Four months since Gerry and I have heard our daughter laugh, seen her smile, read her a story, given her a cuddle. Four months of not knowing what our beautiful daughter has had to endure. Four months since that cold night when our world fell apart. Over these past terrible months Gerry and I have learnt much about missing and abducted children.
We have been shocked to learn the truth. Parts of Europe are a safe haven for sex offenders. They can roam around with no checks.Yet in the past three years MEPs and the European Commission have made THREE different attempts to tackle this scandal. These proposals seem to be very sensible and include things that, to be honest, we assumed happened already.
Things like a European-wide register of convictions including sex offences and sharing information about bans on working with children. The plans have been blocked by national governments. Gerry and I just can't understand why. It seems shameful that information that could help protect children is not shared across Europe. We are all in the European Union together. Should we not be working together to make Europe a safer place for its most vulnerable and precious members — our children? Gerry and I cannot turn a blind eye. Who can? (News of the World)
So many British families holiday within Europe, but how many British parents realise that there is no sex offenders register in many of its countries? Or realise that the criminal record checks on people who work with children, that we in Britain take for granted, just don't happen in other European countries? How many parents realise that possession of child pornography is still legal in some EU countries?
