So This Is Christmas

It is our 15^th Christmas without Damien. 

How has Christmas changed? Totally. I used to be all about Christmas.  Loved it and planned for it. I enjoyed spending time with my children and we had our traditions that we loved every year.  Favourite shows to watch, school plays, favourite foods to prepare and decorating the house.  All the things that one does in anticipation of the wonderful unfolding of Christmas and the family joys it brings. The wonderment of little children and the squeals of delight as they see the presents under the tree.  I loved to walk home from work through town and see Christmas lights happily dangling across streets, bustling with shoppers laden with bags of holiday food and gifts, heading home as the day turned to night.  I loved Christmas and the feelings of happiness and joy were tangible.  Now we have had 15 years of loss.  Damien is gone. I don’t feel the joy anymore. We have a hole in the center of our family and we don’t know why.

After Damien went missing in November 1996 we went about our usual preparations, but instead of joy, I felt fear.  The tree was trimmed and presents were purchased and placed under the tree. We waited every day for the sound of him coming home, but it never happened.  We honestly thought he would be home by Christmas.  It was unthinkable that he would not be found by then.

This was the beginning of the new, changed Christmas. The joy was gone and I tried ever so hard to keep it all together for my other children.  I did all the same things. School plays and festivals and shows and traditions. But I was quaking inside with sadness. I felt guilty the second Christmas doing anything because he was not here.  It was clear he was nowhere to be found and probably would not be walking through the door.  But for the children’s sake we went through the motions.

I think that is how Christmas has become…going through the motions and trying oh so hard to ‘feel’ the joy, but quietly and methodically avoiding the knowledge that this is all for show and there is no joy at all, not as I knew it.  Putting on a good face and making it the best that I can for the children.  I listen to the Christmas music old and new. I am trying to muster a tiny tiny glimmer of feeling, but it is gone and I am numb. No matter how many Christmas programmes I watch, it is gone.

I have grandchildren and I watch the shows with them that I watched with their daddy and his brother Damien, and his sisters.  I am trying so very very hard to feel something, but it is just so difficult to find any feelings at all.  I am numb. I love to be with the grandchildren and watch little faces…. but still - I am numb.  I think every soft mushy, tender, soppy, warm, happy, gushy, sentimental feeling is gone.  

I feel content the grandchildren are excited. I am satisfied that my effort to continue to do Christmas has given my children the desire to continue with the traditions and enjoy the anticipation of the season with their own children.  I hope I saved Christmas for them a bit by not giving up completely but by making the best of a bad situation and doing the right thing for those left behind to cope with the loss of a loved, cherished child, and brother….

By Valerie Nettles

Mother of missing Damien Nettles

Missing People is producing a number of pieces of guidance for families missing a loved one. The first guidance sheets are now available. Click here to visit the Family Guidance pages.

A Missed Call

It is 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

I wake up worrying about a missed phone call from the UK (we now live in America, though our son is still missing in the UK).  I had missed the call yesterday, but it was not a number I recognized and they seemed to have left no message.  I wake in the wee hours of Sunday still wondering who it is.  It must be about Damien? 

At 6 a.m. I check my old messages again and this time find that I have a voicemail, left on Friday, from this person who “has information on what happened to Damien”….evidently my husband listened to it and forgot to tell me about this call, but that is another matter!

I call the person back, having now realized who it is, and by 7 a.m. I am in possession of ‘new information.’ Or is it information? It was a “someone said something to somebody but we don’t know who that somebody is and the someone who told somebody was afraid to come forward.”  That kind of thing.

It was the second this week….

We have had this same scenario many, many times over the years with “information”.  I publically, loudly announce that anyone can come to me with sightings, tips, etc., and I am eternally grateful to everyone who does. I am sure, way back when, in our ‘normal’ life, this ‘information’ would have thrown me into a complete emotional tizzy and scarred me for life. But now, each lead is just another possibility and I have no feelings at all - just another frown line and crease in my brow. 

I think that people have to turn off a ‘valve’ somewhere to avoid going into a complete melt-down. I have learnt to think methodically, analyze the facts, and place them in this compartment of my mind reserved for shattering information. It is a learned self-preservation mechanism. I am so pleased to hear that Missing People are working on a program with trained therapists to develop an understanding of this emotional dilemma, the definition of ambiguous loss, and all the trimmings that come with having a missing person situation in the family. 

So please don’t worry about upsetting people like us. Please don't stop coming forward. If you have any information, speak up. Yes, it is difficult to hear but it is a fact of life that families like mine live with, and we’d rather have to bear the haunting details than have none at all. We are hanging on desperately, hoping for the next piece of the puzzle. Anything, no matter how small it may seem to you, could end up meaning something big to us, and help end this life of not knowing.

By Valerie Nettles
Mother of missing Damien Nettles

Something worthwhile...

Eight months ago I was bored and looking for something to do. I typed into Google, "spare time", "useful" and "worthwhile" - then hit return.  Just below a link to Appalachian Clog Dancing and above another to Macramé Your Own Hammock sat the link to Missing People. As I can’t dance or tie a knot I clicked on Missing People’s website. If you’re reading this then I’m guessing you’ve seen the website yourself and know the mix of emotions looking at the faces of people who seemingly just disappear, can evoke.

Fast forward a couple of months and I’m attending my first weekly training session with other volunteers of different ages, experience and backgrounds. For one evening a week over a twelve-week period we learn about the missing issue. It’s not a big issue, it’s a huge issue, centered around the shock wave that hits the lives of ordinary people when a loved one disappears. Because of the complexities involved, the training packs a lot in. We’re introduced to the type of calls we’ll receive and the people who’ll make them: the police, the families of those left behind, the missing person as well as hoax and suicide calls, each needing to be listened to and supported in their own unique way. We assess risk, role play different scenarios, test and re-test what we’re learning.

By week six certain procedures are sticking to the flypaper of my memory while others zoom around like a flock of starlings - I’m relieved to find from my fellow volunteers that I’m not alone. The training’s fun and we’re well supported, but we’re also a little nervous about taking our first call. 

I approach my initial shift not with a sense of dread but terror. I’m petrified I’m going to say the wrong thing. When the first call comes through I listen and do my bit. Afterwards I’m told it’s gone well, although I thought I sounded like Mickey Mouse talking to Pluto. That was a few weeks ago - with each call I take it gets easier. Tomorrow I’ll be looking forward to my fourth shift, relieved that in the time it normally takes to macrame a hammock, I’ve learned skills that for me, personally, are far more worthwhile.

By Glenn P.
Helpline Volunteer at Missing People

Looking for a challenging role starting in the New Year? The charity Missing People is looking for passionate people with good listening skills and computer literacy to become helpline volunteers. To find out more about the role and complete the application, visit our website (Deadline: 8 December).

Julie Etchingham: Little Boy Lost

Think of all that’s happened in the past twenty years. The death of Diana, 9/11, the rise and fall of New Labour, Iraq, Afghanistan,  the explosion of the internet, the financial boom and the economic bust. As all this has ebbed and flowed through our lives, one family has endured the seemingly never-ending torment of a child who went missing when he was just a toddler.

Close your eyes and you will probably remember his face. Ben Needham. The archetypal blond, blue-eyed boy was just 21 months old when he vanished, without trace, on the Greek island of Kos. There was no instant media to report it, no mobile phone network to set alight with it – and the police didn’t seem to care.

But Ben’s mother Kerry has never given up on what has become one of the longest-running missing persons cases in British history. And her patience and drive to find out about her son may be about to pay off. The investigation is being re-opened.

In a special ‘Tonight’ programme to be aired tonight, we follow Kerry as she makes an emotional return to Greece, where astonishingly, sightings are still being reported – even though Ben is now a grown man. She suffers the agony of DNA tests raising then dashing hopes, but also meets a doctor who is convinced he saw Ben at his hospital around 9 months after he disappeared.

Finally and dramatically – Kerry also meets the Public Prosecutor on Kos who tells her she is now prepared to look at the case afresh, harnessing all the new technology available. A charity has made posters of a digital image of Ben as he may look now. They are going up all over Greece – in the hope Ben may even recognise himself.

Like the family of Madeleine McCann who cling so desperately to the prospect of even the smallest breakthrough, Kerry’s steadfast hope is remarkable. The Foreign Office is backing her efforts and the head of the charity Missing People Martin Houghton says he’s delighted the Ben Needham case is to be given fresh momentum -  and says it’s the power of such hope which can drive people forward during their darkest moments.

By Julie Etchingham
Presenter, Tonight

Watch Kerry’s remarkable journey:  ‘Little Boy Lost –  the Search for Ben Needham’ - Thursday evening, 6 October, 7.30pm on ITV1. You can also help Kerry and all those searching for missing children by visiting www.missingpeople.org.uk/benneedham.

A Patchwork of Legislation

Nicola Sharp

I joined Missing People as Director of Policy and Advocacy in June 2011, just as the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults embarked on its inquiry into support for families of missing people. The inquiry examined a range of issues across four oral evidence sessions, with the second session examining what ‘presumption of death’ provisions are available in England and Wales.

It came as a surprise for me to learn that we do not have a specific piece of ‘presumption of death’ legislation, unlike in Scotland and Northern Ireland where Acts were introduced in 1977 and 2009 respectively. Listening to the oral evidence given to APPG members, I was struck by how complicated the legal system is for a family who believes that their missing family member has passed away and who need this to be recognised by the courts in order to administer that person’s affairs. As things currently stand, families may have to go to court on a number of occasions to have a loved one declared dead for a variety of different purposes. Not only can this be expensive, time consuming and confusing for families, but it can exacerbate the already difficult emotional position they find themselves in.

What I also found puzzling is that each of these processes requires different standards of proof, meaning that there is the potential for a person to be treated as alive for some purposes under the common law, but dead for others by virtue of statute law. I thought that Patricia Barratt, a senior associate at Clifford Chance,  summed the current system in England and Wales up well when she said that ‘this is a confused area of law; a patchwork of statutory legislation, primary legislation, secondary legislation and probate laws mixed with common law provisions’.

Contrast this with the system that exists in Scotland, for example, where a missing person can be presumed dead during a single court appearance for all purposes, and it is not difficult to see why many of the families that Missing People supports in England and Wales perceive this to be very unfair. Moreover Missing People, like many other agencies that have contact with families when someone is missing, struggles to provide guidance and support to families in these circumstances.

Following the end of the inquiry, the APPG made a series ofrecommendations to Government about the support required by families whensomeone goes missing. Missing People was delighted to see that one of these recommendations was for the Ministry of Justice to take steps to consult on presumption of death and set out a timetable for legislative change; not least because this is something that we have been lobbying on for some time as part of our Missing Rights campaign.

This was followed, in July 2011, by more positive news – an announcement that the Justice Select Committee has decided to hold a short inquiry into presumption of death. Missing People is now working closely with families in England and Wales to submit written evidence to the inquiry which highlights the shortcomings of the current system. As part of our submission, we are keen to compare and contrast the experience of a family in England and Wales with that of a family that has used specific presumption of death legislation in Scotland. Records show that 171 people have been presumed dead since legislation was introduced in 1977. 

If you have used the Presumption of Death (1977) Act and would like to support Missing People’s work around this issue so that other families might have access to a better system, then please consider getting in contact via e-mail nicola.sharp@missingpeople.org.uk or telephone 020 8392 4525.

The language of loss

Sarah Wayland

A few weeks ago a significant Australian missing persons case came to a close, of sorts. The remains of a young boy who vanished almost eight years ago were discovered and the media went into overdrive about what this might mean for the family and for families in general.

Working in the field of missing persons for the last few years has given me the opportunity to explore unresolved loss – its complexity, its challenges and its language. We don’t tend think about the language of loss in our day to day lives but language can have such a powerful impact - for families to describe what has happened to them, for the media to report it and for the community to attempt to respond to it.

Look at any missing persons report in a news publication or social media site and the words hope, answers and closure are usually there – families are asked to hold onto hope, they plead for answers to a multitude of questions and the media attach the need for closure as if there is a way to tidy up such an ambiguous and unrelenting loss.

But the issue I keep coming back to is why, as a society, do we need to be so black and white about a loss that is neither. Families of missing people have told me that to have someone missing is to live in that space in between – not just in between life and death, but between hope and hopelessness, between answers and more questions and between closure and not being able to move on…

Regardless of the type of loss people rarely move on from it – it becomes part of their story, they carry it with them for the rest of their lives – just the same as families and friends of missing people. The language is just another way for our community to rationalise the unimaginable – as a community we don’t tend to cope well with not knowing and having someone missing is the ultimate not knowing – whether it be for short or long periods the place where families sit in-between is filled with so many unanswerable questions.

The location of remains is not good news (despite many media outlets and social media sites referring to it in such a way) it is just another step in the journey of living with an unresolved loss. The what if questions may still remain, the longing that things may have been different and the discovery of the person may signal that hope is over – the finality of the loss creates a whole new set of challenges for those left behind.

I stated in an article I wrote a few weeks ago that:

We know that in any person’s lifetime they will be faced with sudden and unexpected challenges. We lament at how bad things happen to good people. The loss of a person who is missing creates an additional complexity – it is no worse or better than any other loss but it is different. It is different because families of missing people are forced to live in that space between the possibility of life and death. A place where some days they imagine the return of a loved one and then other days they are hit with the stark reality that that person may not be coming back. Regardless of what they feel on any given day the ‘missing’ part does not allow them to speak with certainty about their loss.

Our new ways of connecting with each other via social media may have some benefits – it allows families of missing people to know that others are thinking and are supportive of them and it lifts the veil of silence that sometimes comes with such a complicated loss. As long as we try to keep supporting each other through whatever losses, the ambiguous and the more clear cut ones, we can only create a better community that is open to thinking realistically about loss and all of the complexities that come may come with it.

Sarah Wayland has been working as an Australian social worker in the missing persons field since 2003 and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study the international approach to counseling and unresolved loss. She visited agencies, including Missing People UK, in 2006. She is currently completing postgraduate studies in the field of hope and loss at the University of New England, Australia and writes a blog about the challenges of loss at www.thatspaceinbetween.com

Changing Phases

These last few months have been surreal for our family. 

We have spent the better part of 14 years wondering what happened to our son Damien. The brick wall that we have been trying to climb has finally given way in terms of the investigation. It was sudden and unexpected that the case changed from 14 1/2 years of being a missing person case, to a possible criminal case. Although we suspected this might be a possibility, it was still a shock to hear those words: 'possible murder’. We are still waiting on the outcome and every day is a hill to climb until we find the answers we hope will be forthcoming and in our hearts we are keenly aware that there may never be any answers that will give us the final and ultimate peace of “just knowing the truth”.

How do you go from one stage to another? I feel stranded now, treading water in that I cannot fight anymore – the police are listening and taking things to another level.  I've had anger in me since day one, not at Damien, but at the blatant lack of consideration of the police that left our family hanging in a terrible limbo without any direction or support.  The cold, cynical comments and the promises that kept coming and repeated by one senior police officer after another assigned to Damien’s case over the years.  I had anger, and anger helped to channel my actions and to mobilize me to push and take up the search Damien ourselves and whatever publicity came our way to keep Damien’s face and story out there.  I have always felt someone, somewhere may know the answers, but for so long I hit a brick wall.  However, that seems to have taken a new turn, albeit almost 15 years on.   The odd thing is that now I have nowhere to channel my fury….it has dissipated, or perhaps just simmering somewhere waiting to be ignited if need be… and I am left with a new set of circumstances to consider and all the “what ifs” that go with this new phase.  Bottom line is that Damien is still a missing person and until we find out the truth we will never give up on him but I am in new unchartered waters that I cannot predict.

I say phase, as I have found over the years that my strength comes in phases and when it does, this is when we will have a spate of high profile publicity and events for Damien.  It is like riding on a wave and a tide of passion – a crusade.  Suddenly we find a right time and a right place to give it our all in finding answers for Damien.  Afterwards, as with all waves our resolve comes crashing down again and back to earth and stark reality that we still have nothing and still Damien is nowhere closer to being found.  This takes you to another phase that is a self-preservation phase, where you are exhausted emotionally and the overwhelming need is peace and anonymity and solace to recharge and rethink for the next phase.  I sometimes feel that I am turning away from Damien at these times, and I do feel guilty about it –it is as though I have left him somehow, lost and alone.  However, I have to take time to just ‘stop’ and back away, take stock.  It has to be done, but the expense is in my soul which is tortured by guilt for stopping and physically needing rest.  There is no balance…rest is just physical, but emotions never go away or ceases to exist.  It is constant.

I always knew that one day the situation could perhaps change and I know that I am ready to meet the challenges of whatever happens.  One thing I have learned is that there is nothing that I cannot handle now and I will keep going from one phase to the next as they present themselves and I will come out the other side stronger and more determined.   We live in hope we may find peace and yet ready to continue the uphill battle if needed and fight Damien’s corner, because if we don’t….who will??  Watch this space…..

By Valerie Nettles
Mother of missing Damien Nettles