BreakTheChain.org

A Wave of Compassion, A Flood of Complications

Date Added: Jan. 13, 2005
Last Updated: July 10, 2005

Since I started BreakTheChain.org, chain letters about children separated from their families have been the bane of my existence. Unlike other types of chains, missing child chains are most often based on real events. Unfortunately, while often effective in the short term, there are some major long-term problems with using e-mail to reunite these families.

Later versions of this chain omit the Hospital's contact information, perhaps because the web site given contains no information about this case and few people will make an international phone call to verify a chain letter when it would just be easier to forward it "just in case."

Then, soon after the above letter began circulating, a similar chain surfaced, this time including the photo of a young girl, but not much else, including anybody to contact with information.

These chains serves as a poignant reminder that large scale international disasters are also tragedies on a personal level. The December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean Tsunami separated many families and left officials scrambling to reunite them. Here we have a twist on the classic missing child chain letter. Instead of the families seeking the whereabouts of their children, officials are seeking the parents - or at least they were.

The boy is Hannes Bergstroem and was reunited with his father, Marko Karkkainen, after the boy's uncle saw Hannes' picture posted on a web site the Phuket International Hospital established to help identify orphaned children and reunite them with their families. The boy's family, including grandparents, were vacationing in Thailand for the holidays. All but Hannes' mother, Suzanne Bergstroem, were recovered.

The Girl is 10-year-old Sophia Marleen Michl. While her parents were never found, Sophia has returned to Germany, where she is in the care of other family members. German officials ask that you do not forward this outdated notice and let Sophia and her family recover from this tragic event.

Hannes, Sophia and their families were not the only ones whose lives were turned upside-down by this natural disaster. And, Phuket International's web site helped reunite many of them. However, the hospital's work is done and they have removed the page designed for this purpose. Unfortunately, many people have copied the information from that site and posted it on message boards and forwarded via e-mail, where it continues to circulate and cannot be reliably updated.

Once sent, chain letters trying to unite children with their families are very compelling and nearly impossible to retract or follow-up. Long after both children were in the care of their families, pleas from well-meaning folks continue to circulate unchanged. BreakTheChain.org recommends against forwarding missing child chains for precisely this reason and also because their continued circulation often frustrates official's efforts to work on open cases because they must devote time and effort to respond to inquiries on the closed ones.

We, as a global community, can help families separated by disaster, misfortune or other tragedy, but not by sending thousands of copies of an unreliable and perpetual chain letter. For more on the long-term hazards of using e-mail chain letters to locate missing persons, please read The Trouble with Missing Child Chains in the Chain-Breaker's Library. Break this chain.

References: About.com (Hannes), About.com (Sophia) Snopes.com, TruthOrFiction.com, IG4 (German)

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