Over the years I have sat and watched time and time again distraught parents on our screens in the wake of a child or a loved one having gone missing.
Last night was no exception, heartbroken Coral Jones cried uncontrollably on television urging people to help find her five year old daughter April.
I have to say I felt very uncomfortable.
I felt I was invading the deepest recesses of a mother’s private grief. Who advised Coral to do what she did? One suspects the police made this call.
Clearly nothing is being done by the police investigating the disappearance of April to dissuade the media from publishing the name or photograph of the man being questioned by them.
This may well prove ultimately to be very prejudicial if the police have not got their man. There is precedent for this outcome which eventually cost the authorities a lot of money.
I recall when Madeleine McCann went missing in Portugal former Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde observing, “if the child hasn’t turned up in the first twenty four hours we are normally dealing with a death.”
This informed comment would be known to most seasoned detectives. In putting Coral Jones forward before the cameras to make an appeal is there a suggestion that the police know they have not got the guilty party in custody?
If they know they have arrested the culpable party to the crime do they know the child is being held at an unknown location and is still alive but needs to make a connection with another party as of yet unknown to them?
These are all imponderables but all lead to the one unknown quantity – what is to be gained by having poor parents appear on television who lose the complete run of themselves and end up exposing their deepest and most profoundly wounded emotions?
I am a parent. How do I know what I would do were I in Coral Jones’s shoes?
Should experience and statistics show that public appeals on television by parents about missing children pay, I will willingly acknowledge this and step away from my thesis.
1 Comment
I have no idea whether it is a good thing or not to parade stricken parents on TV .But surely it is better than silence. Do we know how many children have actually disappeared without trace within the last 50 years in Northern Ireland?
For example David Leckey disappeared on Thursday 25th September 1969. One week before his 13th birthday The police still deem this as an open case. However they are unable to find David’s file.
At least 3 other boys between the ages of 12yrs – 16yrs went missing within Belfast and all within a five month period. Jonathan Aven 14yrs old from 21 Sydenham Drive, Belfast, went missing on 20th September 1969, David Leckey 12yrs old, went missing 5 days later on the 25th September 1969. John David Glennon, 16yrs old, from Divismore Crescent, Andersontown Road and Ronald Kirk, 16yrs old from Barn Road, Carrickfergus, both disappeared on the 8th January 1970.
Thomas Spence and John Rodgers disappeared on their way to school on November 1974 They were waiting at the bus stop a Rockville Street on the Falls Road to go to their special needs school up the Antrim Road , they never arrived and haven’t been heard of since, John was 13 and Thomas was 10
The last poster on the forum suggested “an investigative reporter worth their salt would relish this case”
What do you think Eamonn?
http://www.belfastforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,47785.15.html