What was claimed
An image shows a girl named Meghan Roberts who has gone missing in the UK.
Our verdict
This is a hoax. The image shared in these Facebook posts is of a girl of a different name who went missing, and was subsequently found, in the United States. Merseyside Police, Nottinghamshire Police and Lancashire Constabulary have confirmed they have no record of any such missing person.
Posts shared to a number of local Facebook community groups across the UK claiming to be from a parent looking for their missing “first born daughter” are hoaxes.
One such post, shared to a group for Nottingham residents, says: “My first born daughter has been missing since Sunday morning(may 25 2025) still no sign of her. It only takes two seconds to share! 📍Nottingham
“Her name is: Meghan Roberts Age:15 Height: 5'3 Weight: 115
“EDIT: YES we've called the cops. YES we've checked her friends houses. If there are any updates I WILL update yall, so plz stop messaging me and asking for an update. [sic]”
Posts with nearly identical text have also been shared to groups for residents in Bispham and Bacup in Lancashire, Rochdale, Middleton, Salford and Ramsbottom in Greater Manchester, and Prescot in Merseyside, but in each case the location has been changed.
But the photo accompanying all of these posts is not of a girl called Meghan Roberts. It shows a teenager of a different name who went missing in Decatur, Alabama in July 2024. The Decatur police department subsequently confirmed she’d been safely located.
Merseyside Police, Nottinghamshire Police and Lancashire Constabulary have all confirmed to Full Fact that they don’t have a missing person by the name of Meghan Roberts on their systems. We’ve also contacted Greater Manchester Police to ask if they had received any recent reports of a girl by this name going missing.
We regularly see similar posts falsely raising the alarm for missing children, elderly people and injured dogs in Facebook community groups.
Hoaxes can damage people’s trust in local community news, because groups can become overwhelmed with false information. As a result, genuine posts may be ignored or dismissed as false.
You can find out more by watching an episode of BBC One’s Rip Off Britain, which features our investigation into the problem of hoax posts on Facebook. Our guide also offers some tips on how to identify such hoaxes.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the image shared in these posts shows a girl of a different name who was the subject of a missing person appeal in the US.
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