Life after ‘missing’; what happens when someone returns home or is found
When someone disappears, there’s a domino effect of action to bring them to safety.
Posters are put up, appeals shared and articles written. More often than not, the person returns home after they realise how much they are missed. But even when that happens, their ordeal doesn’t end there.
‘Going missing might seem like a big part of someone’s journey, but coming back can be just as complex a situation,’ Josie Allan, head of policy and partnerships for the charity Missing People, tells Metro.
She explains: ‘When people do come back from being missing they can be really traumatised. That could be due to underlying issues that caused them to go missing, assault experienced while they’re away or from suicidal thoughts. In our research, it’s pretty profound how many people have either thought of harming themselves or been harmed by others while missing.’
As well as searching for those who disappear, Missing People explore why people vanish in the first place through interviews with those who do come home and via research.
With missing adults, 8 in 10 had diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issues, for example. Relationship breakdown, dementia, financial problems and ‘escaping violence’ are also among the other reasons people left home.
Meanwhile, more than half of missing children experienced conflict, abuse or neglect at home before they left, and 1 in 7 who took part in return interviews with Missing People had been sexually exploited. Children who go missing from care are likely to vanish repeatedly, the charity has also found. When appeals are made for their whereabouts more than once, commentators online can sadly turn to ridicule.
Josie, who has worked at Missing People since 2012, says: ‘We do see judgement, not so much on our Missing People posts but on appeals shared by police. People make assumptions, assume the disappearance is the fault of the person who has vanished. They don’t always think, “that’s a real person. That’s a 14-year-old who has gone missing three times this month, there must be something wrong here.”
Sadly, Josie has also spoken to families who have experienced racist backlash online after their loved one disappeared. Some were left too anxious to do any interviews in the media as a result of this online response. ‘The court of general public judgement can be brutal for any family we deal with. But there is definitely an additional layer of racism which ethnic minorities face.’
Research by Missing People and charity Listen Up this year revealed that Black children are disproportionately likely to go missing, and that they also stay missing for longer than other children.
‘The highest profile missing person cases only include White people which suggests that resources aren’t very used for Black people,’ one young person told researchers. Diligent media reporting and swift police responses are integral to ensure missing people are treated equally, the study concluded.
Missing People want to make sure the voices of missing people are heard and represented. Josie recently spoke to a woman left ‘frustrated’ by the police response to her disappearance during a mental health crisis. Meanwhile, a man who went missing explained to Josie that he had been overwhelmed by the publicity in the media about the search for him and was unsure how to deal with the implications of this on his return. All this information is discussed by charity staff and used to shape Missing People’s policy work.
One example of this work came in 2009; when Josie worked alongside Peter Lawrence, father of Claudia Lawrence who vanished from York in 2009, on the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Act which allows families of missing people to look after their loved one’s affairs in their absence.
The Guardianship (Missing Persons) Act, passed in 2017, gave people the legal powers to manage a missing person’s affairs until their return. It was a nine year battle for Missing People to make the law a reality.
Staff at the charity have also changed the wording they use as a result of feedback from those they’ve supported.
‘There’s certain words and phrases that people don’t like,’ explains Martha McBrier, helpline manager at Missing People. She has spoken to hundreds of children and adults to offer support when they leave home, as well as their families.
'I went missing 50 times in my teenage years'
Jade went missing 50 times as a teenager and was supported in each instance by the charity Missing People. In the video below, she discusses why she felt like going missing, the challenges she faced in life, and ultimately what convinced her to stop leaving home.
‘Some young people say “I’ve run away, but I’m not a runaway. I don’t like that word.” We want to listen to young people when they tell us things like this, and shape the future of how we respond,’ Martha tells Metro.
Martha has seen a huge uptick in exploitation cases which lead to young people going missing. Children, some as young as 11, in the UK have been lured into County Lines gangs with promises of new clothes or shoes, for example. Criminals target vulnerable children, such as those living in care or from difficult family backgrounds.
Martha explains: ‘A young person might get in touch and say “I’ve kind of got myself in a situation with some people, they say I have to go into this place and shoplift, or they’ll kill my sister.” They’re terrified, they’re scared of everyone. These children, they know the thing they’ve been coerced into doing is wrong and they’re worried about the police, school or social services.
‘Exploitation is a lot more common, unfortunately, amongst young people who are in care. If you’re going to exploit someone you’re going to pick a vulnerable person to groom. But that’s not always the case. On one call, I spoke to a person who was a teacher and their partner was a police officer. They had discovered their young person was being exploited. It can happen to anyone.’
Moving forward, Missing People has two main goals.
One is to see the number of children who go missing repeatedly reduced as, currently, over half of all missing children have been missing before. Secondly, staff want to reduce the number of fatal outcomes to missing people cases. Building on suicide prevention projects – such as Missing People’s Suicide Risk TextSafe scheme, delivered in partnership with the Samaritans, which sends a message of support to someone who has disappeared – among wider agencies could make a real difference.
To underpin these changes the charity wants to see better multi-agency working, led from the top.
‘We want more cross government leadership on the response to missing people,’ Josie stresses. ‘It can feel quite patchy at the moment, as it’s primarily a police response. But that doesn’t necessarily take into account the fact that going missing is an indicator of lots of social issues. We want to see a lot more action and that can’t just be done by police alone.
‘There’s a “hot potato” situation about whose responsibility missing people are and that needs to change.’
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