Without A Trace

Without a trace

About 3,000 people are reported missing each year. The good news is, most people do get found

By Teo Cheng Wee

FOR 16 years, Clarissa has had a recurring dream.
In her dream, her son Gerard comes home. She hugs him and asks where he has been, but he does not answer. Before mother and child can say more, he says he has to leave.

Then the dream abruptly ends.

Yet it is the only time she sees him because, in reality, Gerard has been missing for 16 years.

In 1991, the Singapore Armed Forces regular, then 24, went to Bangalore, India, for a holiday with his wife. He told her that he was going out to visit some relatives - then never returned.

Gerard's distraught wife, who had been married to him for 21/2 years at the time, filed a report with the police there and stayed in Bangalore for a month trying in vain to locate him.

Clarissa, now 64, was working in Indonesia at that time and didn't have the money to fly out to look for him. She appealed to the Singapore High Commission in India, which could not find him either. Her husband also helped to look for Gerard.

Later, she put advertisements in newspapers in India. But instead of responses, she got many 'cruel responses' from people in India who asked if she could be their mother or grandmother, as well as other 'dirty phonecalls'.

Years may have passed but questions linger. Nobody knows why Gerard disappeared.

'He was a good son - caring, respectful and independent. If he had problems, he may not want to burden us with them. Maybe that's why he took off,' says Clarissa, who has a younger son.

The pain of his disappearance has not dissipated. After agreeing to meet LifeStyle to share her story last week, she pulled out of the interview on the morning itself, saying that it's 'too painful to relive this episode'.

After some persuasion, she acceded to a short phone and e-mail interview, but asked us not to use her real name.

Now retired to take care of the children of her younger son, Clarissa says she remains hopeful of Gerard's return.

His wife, now 51, remains devastated and is seldom able to talk about him without tearing. Although the couple have no children, she has not remarried and remains close to Clarissa.

'I ask God what happened. I ask for a sign - any sign - so that I can have closure,' Clarissa tells LifeStyle.

'But I have not been lucky.'


Little mystery, many reasons

THE phenomenon of missing persons has been getting greater exposure of late.

In March this year, the police started listing missing people on their website, with details like name, race, age and height, together with the date and location the person was last seen.

They also began working with the National Crime Prevention Council and SBS Transit to put up missing persons posters at bus interchanges and North-East Line stations.

The aim is to get the public to come forward with information as 40 per cent of all their major cases are solved with help from the public.

The efforts of voluntary group Crime Library have also drawn more attention to missing persons.

Founded in 2001 by policeman- turned-recycling firm owner Joseph Tan, the organisation became known after Mr Tan and more than 20 volunteers went on an island-wide search of missing eight-year-old China girl Huang Na in 2004.

When she was found murdered, they wept openly.

Since October last year, the group has been working with transport operator SMRT to put up posters at its 51 train stations and six bus interchanges.

And from August this year, the Singapore Press Holdings Foundation has been sponsoring the group with an advertisement space for missing people in SPH papers twice a month.

But while the long-term disappearances of people like Clarissa's son are mysterious, the majority of missing persons cases are not so sensational.

Private investigator Lionel de Souza, 64, who spent 26 years in the police force, says that 'cases like the McDonald's boys are very, very rare'.

The McDonald's boys have been arguably Singapore's most famous missing persons case.

In 1986, classmates Keh Chin Ann and Toh Hong Huat, both 12 years old then, disappeared mysteriously on their way to school. The fast food chain put up a reward of $100,000 for finding them, but to no avail.

Over the years, stories have emerged about their whereabouts, including rumours of them begging in Thailand.

It was reported that Hong Huat's father had also gone missing while his foster mother now lives in Malaysia.

As for Mr Keh Cheng Pan - Chin Ann's father - LifeStyle contacted him at his Balestier home last week but was turned away by a woman.

'Please stop bringing up this matter,' she said curtly.

The police receive about 3,000 missing persons reports each year - a figure that has stayed fairly constant for the last few years.

There is usually little mystery behind most missing persons, though the reasons can be varied.

Police spokesman Danny Tan says that generally, children who are reported missing would be found playing truant or staying out with friends without informing their family.

However, adults may leave their homes due to family disputes or other personal reasons, and stay out for a long period of time without informing their family of their whereabouts.

Other groups of people who go missing include the elderly or mentally disabled who wander off, rebellious teenagers who run away after a quarrel at home or foreign workers who take off from their employers.

The police say that the public can lodge a report on a missing person any time, as long as the next-of-kin believes that police help is required to locate the missing person.

There is no minimum time period before such a report can be lodged.

Of the 3,000 people reported missing yearly, about 80 per cent are traced or return home by themselves. Singaporeans who remain missing after a year make up less than 3 per cent of this number.

Mr Joseph Tan says that more than 85 per cent of the more than 400 missing persons cases that Crime Library have handled have been found.


All cases taken seriously

ONE grouse that sometimes emerges from families of missing persons is that the police are not putting in enough resources to look for missing persons.
One remark that LifeStyle encountered a few times while speaking to some 10 families and friends of missing persons, is that because no crime has been committed, the police don't pursue their case actively.

When asked about this, however, spokesman Danny Tan maintains that the police 'treat all cases of missing persons seriously and investigate these reports thoroughly'.

He adds that they 'will pursue missing persons reports as long as the person is still missing'.

When a missing persons report is filed, the police will assess the information provided, taking into consideration the age, mental and health conditions of the missing person and the situations under which the person has gone missing.

Greater priority may be placed on searching for those who are vulnerable, such as a young child or an elderly person with memory loss.

Mr de Souza says that it may not always be fair to blame the police.

'If the police have cause to believe that someone is in imminent danger, I'm sure they will be right on it.

'But others might regularly run away from home. If they actively pursue every missing persons case, it might detract the police from pursuing the real criminals.'

He says looking for missing persons can be a time-consuming effort: 'I have had parents come to me asking to search for their child without even being able to tell me where the kid usually hangs out.'

That is where Crime Library's Mr Tan feels that his outfit can come in.

'It's hard to tell the next of kin that because no crime has been committed, the investigation will not continue. To them, what matters is that their loved one is still missing,' he says.

'By helping them put up posters, they can feel that something is being done. That keeps their hopes alive.'

He hopes that Crime Library can one day go beyond putting up posters and notices to working officially with other government agencies.

For instance, he says it would be very helpful if Crime Library is given the authority to check with the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority if someone has left the country.

He adds that he puts so much effort into Crime Library because one of his cousins was kidnapped and killed in Manila in 1996 after a ransom had been paid. 'The trauma lasts till today,' he says.

Dr Adrian Wang, a consultant psychiatrist at Gleneagles Medical Centre, says that it is most traumatic for people whose loved ones go missing without any reason.

He calls it 'unresolved grief', likening it to families that do not recover a body of a loved one after an airplane crash. 'Without any explanation, it is hard to get closure,' he says.

After they overcome their initial shock, they may ask themselves why it happened and if it was something they did or said. This period of soul-searching could take years to resolve.

Closure comes only when the person is able to adjust to a life in the future where the missing person does not have a role in it.

For Clarissa, time has healed, a little. Although she still thinks of her son, it has improved from the time when she could not walk past St Joseph's Institution in Bras Basah - where he studied - without tearing.

She says: 'I just hope for the best and imagine him happy somewhere else in this world.'

chengwee@sph.com.sg

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