What was claimed
A parent has posted an image of their teenage daughter who has gone missing in the UK.
Our verdict
This is a hoax. The image shared in these Facebook posts shows a young woman with a different name who went missing, and was subsequently found safe, in the United States.
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 residents of Skelmersdale in Lancashire 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! #skermersdale
“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 very similar text have also been shared to groups for residents in Farnley and Wakefield in West Yorkshire, Airdrie in North Lanarkshire and Southport in Merseyside, but in each case the location has been changed.
However, the photo accompanying all of these posts is not of a girl called Meghan Roberts. It shows a young woman of a different name who went missing from the town of Oneida in the US state of Tennessee in November 2024. A local police department subsequently confirmed she’d been safely located.
West Yorkshire Police and Merseyside Police told Full Fact they did not have any reports of a missing person of that name. We have also contacted Police Scotland and Lancashire Constabulary.
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We regularly see similar posts falsely raising the alarm for missing children, elderly people and injured dogs in Facebook community groups. We have also written about other posts claiming to be searching for Meghan Roberts that made use of a different image.
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 young woman of a different name who went missing in the US and was later found safe.
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Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.