Missing People in action: Jo's story

16 June 2009

Jo's daughter Danielle went missing in 2007 but, thanks to the help of Missing People, the family was reunited six months later. Here, Jo describes her experience:

  One of the most distressing things a parent can ever go through is when their child doesn’t return home. For us this became reality in May 2007. Danielle didn’t return home from school. We checked with her friends and looked for her around the area in which we live with the hope that we might spot her.

After a sleepless night we checked to see if she had arrived at school, but she hadn’t and so we called the police. During the morning there were some confirmed sightings of Danielle and one which caused us to severely question her safety. As we sat in our garden that morning we contemplated the fact we might never see Danielle ever again.

For us this was the start of a series of similar occurrences where she would be missing for one or two days but always remain locally in Hemel Hempstead and was always returned home safely.

All of this was to change on August 3rd 2007 when we again returned home from work to find Danielle missing. Although very concerned for her safety we thought she would be safely back home within the next couple of days. This was not to be the case. Amazingly Danielle was spotted the following day all the way in Hyde Park in London.

This was the beginning of a six month period when Danielle was missing from home. When we discovered she was in London we were extremely concerned for her health, safety and wellbeing. We were worried about the type of people she might meet and the danger she might find herself in. To us London seemed such a big and dangerous place for our young 15 year old daughter.

It was easy for us to go out to look for her when she was missing in Hemel Hempstead but trying to find her when we travelled into London was trying to find a needle in a haystack. However, the police had a head start when looking for Danielle and this was when we were first introduced to Missing People.

Publicity

  Missing People helped raise awareness about Danielle’s disappearance by distributing posters, placing notices in the Metro Newspaper, inside London Buses and also on the side of large lorries. This was a great help to us as from this publicity the police manage to establish several confirmed sightings of Danielle in London.

This in turn provided great comfort for the family as although Danielle was not at home with us we knew that she was alive and well. And even after a few months when the sightings had died down we contacted Missing People who again re-launched the poster campaigns. During all this time they were very supportive and they even managed to get us some airtime on national TV where we made a public appeal for information about the whereabouts of Danielle.

Finally after six months the police returned Danielle home safely to us. The whole family was absolutely overjoyed that she had returned and words cannot express the relief and happiness that we all felt.

Now, after successfully passing her GCSE’s even though she had missed the majority of her final year at school, she is now studying hard for her A levels and has settled well back into family life.

Missing People played a vital role for us as a family during Danielle’s disappearance. Their continued help with raising awareness about her disappearance gave us the opportunity to know that Danielle was still alive as well as knowing that they were there if we needed to talk to someone. The work that Missing People carry out is vital for families such as ours when a loved one goes missing. Without your help and support they will not be able to go on helping families like ours or to help find missing people like Danielle and bring her to safely.

Whether you volunteer at Missing People your time or make a donation, I can personally vouch that your support really is making a difference. The issue of missing is one that I hope none of you ever has to experience firsthand. however, if you did, you should take comfort in that face, as I did, that there is a marvellous charity in the UK there to help, and have been helping for more than 15 years.