The Boy Who Disappeared by Valerie Nettles

Author:Valerie Nettles [Valerie Nettles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

IT WASN’T JUST THE PERSONAL HURT – THE ALL-CONSUMING disappointment every time another line of enquiry we put forward was disregarded. It wasn’t just the pain of being no closer to finding Damien. It was more than that. The more I learned about the workings of the law and missing person cases – in many instances through the National Missing Persons Helpline – the more I realised how much had been done wrong. Right from the start.

Vital opportunities had been missed; chances to find out what had happened to my son. Poor attitude and incompetence had deprived us of answers. Of any kind of resolution.

That first day – when I had turned to my local police force, when I had arrived on the steps of Cowes Police Station in tears and terrified for the wellbeing of my sixteen-year-old son – I had no idea what was meant to happen next.

Why would I? No one expects to find themselves in that situation. No one prepares themselves for what to do if their child goes missing. Everything I knew about missing person cases at that point was drawn from what I had seen on television or read in the news. My expectation was that news of a missing child would have the police out in droves, airborne searches, rescue dogs and sombre press conferences. That didn’t happen for Damien. And it should have.

At first I’d been naive and perhaps a little intimidated by having to deal with the police. I’d thought my expectations had been wrong, skewed by sensational media stories. But then the mistakes started. Clear failure in just doing the basics of the job:

-Getting Damien’s age wrong.

-Picking out the wrong person in video footage.

-Cherry-picking the leads they did or didn’t follow based on their opinions.

-Losing vital CCTV evidence.

I’d looked into the responsibilities of the police in criminal investigations and tried to ascertain exactly what we should have expected. One extract from the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 set alarm bells ringing in my head: ‘Any police officer involved in the investigation into alleged crimes has a duty to record and retain material which may be relevant to the investigation’.

It didn’t say anything about officers deciding what was or wasn’t relevant. It didn’t give them the right to choose. It didn’t brush off the loss of evidence like they had with the CCTV footage. For almost nine years, Hampshire Constabulary had met us with resistance. We’d had to fight for action every step of the way. In many cases we’d had to act as detectives ourselves.

A huge proportion of the information the police had in their hands was provided by us – by our supporters and friends of Damien. When the police had acted on their own volition, their communication with our family had been poor at best. It had caused us anguish and distress. More pain. How was any of this right? After almost a decade of fighting to keep my son’s case alive, I knew I had to take the police to task.

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