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| Missing women found alive in Ohio – the McCanns know what this means | Missing women found alive in Ohio – the McCanns know what this means |
| (5 months later) | |
| We hardly know anything yet about the three women who have been found alive in Cleveland, Ohio, after going missing a decade ago, but at least two people in Britain know all they need to. | We hardly know anything yet about the three women who have been found alive in Cleveland, Ohio, after going missing a decade ago, but at least two people in Britain know all they need to. |
| For Kate and Gerry McCann, the discovery of Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus – discovered in a house a few miles from where they each disappeared separately – tells them what they have been telling us for the last six years: miracles do happen. | For Kate and Gerry McCann, the discovery of Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus – discovered in a house a few miles from where they each disappeared separately – tells them what they have been telling us for the last six years: miracles do happen. |
| The McCanns' daughter Madeleine disappeared during a family holiday in Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007, and the couple have worked tirelessly across the years since to publicise her story and to follow up every possible lead, however fragile, believing they will one day be reunited with her. Just last week, Kate McCann said she was as hopeful now as in the first day or two after Madeleine went missing: the search, she said, was "very much ongoing". | The McCanns' daughter Madeleine disappeared during a family holiday in Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007, and the couple have worked tirelessly across the years since to publicise her story and to follow up every possible lead, however fragile, believing they will one day be reunited with her. Just last week, Kate McCann said she was as hopeful now as in the first day or two after Madeleine went missing: the search, she said, was "very much ongoing". |
| To some of us on the outside, while we understand why a child's parents would refuse to give up hope, and why we know we'd do exactly the same for our child, the McCanns' search seems increasingly unlikely to have a happy ending. Each year around 250,000 people go missing in the UK. Nine in 10 of those incidents are closed within 48 hours; 99% of all cases are solved within a year. The longer an individual is missing, the less likely there is of a happy outcome. When a prisoner in a US jail said he knew where Amanda Berry, one of the Cleveland women, was buried, the police took him seriously – after all, every police officer knew that finding a body was, by that stage, much more likely than finding Berry alive. (It later transpired that the prisoner was lying, a crime for which he received a further four and a half years' prison sentence.) | To some of us on the outside, while we understand why a child's parents would refuse to give up hope, and why we know we'd do exactly the same for our child, the McCanns' search seems increasingly unlikely to have a happy ending. Each year around 250,000 people go missing in the UK. Nine in 10 of those incidents are closed within 48 hours; 99% of all cases are solved within a year. The longer an individual is missing, the less likely there is of a happy outcome. When a prisoner in a US jail said he knew where Amanda Berry, one of the Cleveland women, was buried, the police took him seriously – after all, every police officer knew that finding a body was, by that stage, much more likely than finding Berry alive. (It later transpired that the prisoner was lying, a crime for which he received a further four and a half years' prison sentence.) |
| But then a miracle happened: Berry and the other women were found alive. "Words can't say enough," said the aunt of one of them, adding that the families had never given up hope. | But then a miracle happened: Berry and the other women were found alive. "Words can't say enough," said the aunt of one of them, adding that the families had never given up hope. |
| Families never do give up hope. I've interviewed families where a partner or a child has gone missing, and I've sometimes thought that what they're going through was worse even than bereavement. When someone dies you at least have the chance of grief and closure: but a relative going missing can mean months, years, even decades of being unable to move on. Life is in some ways frozen at a particular point in time – the last time you saw your partner or child – and everything that has happened since is stuck in that moment and in the events that led up to it. Psychologists talk about the concept of "ambiguous loss": the missing individual is neither physically present, nor psychologically gone. Some of those who have experienced it have called it the worst imaginable pain; and with that pain often goes guilt, shame, embarrassment and powerlessness. | Families never do give up hope. I've interviewed families where a partner or a child has gone missing, and I've sometimes thought that what they're going through was worse even than bereavement. When someone dies you at least have the chance of grief and closure: but a relative going missing can mean months, years, even decades of being unable to move on. Life is in some ways frozen at a particular point in time – the last time you saw your partner or child – and everything that has happened since is stuck in that moment and in the events that led up to it. Psychologists talk about the concept of "ambiguous loss": the missing individual is neither physically present, nor psychologically gone. Some of those who have experienced it have called it the worst imaginable pain; and with that pain often goes guilt, shame, embarrassment and powerlessness. |
| But if it's the hardest thing to live through, research shows that what helps families most is knowing that everything possible is being done to help find their missing relative, that they are being taken seriously and their story is being believed. Strangely enough, relatives don't seem to talk about needing to be believed when it comes to hope: they have enough hope of their own, perhaps. | But if it's the hardest thing to live through, research shows that what helps families most is knowing that everything possible is being done to help find their missing relative, that they are being taken seriously and their story is being believed. Strangely enough, relatives don't seem to talk about needing to be believed when it comes to hope: they have enough hope of their own, perhaps. |
| So the story from Ohio won't surprise the McCanns or other families in a similar situation. And while the rest of us might wonder how sensible it is to keep on hoping, this story makes the point the McCanns want us to understand. We know the statistics were against those families in Cleveland, just as they're against the McCanns: but as we see the TV coverage from Ohio, and hear about the joy of the reunions, no one can deny that even a sliver of hope really can come good. | So the story from Ohio won't surprise the McCanns or other families in a similar situation. And while the rest of us might wonder how sensible it is to keep on hoping, this story makes the point the McCanns want us to understand. We know the statistics were against those families in Cleveland, just as they're against the McCanns: but as we see the TV coverage from Ohio, and hear about the joy of the reunions, no one can deny that even a sliver of hope really can come good. |
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