No evidence child found wandering in Dewsbury or Chesterfield

Posts shared hundreds of times on Facebook claim a young boy was found wandering in both Dewsbury, West Yorkshire and Chesterfield, Derbyshire—but these posts are very similar to others we’ve seen, and are likely to be hoaxes. 

West Yorkshire Police and Derbyshire Constabulary both told us they had no record of anything relating to these claims. 

We’ve seen the same post shared in other Facebook groups too. The same image has also reportedly appeared in similar posts in the United States. 

We’ve also found examples of other Facebook posts shared abroad that use different photos and names but feature similar wording. 

These posts appear to be the latest examples of hoaxes that we’ve seen falsely raising the alarm for missing children, elderly people, abandoned infants and injured dogs in Facebook community groups. 

Our investigation into these sorts of hoax posts last year found that they’re often edited later to promote something completely different, such as a property listing or cashback site, with comments frequently disabled to prevent users calling them out publicly. The two Facebook posts in Dewsbury and Chesterfield also   have comments disabled. 

Full Fact’s investigation featured in a recent episode of BBC One’s Rip Off Britain.  

This behaviour poses a risk to user engagement with local community groups, which can become overwhelmed with false information. This could mean that genuine posts potentially get ignored or—perhaps worse—dismissed as false. We’ve written to Facebook’s parent company Meta expressing concerns about how these hoax posts can flood community groups, and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.

Our guide offers more tips on how to spot if a Facebook post is a hoax.

What do the posts say?

The post in a Facebook group for Chesterfield contains an image of a young child, seemingly asleep, with what appear to be injuries to his face. This is the same image we’ve seen used in posts elsewhere, including Facebook groups for Dublin and Skegness. 

The post says: “This little boy, approximately 3 years old, was found 1 hour ago here in #chesterfield. 

“Officers have the child safe at the Police Station but we have no idea where he lives. No one has called looking for him. Let’s flood our feeds so this post can reach his family…IT ONLY TAKES TWO SECONDS TO SHARE!”. 

Derbyshire Constabulary told us it had no records relating to this.

The post in the Dewsbury Facebook group is slightly different, and more closely matches examples we’ve seen in Poole, Hereford and Kings Lynn.

This post states a “little boy approximately 3 years old was found last night walking behind a home here in Dewsbury”, before stating the boy was “saved” by “Deputy Ryan Braidley”. Similar to the Chesterfield example, the post says no one knows the identity of the child and encourages users to share the post, but in this instance the post claims the child “says his mom’s name is Emily”.

West Yorkshire Police told Full Fact it had no knowledge of this incident, adding that the use of “Deputy” indicated the post originated in the US. It also said there was no “Ryan Braidley” in its workforce.