Rock Choir Targets Missing Children

The faces of Madeleine McCann and Damien Nettles were among more than 10,000 images held up at Wembley to raise awareness of the tens of thousands of children who go missing every year in the UK.

Members of the Rock Choir, a community singing phenomenon that is sweeping the country, filled the London stadium with posters of some of the 100,000 children who go missing each year.

The move comes after Prime Minister David Cameron told Kate and Gerry McCann their ordeal was ''every parent's worst nightmare'' as Scotland Yard pledged to lend its ''particular expertise'' to the search for their daughter.

Madeleine went missing aged three on holiday in Portugal in May 2007.

Caroline Redman Lusher, director of the Rock Choir, said:

 ''If we can help just one missing child be brought home to safety, it will all have been worthwhile.''

Martin Houghton-Brown, chief executive of Missing People, which helped organise the event, said: ''By actively joining the search for missing children, and raising funds for the search to continue, Rock Choir has created a truly innovative partnership.''

Other missing children featured on the posters included:

:: Damien Nettles, who was 16 when he went missing after a night out with friends in Cowes on the Isle of Wight on November 2, 1996;

:: Jamie Cheesman, who was 16 when she was reported missing in November 1993 after staying with friends in Grimsby;

:: Carmel Fenech, who was 16 when she went missing from Crawley in 1998;

:: Andrew Gosden, who was 14 when he went missing from Doncaster on September 14, 2007;

:: Katrice Lee, who was two when she disappeared in Germany more than 29 years ago;

:: Ben Needham, who was 21 months old when he went missing in Greece in 1991;

:: Alexander Sloley, who was 16 when he went missing from Edmonton, north London, on August 2, 2008.