Teenage girl who featured in four Roma ‘Missing Children’ videos found safe in Italy

The 17-year-old, who cannot now be named for legal reasons, is the seventh child to have been featured in AS Roma’s ‘Missing Children’ social media campaign who has subsequently been found safe.

Working in partnership with global charity the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and Italian state police, Roma featured the young girl, who went missing from her home in Tuscany on August 7, in the videos to announce the signings of Pedro, Marash Kumbulla, Borja Mayoral and, most recently, Chris Smalling from Manchester United.

The videos, which all featured the teenage girl alongside a number of different missing children from around the world, have been viewed over two million times on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

“This is just brilliant news,” said Paul Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer at AS Roma.

“When the club decided to launch the campaign, we wanted to use the viral nature of transfer announcements on social media to increase awareness of children missing from home. Back in June 2019, our hope was that even if we could just contribute in some small way to helping find one missing child, it would be the best thing we could ever do with the platform and audience we have on social media.

"To find out now that a seventh child who has featured in Roma’s announcement videos has been found safe is simply incredible. We want to thank everyone who shared the videos on social media and now we pray that all of the other missing children that we’ve featured this summer will also return home safely.”

In June 2019, Roma launched the social media campaign in partnership with Telefono Azzurro (Italy), the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (USA), Missing People (UK), Missing Child Kenya and the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (worldwide).

To date one girl in Italy, three teenagers from England, a young boy from Belgium and two children from Kenya have all been found safe after appearing in AS Roma’s transfer videos.

Caroline Humer, Vice President of Programs at the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, said: “Finding and bringing a missing child home to their family is always an amazing day for us.

"We are so grateful for our partnership with AS Roma and for their willingness to highlight this global issue by displaying photos of missing children. We also want to thank their fans for their support.”