Michael Macintosh remembers the last time he saw his young son Mathieu-Pierre.
Dropping him off at an airport in September 2013, the father didn’t have any fears about never seeing his nine-year-old again.
“Like any other day, I was seeing my son, he was going overseas with his mum for six weeks he was due home,” Mr Macintosh told SBS World News.
“I didn’t think twice. I said goodbye hugged him and that was it.”
Mathieu-Pierre is now missing, one of several who are abducted by one parent and taken overseas every year.
A common struggle of parents with missing kids is not knowing what they look like years after their disappearance.
But a new campaign by a US organisation that searches for missing children, and the Australian Federal Police, is hoped to helped track kids like him down.
On International Missing Children’s Day, six age-progressed images of missing and parentally abducted Australian children have been released in a bid to find and bring them home.
'I will keep looking until I find you': The never ending search
Forensic artists from the US have designed pictures of what the kids would look like today.
Mr Macintosh said he was in doubt at first when he saw the picture of his son.
“It was quite a shock I looked at it and I thought: ‘well that's actually not my son’.
“Now looking at the photos, there are a number of similarities.”
Every year, around 38,000 people are reported missing in Australia, and a staggering 20,000 are under 18 years of age.
Missing child Mathieu-Pierre Macintosh in 2013. Source: Supplied
AFP Assistant Commissioner Debbie Platz said the majority of missing children cases revolve around abductions.
And within culturally diverse communities, some people are reluctant to make missing persons reports, whether because of a suspicion of police or a lack of awareness of laws.
“And then also of course there are groups who feel if they report to police that it will bring shame on their family and community, so they're embarrassed to report to police,” Ms Platz said.
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