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National
Center for Missing & Exploited Children®
Success Stories
International Search for 3-Year-Old UK Resident Ends in Florida
In November 2004, NCMEC received a report of a 3-year-old girl from
the United Kingdom who had been abducted by her non-custodial mother.
The child was abducted during a supervised visit with her mother in Jamaica.
The abductor transported the child from Jamaica to the Bahamas and later
from the Bahamas to the United States.
The International Missing Children’s Division at NCMEC
worked with its liaisons at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
U.S. Postal Inspection Service to locate a possible address for the abductor
and child in the United States. In March 2007, a potential address was
located in Florida.
Since the child had been missing for several years, NCMEC age-progressed
the child’s photograph and distributed it to law enforcement in
Florida. Six weeks after NCMEC’s initial determination that the
abductor was in Florida, an officer with the Palm Beach County Sherriff’s
Office recalled seeing the child when responding to a call concerning
the child’s mother.
NCMEC also learned that the mother was highly mobile and frequently
traveled outside of Florida both domestically and in the Caribbean. Due
to the possibility that the abductor would flee with the child, NCMEC
got pro bono attorneys to file an emergency pick-up order in court. NCMEC
also requested that local law enforcement conduct a school check to make
sure the child was still in the area.
After determining that the child was still in Florida, NCMEC coordinated
the efforts of law enforcement, child protective services, and the pro
bono attorneys, and compiled the searching family’s custody order
from the United Kingdom, the Hague application, and other relevant materials
for the court hearing. After the court signed the emergency pick-up order,
law enforcement picked up the child from school and placed her in the
temporary custody of child protective services while her stepmother traveled
from the United Kingdom to Florida to be reunited with the child. With
the help of a reunification counselor, the child and her family were
reunited after over 3 years of searching.
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