Second English girl featured in Roma missing children video found safe

Roma officials were informed before their Europa League tie against Istanbul Basaksehir by Missing People, the UK charity who partnered with the club at the beginning of July, that the teenager had been found.

Through the partnership, Missing People provided Roma with 20 different British cases to feature in the campaign, which used viral transfer announcement videos on social media to raise awareness of missing children all over the world.

The English teenager becomes the fifth child featured in the video campaign this summer to be found safe and the second from England.

On July 25, a 15-year-old girl from London was found safe, six days after appearing in a video to announce the signing of Turkish defender Mert Cetin.

A week later, a nine-year-old boy from Belgium was found safe after being featured in a video to announce the loan signing of Davide Zappacosta.

On Sunday, a 13-year-old boy, who went missing in August and was featured in the Henrikh Mkhitaryan announcement, was found safe.

Then on Tuesday this week, Roma was informed by Missing Child Kenya that a second Kenyan child, an eight-year-old girl who was included in the video to announce Chris Smalling’s arrival from Manchester United, had been found and reunited with her family.

The sixteen-year-old girl from London, who can no longer be identified for legal reasons, went missing on July 12 and actually appeared in more Roma announcement videos than any other child this summer.

In total, she featured in seven different missing children videos.

After first being featured in the video to announce the Zappacosta signing, the teenager was then included again by Roma in the announcement videos for Premier League arrivals Chris Smalling and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to increase awareness of her disappearance in England.

After the close of the transfer window, a new video highlighting all of the English missing children featured in the campaign was published – with the 16-year-old shown first, and also named in the Twitter caption, which has since been deleted.

The tweet, accompanying the final video, read:

'From teens [Name Deleted] & Khaled, who went missing recently, to Lee & Damien, who’ve been missing for decades, we’ve featured 20 British children. One girl has since been found safe & we pray for more god news soon.'

When all of three of the original announcement videos that she’d featured in had to be deleted, due to other children included in them being found, the girl appeared in all three edited replacement videos that were shared on social media – including the new Mkhitaryan and Smalling videos that were released on Monday and Tuesday.

“It is fantastic news that another one of the young people who was part of the AS Roma transfer video appeal has been found,” said Jo Youle, CEO, Missing People. “We are really thankful to our friends at AS Roma for sharing their transfer videos featuring the missing children on social media. With the help of their millions of fans, it has raised awareness of missing children and young people to a wide audience.

“Anything we can do to get the word out about children and young people who have disappeared is welcome. More than 86,000 children are reported missing in the UK each year, with two percent, or around 1,700 children and young people, remaining missing for longer than a week.

“As well as sharing appeals through the media, on our website and via social media, Missing People provides free, confidential specialist support through our helpline which is available 24 hours a day, and we also support missing children and adults, and their loved ones, who are left behind, using text and email.”

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To support Missing People, make a donation today via www.missingpeople.org.uk/donatenow
Your donation could help answer a call to a missing child who could be in danger and has no one else to turn to.