yes. They failed my it two-year-old child. Sold into the sex trade. We | :01:04. | :01:08. | |
visit the Thai capital Bangkok where thousands of children are | :01:08. | :01:14. | |
traffic each year. Paedophiles come to party here. Why is this going | :01:14. | :01:19. | |
on? The children they are using did not have papers. The children they | :01:19. | :01:22. | |
use cannot be tracked. What we have here is that we are looking for | :01:22. | :01:26. | |
victims but we did not know who they are. We report from Mexico on | :01:26. | :01:31. | |
the thousands of children who go missing two drug gains every year. | :01:31. | :01:36. | |
TRANSLATION: It is under scramble to lose a child. It is a pain like | :01:36. | :01:39. | |
they have to on a heart out. It is like your life does not have | :01:39. | :01:44. | |
meaning any more. -- like they have to warn your heart out. | :01:44. | :01:48. | |
It is the worst nightmare for every parent. The child who goes missing. | :01:48. | :01:52. | |
It affects at least 8 million children around the world every | :01:52. | :01:55. | |
year according to the Centre for Missing and exploited children. In | :01:56. | :02:00. | |
many cases, the child is found within hours but in the rarest of | :02:00. | :02:04. | |
situations, the ordeal can last months or even years. We have a | :02:04. | :02:08. | |
series of stories from families from different parts of the world. | :02:08. | :02:13. | |
In the first of these reports, I go to the south of England did to meet | :02:13. | :02:16. | |
Sharon Lee whose daughter Katrice Lee has been missing for 30 years. | :02:16. | :02:22. | |
This is her story. She was a delightful, happy and | :02:22. | :02:29. | |
little girl. She absolutely adored her older sister. They were quite | :02:29. | :02:32. | |
happy, and it has she was happy to let her play with her and her | :02:32. | :02:38. | |
friends. They idolise one another. -- Natasha. They had been naughty | :02:38. | :02:43. | |
moments that most T Roberts do that she was a happy child. This is in | :02:43. | :02:52. | |
West Germany, 1981. Home to a British army base. In November that | :02:52. | :02:58. | |
year, their lives changed for ever. Until 20th November, 1981 we were a | :02:58. | :03:08. | |
normal and happy family. After that time, our normal wife stopped, if | :03:08. | :03:11. | |
you like, and the only way I can explain it is that we have been | :03:11. | :03:17. | |
living a nightmare ever since then. -- normal life. Katrice Lee | :03:17. | :03:20. | |
disappeared from a supermarket on her second birthday. It is a day | :03:21. | :03:25. | |
that her mother will never forget. I went to the checkout and I | :03:25. | :03:29. | |
realised I had forgotten some crisps from a Tea Party a was | :03:29. | :03:32. | |
having that afternoon. I put them down by the checkout and asked my | :03:32. | :03:37. | |
sister to keep an eye on her as they go back and get some crisps. I | :03:37. | :03:40. | |
went back to the Isle, pick them up and got back to the checkout and | :03:40. | :03:45. | |
asked my sister where Katrice Lee had gone and she said that she had | :03:45. | :03:50. | |
gone after me, back up the aisle and that was the last time that my | :03:50. | :03:55. | |
daughter was ever seen. In 1981, the British Royal Military Police | :03:55. | :03:58. | |
led the investigation into her disappearance but have since | :03:58. | :04:03. | |
admitted that mistakes were made at the time. My current chief officer | :04:03. | :04:06. | |
has openly admitted that there were flaws in that original | :04:06. | :04:12. | |
investigation. However, it was investigation of its time and | :04:12. | :04:16. | |
policing has developed and devolved over 30 years. I think that if you | :04:16. | :04:20. | |
were to look at any police investigation 30 years ago, you | :04:21. | :04:28. | |
would find flaws in it. I do accept, as my chief officer has said, that | :04:28. | :04:34. | |
the family were not treated as well as they should have been. We had no | :04:34. | :04:41. | |
support as a family. Do you believe that the system failed he? Failed | :04:41. | :04:51. | |
:04:51. | :04:53. | ||
you and your family? Yes, they failed my two-year-old child. | :04:53. | :04:59. | |
If they had listened to last them as far as I'm concerned, I may not | :04:59. | :05:03. | |
have to be doing this interview now. My daughter could have been found. | :05:03. | :05:08. | |
In the case of a missing child, what happens in the hours and days | :05:08. | :05:14. | |
after a disappearance is crucial. think that how police responded the | :05:14. | :05:18. | |
first few days is so important and a risk assessment at that stage to | :05:18. | :05:22. | |
work out why the child has gone missing, where they may be, what | :05:22. | :05:27. | |
risks they are facing - is this an abduction? It is so important in | :05:27. | :05:31. | |
those first few hours and first few days that everything is done to | :05:31. | :05:36. | |
find the missing child. It is estimated that around 140,000 | :05:36. | :05:40. | |
missing children go missing each year in the UK and 99% of all | :05:40. | :05:45. | |
reported missing cases are solved within one year. This is the | :05:45. | :05:51. | |
central focus of all the information comes into. Last year, | :05:51. | :05:54. | |
the Royal Military Police decided to reopen the investigation into | :05:54. | :05:59. | |
Katrice Lee's disappearance. A dedicated team are reviewing case | :05:59. | :06:03. | |
files, interviews and the new lines of inquiry. Eight progression | :06:03. | :06:06. | |
photos had been commissioned of how she would have looked at key times | :06:06. | :06:10. | |
in her life. It is hoped that by using the latest surge techniques, | :06:10. | :06:16. | |
the investigation can move forward. We got a profile of their DNA that | :06:16. | :06:22. | |
we managed to obtain from one of her family members. We have | :06:22. | :06:26. | |
equalised that Rafal to search the national DNA database in the UK and | :06:26. | :06:30. | |
I have taken that one step further and gone to my colleagues in | :06:30. | :06:37. | |
Interpol and said -- and had that DNA profiles admitted to the | :06:37. | :06:42. | |
international DNA databases. They stretch from Ireland to Russia. | :06:43. | :06:47. | |
They were taken in the July before Katrice Lee disappeared. -- Katrice | :06:47. | :06:52. | |
Lee. She says that she will never finished the campaign it to raise | :06:52. | :06:55. | |
awareness about the disappearance of her daughter and believes that | :06:55. | :06:58. | |
they will one day be reunited. I have never not had hoped. If the | :06:58. | :07:02. | |
day ever came when I had no hope that my daughter would be found, it | :07:02. | :07:07. | |
would be the day that I stopped doing media and press releases. I | :07:07. | :07:12. | |
have always had hoped that there would be an Indian tour our story, | :07:12. | :07:20. | |
to Katrice Lee's story. -- and Indian to our story. | :07:20. | :07:25. | |
In Thailand, it is difficult to gauge how serious the problem of | :07:25. | :07:28. | |
missing children is but a agencies believe that thousands of children | :07:28. | :07:32. | |
are traffic each year with most of them ending up as beggars or sex | :07:32. | :07:36. | |
workers. We have travelled to Bangkok, the centre of Thailand's | :07:36. | :07:43. | |
sex industry. We met Manee Thongchum his daughter was abducted | :07:43. | :07:49. | |
to make his ago. Their search for her daughter, Jiji has been long | :07:49. | :07:53. | |
and lonely. Preparing heard children for school | :07:53. | :07:56. | |
is on the Manee Thongchum has come to dread. Each time her little | :07:56. | :08:00. | |
girls are out of sight, the memories come back of the awful | :08:00. | :08:05. | |
moment, 2.5 years ago, but her second child Jiji disappeared. | :08:05. | :08:08. | |
Every day after school, the nine- year-old would come to these petrol | :08:08. | :08:16. | |
station to work alongside her mother selling flowers. It was | :08:16. | :08:20. | |
impossible for Manee Thongchum to keep an eye on Jiji all of the time. | :08:21. | :08:25. | |
TRANSLATION: I went into the back of the car to feed the baby while | :08:25. | :08:34. | |
Jiji was selling flowers with her older sister. When I came back, she | :08:34. | :08:40. | |
had disappeared. We look for her everywhere but all we found was one | :08:41. | :08:46. | |
of her flip-flops on the footpath. CCTV footage shows a Jiji looking | :08:46. | :08:52. | |
for customers and then apparently distracted, walking out of the shot. | :08:52. | :08:56. | |
Her family had travelled all over Thailand looking for her and on one | :08:56. | :09:02. | |
occasion they came here where they received false information that she | :09:02. | :09:06. | |
had been found. This sleazy tourist town is one of the main | :09:06. | :09:10. | |
destinations for trafficked children in South East Asia. There | :09:10. | :09:15. | |
are hundreds of children working in streets and bars here. As beggars | :09:15. | :09:23. | |
and as child prostitutes. This woman spends her time searching for | :09:23. | :09:27. | |
exploited children. Many are from neighbouring Cambodia and are not | :09:27. | :09:32. | |
abducted but sold to traffickers by family members. Paedophiles come to | :09:32. | :09:36. | |
party here. Why is this going on? The children that they are using | :09:36. | :09:41. | |
did not have papers. The children that they are using cannot be | :09:41. | :09:44. | |
tracked. So what we have here is that we are looking for victims but | :09:44. | :09:48. | |
we do not know who they are. Thai children who were rescued and | :09:48. | :09:53. | |
cannot return home gate put into shelters like this one. Cambodians | :09:53. | :09:57. | |
are less fortunate and a sense back to the border where they may well | :09:57. | :10:04. | |
be abused and traffic again. Those responsible, if they can be found, | :10:04. | :10:10. | |
often escape prosecution. TRANSLATION: In Thailand, we have | :10:10. | :10:15. | |
laws regarding human trafficking which look very good on paper but | :10:15. | :10:18. | |
the people who have to enforce it has sometimes do not understand the | :10:18. | :10:23. | |
entire process and because it is so complicated and involves a so many | :10:23. | :10:30. | |
different agencies, it is easy for them not to pursue it. The Mirror | :10:30. | :10:34. | |
Foundation tries to keep records of Thailand's missing children. It is | :10:34. | :10:40. | |
a small operation, funded by donations. They have just five | :10:40. | :10:45. | |
permit staff and received several desperate phone calls every day. | :10:45. | :10:49. | |
TRANSLATION: The police know how many cars go missing each month. | :10:49. | :10:52. | |
They know what type of cars and what had been done with the stolen | :10:52. | :10:56. | |
cars. But for missing children, they have no answer. They cannot | :10:56. | :11:00. | |
even tell us how many children are missing, how many have been rescued, | :11:00. | :11:07. | |
and what has happened to were abducted children. Jiji's family | :11:07. | :11:10. | |
have had to search on their own with money given by family and | :11:10. | :11:15. | |
friends. TRANSLATION: Everything has | :11:15. | :11:20. | |
completely changed. We used to go everywhere as a family. The songs | :11:20. | :11:25. | |
which we listened to, the food which we listened -- used to eat. | :11:25. | :11:29. | |
All the things we used do together, we have stopped. For a long time, | :11:29. | :11:34. | |
it was too painful for Jiji's Perez to return to the petrol station | :11:34. | :11:38. | |
from which she was taken. They now work there again, hoping that | :11:38. | :11:48. | |
:11:48. | :11:48. | ||
whoever took their little girl made The war on drugs in Mexico hits the | :11:48. | :11:51. | |
headlines on a daily basis but little is known about the thousands | :11:51. | :11:55. | |
of children who go missing two drug gains every year. The government | :11:55. | :11:59. | |
there has set up a new unit dedicated to finding missing people | :11:59. | :12:03. | |
but the problem of child abduction by drug cartels is good -- is | :12:03. | :12:08. | |
growing. Many are forced to work for gains in the opium and narrow | :12:08. | :12:13. | |
one of fields. Some are groomed to be killers. Will grudge travelled | :12:13. | :12:17. | |
to Mexico to speak to one family about their missing son. This is | :12:17. | :12:27. | |
:12:27. | :12:31. | ||
From the outside they look like a normal family, but the reality is | :12:31. | :12:35. | |
that they are in anguish. Before every meal, they prayed for the | :12:35. | :12:42. | |
same thing, the return of a teenage son who disappear to last year. | :12:42. | :12:52. | |
:12:52. | :12:56. | ||
This day was particularly poignant. TRANSLATION: You do not know how | :12:56. | :13:01. | |
much I miss my son. Yet in some way, I am grateful to God that this | :13:01. | :13:08. | |
happened, because this has brought us closer to God. The day after he | :13:08. | :13:12. | |
disappeared, his father received a call telling him to pay a ransom of | :13:12. | :13:16. | |
tens of thousands of dollars. He negotiated the price down to | :13:16. | :13:20. | |
something he could afford, but the group took the money and never | :13:20. | :13:26. | |
return the boy. TRANSLATION: I am pretty sure that he is working for | :13:26. | :13:29. | |
organised crime against his will. He had plans to continue his | :13:29. | :13:34. | |
studies. He wanted to be an orthodontist. He never threatened | :13:34. | :13:38. | |
to leave all say, I'm going to disappear from home and leave my | :13:38. | :13:45. | |
parents and brother. The authorities asked that, but no. | :13:45. | :13:49. | |
Should he make it home, his bedroom will be waiting for him as he left | :13:49. | :13:56. | |
it. His parents' fears are growing by the day. Meanwhile, at the | :13:56. | :13:59. | |
Mexican Association of stolen and disappear children in Mexico City, | :13:59. | :14:05. | |
there is a steady stream of families coming through the door. | :14:05. | :14:09. | |
One wall at the association is plastered with the missing posters | :14:09. | :14:16. | |
of some of the almost 1,300 cases they had seen since 2009. While the | :14:16. | :14:21. | |
drug cartels often target adolescents do work for them, they | :14:21. | :14:25. | |
also got a babies and toddlers to sell them on all for ransom. She | :14:25. | :14:29. | |
founded the organisation 20 years ago when her own granddaughter was | :14:29. | :14:33. | |
snatched by a woman posing as a nanny. Luckily, they manage to | :14:33. | :14:40. | |
track her down, but many others are not so fortunate. TRANSLATION: It | :14:40. | :14:44. | |
is indescribable to lose a child. It is a pain like they have torn | :14:44. | :14:48. | |
your heart out. It is like your life does not have any meaning any | :14:48. | :14:52. | |
more. The West pain a human being can experience is the loss of a | :14:52. | :14:58. | |
child. For all the therapy you may have, the pain is lacerating. There | :14:58. | :15:05. | |
are not words to describe it. the face of what they see as the | :15:05. | :15:08. | |
indifference, sometimes even the involvement of the authorities in | :15:09. | :15:12. | |
their children's disappearances, one group of mothers has decided to | :15:12. | :15:18. | |
take matters into their own hands. Outside the Attorney General's | :15:18. | :15:22. | |
offers, a handful of parents staged a Honda's -- a hunger strike to | :15:22. | :15:25. | |
demand an audience with the President. The Interior Ministry | :15:26. | :15:29. | |
says it is taking the problem seriously and has announced the | :15:29. | :15:34. | |
creation of a new unit to find missing persons and the national | :15:34. | :15:38. | |
database of human remains. But she says it is not just the | :15:38. | :15:44. | |
government's responsibility to tackle the problem. TRANSLATION: | :15:44. | :15:49. | |
This is everyone's worked as we are human beings. The children are not | :15:49. | :15:52. | |
just stolen children but the children of all abuzz, and we see | :15:52. | :15:56. | |
something happening against a chart and a young person, we must report | :15:56. | :16:04. | |
it because we are all involved and can all be affected by this. At his | :16:04. | :16:10. | |
home, she is getting through her first Mother's Day meal without him. | :16:11. | :16:16. | |
Despite the time, she that -- has not lost hope for having him back | :16:16. | :16:21. | |
before next year's celebration. But she has little hope that it will be | :16:22. | :16:25. | |
the authorities that will bring him back. | :16:25. | :16:30. | |
All the research took place in the world's newsroom, the first | :16:30. | :16:31. | |
international conference for missing children and adults took | :16:32. | :16:36. | |
place last week at the University of Portsmouth and the UK, and one | :16:36. | :16:42. | |
of the event's organisers joins me now. Good of you to join us. Nice | :16:42. | :16:47. | |
to see you. Tell us what the point of the conference was for you and | :16:47. | :16:54. | |
why you felt it necessary to hold it. It was aimed to bring people | :16:54. | :16:57. | |
together from all types of professions, anyone who is dealing | :16:57. | :17:02. | |
with a missing person, so we did not had just an academic conference, | :17:02. | :17:06. | |
we thought why not combine that with a policing conference, and | :17:06. | :17:10. | |
that grew into something much bigger than we anticipated, because | :17:10. | :17:15. | |
the response from the academic world was overwhelming. We have | :17:15. | :17:22. | |
over 30 academic presenters, on a wide variety of topics, the | :17:22. | :17:26. | |
research, the most up-to-date research in all elements relevant | :17:26. | :17:30. | |
to missing people. What are you hoping that the conference would | :17:30. | :17:35. | |
have achieved? What we would like to achieve by the conference is to | :17:35. | :17:43. | |
bring people together, people from across a variety of professions, | :17:43. | :17:49. | |
and to be able to talk to, understand each other's ideas, | :17:49. | :17:54. | |
culture clashes, to share knowledge and to highlight gaps in what we | :17:54. | :17:58. | |
know, what we don't know, what we need to know, and take it from | :17:58. | :18:03. | |
there. We may influence policy, we may understand that more research | :18:03. | :18:08. | |
needs to be done in certain areas. There are certain patterns of | :18:09. | :18:13. | |
behaviour, if you understand a particular type of characteristic | :18:13. | :18:17. | |
involved in a particular type of offender, for example, they knew no | :18:17. | :18:22. | |
way to target your resources as a policing operation, or even in | :18:22. | :18:27. | |
terms of child abduction, there is a study that has been done on | :18:27. | :18:31. | |
child-stranger abduction. How do we teach parents to teach their | :18:31. | :18:35. | |
children, who do they need to avoid? We know from the research | :18:35. | :18:40. | |
that it is not a complete stranger in most cases. Not somebody that | :18:40. | :18:44. | |
comes out of the bushes. It is somebody that they are familiar | :18:44. | :18:50. | |
with. The idea of the stranger danger is not true. In that sense, | :18:50. | :18:54. | |
we can influence the discussion and influence the policy publicly as | :18:54. | :18:59. | |
well. It is clearly very difficult to gauge the true extent of the | :18:59. | :19:04. | |
problem. But from what you understand, how serious is it? | :19:04. | :19:08. | |
is an extremely important issue to know, because children are | :19:08. | :19:13. | |
vulnerable. Because they are not know -- not where they are supposed | :19:14. | :19:18. | |
to be, they are probably coming to harm. Do you know how widespread | :19:18. | :19:23. | |
the problem is? It is difficult to tell. There is a variation in the | :19:23. | :19:29. | |
way that different countries record or even report the problem. Between | :19:29. | :19:34. | |
countries, in some countries, the value of a child is not consider it | :19:34. | :19:39. | |
as high as we may consider them. Simply because they are not earning | :19:39. | :19:44. | |
money. So they are not a valued member of society, as such. If | :19:44. | :19:50. | |
anything happens to them, if they run away, people may not take | :19:50. | :19:55. | |
notice. Whereas for Russ, they will. In some societies, they are costing | :19:55. | :20:02. | |
the parents and that is a burden to them. Yes, in terms of society, | :20:02. | :20:07. | |
every parent, we would assume that parents across the world kept for | :20:07. | :20:13. | |
their children, but in terms of society, the police... they may not | :20:13. | :20:20. | |
spend the time and effort to search for them. Explain to us what a | :20:20. | :20:25. | |
missing child can do to the family. It is heartbreaking. Not even a | :20:25. | :20:31. | |
child, any one that you love, you do not know where they are, they go | :20:31. | :20:36. | |
for a minute, you have that fear, they go for an hour, think of a day, | :20:36. | :20:42. | |
a week, a month. Their life stops. They cannot move on. They have no | :20:42. | :20:51. | |
ending. The what if, it is not need telling, it just eats away. We know | :20:51. | :20:57. | |
that they struggle to cope. We know they have to move on to some extent | :20:57. | :21:00. | |
because of other children, that they possibly have to raise, but | :21:00. | :21:05. | |
they can't move on and they are stuck at that particular moment, | :21:05. | :21:08. | |
where that particular child went missing and they cannot let it go. | :21:08. | :21:15. |