Can’t Get Missing Children Out My Mind

[Whitewinelover19]

Name changed for this thread.Apologies if this has been done many times before. I was flicking through the tv channels recently and saw a programme about missing children. There’s a long list of children and young people who’ve disappeared over the years but I’ve found it really difficult to put it out of my mind.
I then suddenly started thinking about Ben Needham and Katrice Lee. Both of them from a very long time ago but I found these two cases really sad in particular.Obviously Maddie McCann everyone knows about as it’s still quite recent.
I think it’s because they were British children who went missing abroad. And toddlers. Ben wasn’t even two when he disappeared in Kos, at his grandparents place. His gran took her eye off him for a few moments and then he was gone. This was pretty remote from what I gather, like farmland.
Katrice Lee went missing from an Army base in Germany. She was shopping with her mum and aunt, and disappeared in a busy store. It was her second birthday. This was way back in 1981. This came into the news again very recently, following a lead.
What struck me was that although they were different types of surroundings, they were very normal circumstances. How can children just disappear, with no evidence? I just find this very hard to understand. I found reading up on these cases very sad.
It’s almost like I’m grieving for children that I’ve never known. They wouldn’t even be children now, Ben Needham would be 30 this year and Katrice would be 40 this year. But I’m still thinking of them as toddlers.
I just can’t help wonder what happened to them? Are they alive? If they were abducted, they may not even know and live their lives obliviously.
Seeing their pictures almost make me feel emotional .
I think being a parent has made me much more sensitive. I just couldn’t imagine going out in a normal day and coming home without a child. It must be so awful for the families.
Does anyone else think of similar things and struggle to forget them?

I do remember lots of missing children, and think about them from time to time, and their families. Madeleine McCann went missing as my dd was born, so when I see how my daughter is growing up, I feel a pang at that being how long she has been lost, and her family have been searching.
I also think of Genette Tate, who went missing decades ago. I remember it being on the news, and being worried out on my bike on country lanes.
It is very bleak, the numbers of children lost .

I often think about Madeleine McCann because she'd be exactly the same age as DS1

Generate Tate, has to check if she was ever found. She’s one of the longest missing persons in the UK.
Maddie McCann would be 16 now too.😔

It's very sad. I think of them, and their parents.

I suspect the vast majority of them died at the time and were just never found. Isn’t that what happened to Ben needham? I’m sure I read he was killed by accident on a building site and it was covered up.

I thought someone had confessed to accidently killing Ben Needham. It was an accident involving a tractor or digger I think.

Ben Needham is presumed to have died but as far as I know, apart from a toy car nothing was else has been found that belonged to him for definite.
Katrice Lee was beloved to have wondered off into a nearby river but her family didn’t believe this. The investigation at the time was a sham.
It must be worse not knowing, for the parents.

I agree that it is tremendously tragic. And, that for the parents and for those children it must be worse.

I wonder about this too. The torment the parents must go through. The not knowing and constant wondering must be worse than anything. To think some missing people could be out there having no idea, maybe having seen a picture of themselves, is so tragic.

mychickens that’s a really traumatic story although I think I heard of it many years ago.
I know we shouldn’t speculate but I always hoped that I’d wake up one day and Maddie would be found in the news. I mean even with all the resources and money, nothing has been found of any substantial use.
When it comes to Ben Needham, the accidental death theory didn’t make sense to me. If a builder suspected he accidentally hurt a child, why wouldn’t he stop and call the emergency services? And if he was abducted, a remote farm building seems a strange place aswell. None if it makes any sense.

It’s just bloody scary that children have vanished completely from ordinary places..
Atleast nowadays in this country , we have cctv more or less everywhere.

When it comes to Ben Needham, the accidental death theory didn’t make sense to me. If a builder suspected he accidentally hurt a child, why wouldn’t he stop and call the emergency services?

Because the child was killed instantly?

It’s the same as any hit and run. Someone causes an accident and doesn’t want to face the consequences.

It never bothered me before I had kids but now it makes me feel sick and panicky. I won’t take my DC abroad because I think it’s too risky.

People, including children, have always gone missing “without trace”, seemingly “vanished into thin air”. It’s something all cultures have anxiety about and construct mythology around.

In reality, it’s that abductions are fast and stealthy, that sometimes the adults are temporarily inattentive.

Andrew O’Hagan’s book “The Missing” is all about the subject. It’s non-fiction and sensitive.

Ultimately, though, these aren’t our losses, so we have to be careful not to rubber neck other people’s very real tragedies.

Ben Needhams family have accepted that he died outside the house following a tragic accident.
It is possible both Genette Tate and April Fabb were victims of Robert Black iirc and he was due to be charged with Genettes murder but died in prison shortly before the police were able to do this.

It never bothered me before I had kids but now it makes me feel sick and panicky. I won’t take my DC abroad because I think it’s too risky.

The risk isn’t any higher abroad than at home, and you can control the risk.

Almost all child abductions are of unsupervised children, either children travelling alone (to the shop or school or similar), or children who have briefly been left unwatched, or sipped away from the adults. Very occasionally from an unlocked car or home.

You can control all this with systems, reins, buggies, vigilance, using locks. It would be a shame to miss out on holidays. I know anxiety isn’t always rational, though.

@TottieandMarchpane excellent post. The term for many people who compare themselves in some way to the victim or the victims family are called Grief Hijackers.

It’s an unfortunate urge that they have to make such comments -
“I went to the same school as the victim” albeit 5 years previously/later.

“My child is the same age!” - it’s not a game of Top Trumps and other people with children of a different age or no children cannot possibly feel the same as them!

“We love in the same town!” - along with thousands of other people!

It should be that a missing child is something everyone is shocked and saddened by and not people trying to ‘top’ each other by trying to outdo each other with reasons for feeling sad.

I do wonder if sometimes the parents have been more inattentive than they admit. Children don't "vanish" if their parents are actively watching them . In cases like the McCann disappearance, the children were left alone for long periods, far from where the parents were dining - you can't really say that Maddie "vanished" when she was left alone for at least half an hour or longer, on multiple occasions.

@ShippingNews it’s true that some parents are not watching their child enough but there’s also a fair number of cases where the child has been snatched while there back has been turned for a few seconds, as in the case OP mentioned when that came on the news :(

I unfortunately have to detach myself, it’s too harrowing to comprehend and I have listened to true crime pod casts etc which give me quite severe anxiety about my own children who are pre school age.

My biggest fear is walking ahead of them slightly, turning around and finding them gone :(

Is it unhealthy/overkill to get one of those GPS tracker watches for little ones? A few weeks ago my just turned 4 year old ran away from me in the supermarket and I was hysterical when I couldn’t find her after a couple of minutes

There’s a very sad case in Australia of a little boy, William Tyrell, that disappeared 5 years ago. He seems to have vanished into thin air but I think there is info that hasn’t been revealed about the case as he was a foster child.

Of course children and adults can disappear without trace. In Ben Needhams case he was accidentally killed and the body hidden. The cruelty of not telling his parents is beyond comprehension. With other cases, the countryside is vast and it would be perfectly possible to conceal a body or weigh it down and put it in water. Some of the older cases if it happened now there may have been cctv or forensics if it happened now.

It's very tragic though thankfully very rare to have kids go missing randomly. Most of the "missing" younger kids are custody disputes or evading care proceedings alas and the older kids left of their own accord rather than foul play - a local teen was found 4 years later living with a man twice her age with a kid, she was only 14 when she ran off

I disagree that they aren’t our losses. I think we all feel it, as a nation, even as a species, when a child is taken and never found. That is the good side of humanity, it is the best of all of us, that we genuinely care and feel upset when something so terrible happens to a child and family that we have never met.
Losing a child like this must be incredibly isolating. Feeling that so many people do care, think of you, think of your child and want very much for that child to be found, is surely a comforting thing ?