Hundreds share fake appeal for ‘missing’ girl Bella Heather

Hundreds of people across the UK have shared hoax appeals for information about a supposedly missing five-year-old named Bella Heather. 

Full Fact has seen examples of the posts in Doncaster (South Yorkshire), Whaley Bridge (Derbyshire), Hastings (East Sussex), Longton (Staffordshire), Dumfries and Galloway, Silsden (West Yorkshire), Wrexham, Stockport (Greater Manchester), Dewsbury (West Yorkshire) and Otley (West Yorkshire). 

All of the posts have very similar text, which says: “My niece Bella Heather she's 5years old has been missing for 7hours. She was last seen playing with her pup on our pourch [sic] in #doncaster [or relevant location].

“An amber alert has been activated. Please keep our sweet girl in your prayers and thoughts help bump this post. She can't be far. Thank you.”

The posts also all use the same image, of a young girl with blonde hair in a lilac shirt, holding a puppy on a lead. 

But these are not genuine appeals. While Full Fact has been unable to locate the original image, there are several signs that all is not as it seems. 

Firstly, the same image and text has been used in other countries—with at least two law enforcement agencies in the US warning of the post being involved in a potential “scam”. 

Secondly, it is impossible that the same girl could have gone missing in exactly the same circumstances in different locations all over the UK, and we have not been able to find any genuine appeals for a girl with this name going missing in the UK from sources such as police forces or news reports. 

Thirdly, the post bears many similarities to other hoax appeals concerned with supposedly missing young children we’ve fact checked in the past. 

These often use the phrase “sweet girl”, ask social media users to “bump this post” and mention some kind of alert being issued—in this case an amber alert.

This refers to a system used in the US, designed to provide an early warning system in order to trace abducted children. This system is not used in the UK, which is another clue that the post is sharing false information.

There is a similar system in the UK called Child Rescue Alert (CRA). The CRA works as a partnership between the police, the media and the public, and is used “where it is feared that there is a real, immediate risk to the life of a child”. 

Full Fact has previously checked many different posts shared to Facebook groups which falsely raise an alarm for other missing children, abandoned infants or injured dogs. These posts are often edited later to promote property listings, with comments frequently disabled, so other social media users are unable to identify the post as a hoax. 

These types of posts could cause local community groups to become overwhelmed with false information and potentially result in genuine appeals being ignored or—perhaps worse—criticised as fake. We have written to Facebook’s parent company Meta expressing these concerns and have asked the company to take stronger action in response to this problem. 

It’s always worth checking whether content is real before you share it. We have written a guide on how to verify online images which you can read here and tips to spot if a Facebook post is a hoax here.

Image courtesy of Brett Jordan