Every year around 38,000 Australians are reported missing and while most of them are located within a short period of time, approximately 1,600 people — many being young people under the age of 18 — are still yet to be found.
As part of an attempt to combat these high numbers, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) released a series of six age-progressed images of missing and abducted children on Thursday for International Missing Children’s Day in the hopes they may be recognised by someone in the community.
The images of Thomas Speath, Serena Speath, Leela McDougall, Mathieu-Pierre Etienne Macintosh, Bronte Watter and Isabella Watter, who all remain under the age of 18, were created by leading forensic artists from the United States National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and show what they could look like in 2017.
Every year around 38,000 Australians are reported missing and while most of them are located within a short period of time, approximately 1,600 people — many being young people under the age of 18 — are still yet to be found.
As part of an attempt to combat these high numbers, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) released a series of six age-progressed images of missing and abducted children on Thursday for International Missing Children’s Day in the hopes they may be recognised by someone in the community.
The images of Thomas Speath, Serena Speath, Leela McDougall, Mathieu-Pierre Etienne Macintosh, Bronte Watter and Isabella Watter, who all remain under the age of 18, were created by leading forensic artists from the United States National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and show what they could look like in 2017.
International Missing Children’s Day, held on May 25 each year and established in the 1980s, came into effect following the disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz from a New York street corner in 1979 and now acts as a commemoration of efforts around the world to locate missing young people.
Etan’s story was the first to receive national coverage within the United States after his photographer father circulated his image, which featured on milk cartons, and influenced changes in the laws, methods and tactics of finding missing children.
