Dear Damien
I don’t know how I will spend my day on your missing day.
I will probably, like the previous 27 years, recall your known movements the last time you were seen, minute by minute. Recalling the known facts around the case, which are very sparse. I will recall the insane emotional roller coaster ride. We are still on it! The ups and downs of hope. Weathering the storms of anxiety and heartaches that come with it all. Not knowing for certain is the worst part. Having no idea or hint of a reason. Nothing to explain it any of it.
I still hear from people who contact me with information. They feel compelled to mention, even now, in hushed whispers, something that might help us.
They come to me because they do not trust police, they tell me. So I pass things to the cold case officer and rarely hear anything back!
Police did their best to not investigate this as a possible murder. Despite all the information provided. Including descriptions of his death - of his head being kicked like a football. Or squealing in pain as he was being stuck with a pitchfork. Fed to pigs. Put into a lobster pot and fed to fishes. Burned in a carpet. Surely not all those things happened ! But they are all in my head now.
Arrests were eventually made after 14 years. The case raised to suspected murder. It went nowhere. After that lapse of time they couldn’t pin it on anyone. One dead. One who would brag about his involvement when drunk. CPS let him go. The case reverted to a missing case.
The entire debacle goes back to a shoddy, flawed, initial handling and a ‘non-investigation’ of a missing 16-year-old boy.
They suggested to me you had gone off on a ‘funny five minutes’ to quote the desk sergeant who took my statement when I reported my child missing. With a bemused smirk in his face said these words that haunt me, “he will be home by tea time. All young boys do this.” If only I knew then what I know now. I would have been less deferential and more assertive. I told them it was out of character. Why did they try to infer different?
Assertiveness came over time! Out of exasperation and frustration.
As one officer put it, who had carried out the first complaint we made about the loss of CCTV evidence, ‘the information they lost would have been a gift to any investigation.’ Irreparable damage to this case.
What is left for us to do but wonder? How things might have been, should have been. Would we have had some resolution?
November 2 in some countries is ‘the day of the dead’ paying respects to ancestors who rise and walk among us that day. For us, we have no grave to go to and pay respects.
We don’t even know for sure he is dead.
So many rambling thoughts. Did he have memory loss? Was he taken by someone? Drugged? Trafficked? Murdered? Drowned? Buried? Coerced into something sinister? All we know is he is not with us. We don’t know why. We miss him beyond any words to describe.
Words don’t do this experience of ‘missing’ justice. There are no words to describe the emptiness and the fear I feel for my son. The helplessness. The deep sadness that I carry in my soul.
There is no finality, no burial. No place to go and pay respects. Just a lonely emptiness and fear.
I find some solace in writing about it. Also, participating in work groups to improve how future cases are handled. Giving back, sharing lived experience in hopes of change in how these cases are handled.
I understand the incredible burden on already over stretched police budgets and lack of staff. It wasn’t this bad in 1996 but I was always made aware they had more important things to do. Cases like Damien’s get lost between the cracks between runaways, trafficked and county lines. We have no information supporting a reason he would want to go. All we know about our son the night he vanished, he had drank strong cider. Was seen with strangers (soldiers) before he vanished. Also near the sea. Last seen on CCTV a few mins after midnight on Nov 3. The weather was bad, so walking along the coast road highly unlikely as Damien would have chosen the sheltered route, inland, where he began to walk with his friend who claims they parted ways at 10:30pm to walk home.
We may never know. All these thoughts have plagued us over what will be 28 years on November 2.
We will continue this life sentence until we die unless by some miracle we find some answers.
We have 16 years of lovely happy memories of you Damien. You still make us laugh when we talk about you and things you said and did. You are now an urban legend on the Island we love and had so many wonderful times when we lived there.
I think you are still there somewhere.
We just want to find you.
You can read more about this case in my book,
Available from Amazon, Audible, Kindle and bookshops, Goodreads.