Every day from today, I am going to write a post about a missing person. I am 
doing it to remind us that this is a terrifying nightmare that happens to some families. How they continue their tormented lives, I cannot imagine, it must be a living hell.
I am doing it because of a comment posted by Tom Paine in my recent post about Madeleine, four today. He questioned whether the intense media attention about her disappearance was because she was blonde, and asked if similar coverage was given to missing boys.
He may well be right. So I am doing my little bit to remind everyone about the missing people in our world who have simply vanished without trace, perhaps in the clutches of evil people, their fate unknown. This is the cruellest agony for families to endure.
I shall start today with a Portuguese boy following reports about how Portuguese families are distraught about their lost children.
Rui Pedro Mendonca vanished in 1998, when he was 11 while walking home from school in the northern Portuguese town Lousada. A month later, hopes were raised when he was sighted with a middle-aged man in Disneyland in Paris. Then three years later, his mother’s worst fears were realised. Horrific images of Rui Pedro being sexually abused were reportedly uncovered during an international police operation that cracked a global paedophile network. More than 200 paedophiles in 13 countries had exchanged more than 750,000 images of children through a private internet club called Wonderland.
Rui Pedro has never been found, the trail has gone cold and investigators fear that may have been murdered to cover up the abuse.
Let’s hope, and pray, that is not the case. He was 20 in January.
Update 30 Aug, 2007: Although this post is now ocassional, I am still very dedicated to the cause and will continue to write these reports whenever possible. My heart is with families who have lost love ones without any real explanation, they have simply vanished.
I could weep for your kind intentions, Ellee. You are such a good woman. Do you not realise that in a world of billions of people, even a tiny incidence of child abduction translates into thousands a year worldwide? There were 846 incidents in Britain alone in 2002/3
I know you mean well and your compassion is touching, but publicity is unfortunately not the answer. If every child abduction was publicised it would just become background noise. Solid police work is the only way.
I saw Sky ruthlessly exploit Rui’s family today. The family was making the same point as I am, but Sky “spun” it to suggest that the Portuguese police are incompetent. They then went on shamelessly to use a particular scandal in a childrens’ home to imply that Portuguese society was rife with paedophilia. It was yellow press tabloid journalism at its worst.
I went to school with children from the North Wales childrens homes where children were systematically abused for 20 years. They had to be closed down because they were effectively being run as paedophile brothels. Children in care are vulnerable and state-run services are sloppy and inefficient everywhere. It is sadly inevitable that childrens’ homes will be targetted by paedophiles.
The incidence of paedophilia is low, but constant. I don’t believe it varies from country to country or from time to time. Simon Heffer in the Telegraph today ridiculously suggests that Britain has “cornered the market in exporting perverts.” This is just as ludicrous as Sky making out that Portugal is pervert central. Whatever happened to British journalism?
Child abduction is a rare tragedy. Of course all of us, especially those of us with children ourselves, feel for the families. We have to let the police (who have families too and feel just the same as us) get on with their jobs; giving them full support and cooperation.
We can’t control the incidence of perversion in our population. We can only take reasonable precautions, hope for the best and - if the worst comes to the worst - trust in (and help) the police.
Most of all, when they catch paedophiles, we need to put them away permanently. They cannot turn off their sexual urges any more than anyone else can and there is no more powerful force in human nature than sex. When people can indulge their urges -however weird- with consenting adults, that’s fine. Paedophilia is different and simply cannot be tolerated (although we would do well to be more tolerant of pornography made without harming children such as literature, manga and computer animation). It’s better for paedophiles to have some kind of harmless outlet for their sexuality.
Finally, we can also turn off our TV every time some sick tabloid journalist tries to translate grief into viewing figures.
Thank you Tom, but I’m going to continue and from now on will focus on those who do not have the benfit of worldide publicity, I believe we need to keep people informed. Every case is heart breaking for the families involved.
I used to write letters for Amnesty International and they told me that it made a huge difference for prisoners of conscience if their captors knew that individuals, organisations and governments in the outside world were taking an interest in them. That must be the same for young children too.
Imagine how it would be for Alan Johnston if he was allowed to be forgotten. There are many more like him who are not high profile. I may include political cases too, I shall see how it evolves.
Good luck. I don’t mean to be discouraging. I wish we could stop the journalists pretending they have the same good intentions though.
So many go missing and are never heard of again. I recall Genette Tate, who vanished doing a newspaper delivery in the early ’70’s.
Thank you again Tom. I know you are a very fine and generous philanthropist. Every missing person has a story that needs to be told to keep their memory alive.
Captain Picard, The disappearance of Genette Tate is truly heartbreaking, she has beein missing 29 years now, it is the longest missing person inquiry in the UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/3161955.stm
Ellee, there are also two little boys who went missing in Birmingham some years ago, I’ll try and remember/find out more.
Still praying…
WE’RE all still hoping for the right outcome. As Ellee points out, that’s for all those missing children….
Linda, please send me the info if those little boys are stll missing and I will write about them.
This is indeed every parent’s worst nightmare. Background noise as TP says and I realise his awful truth. We should not forget that these paedophiles, these monsters, these men, are someone’s son, brother, husband and usually father. But that polite, quiet man who is always smart and has a good job and drives a posh car, could never do such a thing, could he? If the wife/partner of someone you ‘knew’, you liked, told you her husband had abused their child, would you believe her? Think about it What if he was charming? Affluent? Well spoken and well dressed? Quiet? Helpful? What do paedophiles look like? How does he dress? Is he allowed to drive a car? Be married? Have children? Play golf? Afford holidays in Disneyland? Do all bad men wear black hats? What is needed in this country, that we haven’t got, is someone the good guys can talk to.
Philipa, paedophiles can look like normal people, some of them in trusted posts in the community. Others have “evil” written all over their faces.
Ellee, I think you are courageous and right to do this. I saw the Sky report Tom is referring to and they did, indeed, try to imply that the Poruguese police are incompetent. They have also got 3 of their top presenters out there today and these spend most of the time interviewing each other, trying to make a story where there is none. I know the family are grateful for the media coverage as their only hope is that someone spots Madeleine somewhere but this kind of speculation could even imperil the investigation. I put the Madeleine poster on my own blog with an appeal in French and Italian yesterday because few people know of the case here - not even my neighbour who is a policeman. I think it highly unlikely that she is in Italy but it is just possible that someone who travels may see something. It must be terrible when someone goes missing and let us not forget that adults disappear too. Ok, they are not as vulnerable as children but their families go through hell because they can have no “closure”.
Since Madeleine went missing, she and her family have been constantly in my thoughts. But, so have the other children who have simply vanished. Thank you for reminding us of the plight of others.
As far as paedophiles go, when are governments etc going to ensure the safety of our children? When are they going to get some guts and sentence appropriately? When are the courts of Human rights going to look in earnest at the rights of children not to be stolen from their families, sexually abused and then often murdered? When will they put the rights of innocents before the rights of these monsters who have effectively given up their claim to human rights the second they ruin a child?
Diane is so right. Ellee - there is nowhere to go for people who know of someone who looks ‘normal’. There is childline for abused children old enough to ring, but what of the mothers of children too young to call for themselves? They are turned away. What of people who know of sons or ‘friends’ or husbands even, who are paedophiles? They have nowhere to go. Every single abductor, abuser and paedophile is not alone in this world. They are known to people.
I say a prayer that Rui Pedro and Madeleine will come home safe and sound to their family’s. It breaks my heart to think that our kids are not safe anymore.
I’m sorry for my English but í would like do give my opinion on Rui Pedro case.
In this particular case, i think the problem has been no one’s attencion. His mother as fighted all over the years for some attencion on the media, for some one had seen her soon but the story do not leave from portugal frontiers. In this case,would be necessary to make the fotos more acctualy and spread them all over the world. If he is alive, he have already 20 years and i believe someone has to recognized his.
Dear Beatriz, thank you for making contact, I feel so sad for Rui Pedro’s family. I wonder if they can use age progression techniques to produce a picture of him as he would be today, I wrote about it here:
http://elleeseymour.com/2007/05/15/the-missing-louis-mackerley/
Perhaps they can renew the appeal with this latest picture.
It would be great to use age progression techniques to produce a picture of him as he would be today, and broadcast it all over the world. Rui Pedro and his family deserves that.
I was “walking” around in the internet and I stumbled across your website and your comment about the Portuguese boy gone missing in 1998.
I’m from Portugal also and I’m starting to get very abset about the way the English media are handling with the Madeleine case.
Portugal is a very peaceful country and comparing to the English society we are extremely careful with our children (at most of us). I have a 2 year old and I would never consider the possibility of living him alone while dining out. Never. I’m sorry to bring this up but the truth is the Macann left their children alone in a foreign country and didn’t even bother to lock the door.
I feel for them but things just started wrong and the Portuguese police is making a huge effort to make it right. And from my knowledge they are one of the most successful polices in the world in this sort of cases. We have few missing children (comparing with other countries) and even those how go missing are often found. But we also have to be prepared that some children never came home, just like João Pedro.
It’s sad but it’s true. My heart feels for Madeleine, for João Pedro and many others but also for their mothers. They are silent victims in all of this.
Neusa H.
Neusa, thank you for your comment. I can understand that you are proud of your country. Obviously, Medeleine’s parents thought they left her in a safe environment, that she was not under any threat. These cases are obviously very difficult for police. As you say, it is the mothers who are the silent victims who suffer for ever.
Ellee, thank you so much for highlighting my son, Luke Durbin’s disappearance and also other missing people. With regard to Tom Paine’s comment re “solid police work” being the only way, I do agree that initially this is paramount, however, as with the police working on Luke’s case, when all avenues of enquiries have been exhausted, publicity is all that is left. Look at Crimewatch and crimes that are solved many years afterwards due to publicity. The difficulty the police have with many missing people is that as with Luke’s disappearance there is nothing to suggest a crime has or has not been committed.
Over the last year I have questioned every aspect of my motives as to the publicity I have created for Luke. I come back to the same conclusion, if someone has committed a heinous crime against my son, that person is hardly going to ring the police and confess all, however, as another mum said to me, whose son, Damien Nettles, has been missing for ten and a half years, that person may have family, friends or colleagues who are suspicious of that person and publicity may trigger their conscience.
As a parent to lose a child in anyway is devastating, to lose a child and not know their age anymore, to not know which tense to tslk about them is soul destroying.
For many parents, family and friends of the missing, publicity is the only proactive way for us, it stops us drowning in our own despair. Ellee, thank you again and I hope your coverage of the missing continues.
Lottie, thank you for your comment, this is truly heartbreaking for parents which is why I am writing about these cases each day. I never take my sons for granted, they are the most important people in my life, along with the rest of my family.