Without a trace
Nick Fielding
Published: 12:01AM GMT 24 Nov 2007
Every year thousands of children are reported missing. While the great majority are found, some have remained lost for a decade or more. Nick Fielding talks to the families of those who never came home. Photograph by David Spero
A British toddler goes missing abroad, leaving behind a distraught family. Except that this is not the story of Madeleine McCann, whose disappearance from a holiday villa in Portugal on May 3 has dominated the news schedules ever since.
When Katrice Lee vanished in Germany in 1981 there was no blanket media coverage, no poster campaign, hardly even a mention on the national news. And today, 26 years later, her family still have no idea what happened to her.
Her sister Natasha, now 33, is five years older than Katrice, who disappeared on her second birthday on November 28, 1981. 'How can I explain it?' she asks. 'Losing Katrice - it's like taking a deep breath and holding it for 26 years.'
The two girls, along with their parents Ritchie and Sharon, were living in Paderborn in western Germany. Her father was a sergeant in the 15/19 King's Royal Hussars. It was Katrice's birthday and the family decided to go to the Naafi in nearby Schloss Neuhaus to buy things for her party.
'For some reason, I decided that I didn't want to go shopping,' Natasha says. 'My aunt and uncle had come over from Bielefeld [they were also in the Army] for the birthday and my aunt went with my parents while my uncle stayed at home with me. Dad drove them to the Naafi and waited for them in the car-park. It was the last payday before Christmas so the Naafi was packed. Katrice decided she didn't want to go in the trolley. Mum got to the checkout and went back to get some crisps.' And then Katrice disappeared.
'I have terrible feelings because I didn't go with them. No matter how much I tell myself that it's not my fault, I still feel guilty. After Katrice disappeared, my parents decided not to have any more children. I've been single for seven years. I find it difficult to get close to people. I don't get angry very often, but I do get passionate about her. I have to detach myself so that I don't break down. I have had plenty of bad dreams about Katrice. The dream is always me walking through woods near where we lived in Germany. I see a toy pram and my sister's head in the pram.'
Natasha still remembers many details from that day. Her father returning to the house to tell her uncle that Katrice was missing. 'Dad said, "We can't find Katrice". To me, it was like losing a toy. Mum was stood outside by the car. She was swearing, in a terrible state. I can still see her standing there. Mum can't remember any of it.'
Every year about 140,000 children are reported missing in the UK. The majority are reunited with their families within 72 hours. A tiny number are still missing weeks, months, even years later, and in some cases with no evidence as to what happened to them. 'People - and kids in particular - don't go missing without reason,' says Paul Tuohy, the chief executive of Missing People, a charity that runs the Missing Persons Helpline and does more than any other organisation to help reunite missing people with their families. 'It's a by-product of social issues - debt, bullying, abuse, myriad reasons. It occurs as a result of something else.'
There are no official records for the number of British children who are still missing after six months or a year, but Missing People has 300 open cases of children who were under 17 when they disappeared. Of these, 34 have been missing for more than a year.
It is common sense to suppose that the longer a child has been missing, the less likely it is that they will return safely to their families. In the United States, 800,000 children are reported missing each year, and about 100 cases are thought to be premeditated abductions. Of these, it is estimated that over three-quarters are likely to be dead within three hours of disappearing. But that does not mean there is no reason for hope. Very occasionally, a child does turn up after a long period away.
On June 5, 2002, Elizabeth Smart, aged 14, was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom in a district of Salt Lake City, Utah. In the first days of her disappearance, thousands of volunteers combed the local area searching for clues. Elizabeth's parents, Ed and Lois, maintained a high media profile, even as the trail cooled and the days turned into weeks, then months. Astonishingly, after nine months and thanks to clues gleaned from her younger sister, who was in the bedroom at the moment of the kidnapping, Elizabeth was found alive, living with a polygamist preacher, Brian David Mitchell, who had once carried out work at the Smarts' home. 'I'm sure she's been through hell,' Ed Smart said at the time, adding that it was 'absolutely wonderful' to have her back with their family. Elizabeth is now a university student. Mitchell remains in custody, but has been declared unfit to stand trial.
Such high-profile cases - like that of Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl who was abducted on her way to school in Vienna in 1998, aged 10, and held in a cellar by her captor for eight years until her escape on August 23, 2006 - despite their positive outcomes, provide fuel for every parent's worst fears. We occasionally hear stories, often from friends of friends, of children snatched or almost snatched in shopping centres, or outside schools. In reality, such cases are mostly urban myths. But as any parent knows, the anxiety such stories feed, that there may be people out there who want to take our children, can be all too real. And perhaps the most horrific scenario is for a child to disappear without trace, perhaps for ever, with their families left to agonise over what might have happened.
In cases where there is no resolution, Paul Tuohy believes that we seriously underestimate the impact that losing a member of the family can have. 'There's an odd irony for me,' he says, 'in that we spend around £30 million a year on victim support. If someone robs you or you are burgled, more than likely you will receive a letter and possibly a visit from someone who will help you get over the shock. But if your child or brother or father disappears, there is very little support. We are the people they call when they are at their lowest, sometimes many years later.'
Tuohy has an ally in deputy assistant commissioner Robert Bryan at New Scotland Yard, who for the past five years has led the Association of Chief Police Officers on the question of missing people. Bryan has been instrumental in building strong links with the voluntary sector, recognising that it brings unique expertise to the issue. He says that the police have done a lot of work to understand precisely who disappears and why, noting that many children run away from care homes, for example, often because they are a long way from the child's home region, or because they have drug or other problems.
'Abductions are very rare,' Bryan says. 'Out of some 200 cases a year, almost all are parental abductions. Stranger abductions happen maybe once every couple of years. The real challenge for us is to pick out from the many thousands of children who go missing, the ones who really are at risk. One of the changes I have made is to focus on the families who are left behind and to realise that communities are also affected.'
On September 10, 1988, 15-year-old Lee Boxell left his home in Sutton, Surrey, to watch Crystal Palace play at nearby Selhurst Park. He has not been seen or heard of since. 'Every year that day comes around, it's very hard,' Chris, his mother, says. 'Christmases, his 18th, his 21st, they've all been and gone, but how can you celebrate?'
Chris and her husband Peter still live in the same neat, modern terrace house, a picture of Lee standing just to the right of the fireplace in the sitting room. 'I suppose we could have moved, but I would dread the thought that he could come back here some day and find us gone.'
Chris gets out a number of scrapbooks that document the lengths they have gone to in order to find out what happened to Lee. They are full of newspaper and magazine cuttings - dozens of articles, details of television interviews and football club appeals. There are reports of rivers and ponds being dragged, empty properties being entered and examined. At first there were 25 detectives on the case and an incident room was set up in Sutton High Street, but with no information coming in, within a few months it was down to four detectives.
'I was keeping the campaign going,' Chris says. 'If not, I would have gone to pieces. Now I feel very guilty that my life was centred on looking for Lee because, to be honest, I forgot about my daughter, Lindsay. She really needed me and I haven't given her enough. If she had gone missing, of course I would have done the same.
'My husband used to spend all his spare time wandering the streets around here and in central London, looking for any information on Lee. There was never anything. I always ask the police what they think may have happened and I always get the same reply: they don't know. There's no evidence of life and no evidence of death.' There have been moments when their hopes have been raised. 'One day Peter was outside working on his car when a man came round asking for the Boxells. He said, "I think I know where your son is. He's in Greenford Market." Peter went there straight away. There was someone who did look exactly like Lee, but it wasn't him.'
The family has offered a reward of £25,000 for information on Lee, but no one has come forward. 'We had beermats made, milk cartons, pop videos. The Body Shop printed his picture on the side of their delivery vehicles. It's been endless.'
Upstairs, Lee's bedroom is the same as the day he left, 19 years ago. The calendar is set on the same day. His vinyl records, books, clothes, even his school uniform remain. Lee would now be 34. 'People say, why don't you clear it all away?' Chris says. 'I can't. Even his Old Spice aftershave is there! Not many kids use that these days. I have to hope that one day he will come back to us. For many years I wouldn't even go on holiday.
'I have been to see clairvoyants. I wanted someone to tell me that he's alive. I know it's all rubbish, but it helped me at the time. I know that with other kids who have gone missing, after a while their families agree to pronounce them dead. But I can't do that. When I know for certain, that's different.'
Damien Nettles disappeared after a night out with friends in Cowes on the Isle of Wight on November 2, 1996, aged 15. His family now live in America - Damien's father is American - though his mother Valerie still returns regularly to the Isle of Wight to appeal for information. She is critical of the initial police handling of the case, pointing out that no significant search was organised until 14 months after he disappeared, but now, confident that there are people who know what happened to her son, she concentrates on keeping his memory alive and in the public domain.
'We are far from giving up on this,' Valerie says. 'My daughter Melissa [20], made a MySpace page for Damien about six months ago and had all of her contacts add his details, and so it snowballs. Yesterday, my other daughter, Sarah [30], made a Facebook page for him and we have already had more than 60 people sign up. I don't think we have come to terms with Damien's disappearance, though we have learnt to live with it. It has had a terrible effect on each of us. We cope by never giving up.'
Sarah, now living in Seattle, shares her mother's anguish. 'It's been 11 guilt-ridden years. It has broken my heart. The week before Damien disappeared, while he was on his half-term break, he visited me at university in Portsmouth and I had called Mum to tell him to come home. I was a poor student and I just couldn't afford to look after him, to pay for his food and so on. Afterwards I felt that if I had let him stay longer with me in Portsmouth, everything would have been OK. Recently I have been getting more active, using these new kinds of community pages on the internet to spread the word. It might not seem much, but it gets people thinking.
'Initially, Damien's disappearance made us feel very distant as a family. There was a lot of resentment. We eventually realised we had to be as close as possible. If we hadn't all moved together to America, it would have split us apart.'
In her heart of hearts, Sarah no longer truly believes that Damien is still alive. 'Something happened that night. I don't know what it was and I won't even speculate. You go through denial. At the beginning, our living-room looked over the front drive and every day I had a weird feeling of expecting to see him. I was so certain. But it never happened. For the first five or six years, I thought he might be somewhere. Now I look at it logically. He would never have run away, so I can't see any reason for him to be out there.'
Instead, Sarah wants to make sure that people do not forget her brother. 'Damien was a real person, not just that boy who went missing 11 years ago. Something happened and someone has to know something.'
The amount of media coverage devoted to the McCanns suggests there has been a change in the way the public perceive missing children. Despite Paul Tuohy's frustration at the lack of recognition given to the subject, he heads a vibrant organisation that now employs 50 people and runs a 24-hour helpline. Missing People has built strong links with the National Missing Persons Bureau - a relationship that has its genesis in the Fred West investigation when Gloucestershire police realised that what was then the Missing Persons Helpline had better records of disappearances than it did.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/3355155/Without-a-trace.html
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