|
|
|
|
|
 Email+  Share+
THE SEARCHERS
07 February 2010 By John Burke, Public Affairs Correspondent
David Linehan has never stopped searching for his cousin Michelle, who went missing in 1993, she is believed to have been killed and her body dumped. Watching last week’s Garda investigation into the discovery of a body in the Dublin mountains brought Lenihan’s pain into sharper focus.
The body turned out to be that of Ken Fetherston, a 26-year-old father of one from Tallaght. Fetherston went missing last September, when he was seen driving a red Honda Civic. Just days later, the blood-stained car was found near Gorey, Co Wexford.
Gardaí believe that Fetherston’s death was linked to money that he loaned someone and was trying to recover before his disappearance. Linehan said he could relate to the Fetherston family’s pain. The body of his 23-year-old cousin, Michelle McCormick, has never been found. McCormick, from Mayfield in Cork city, was last seen in Owenahincha Holiday Park in Cork in July 1993. A man was subsequently charged with her killing, but the case collapsed.
Linehan has also had to endure the experience of having a second family member go missing. His father, Thomas, disappeared in January 2001. Gardaí mounted a search, but to no avail, and Linehan himself found his father’s remains four months later.
‘‘Not having a body to bury tears a family asunder," he said last week.
‘‘It’s a total lack of closure. You don’t have a clue what has happened. When someone is found - it isn’t the right word to use maybe - but it is a relief." Linehan is co-founder of the Cork-based Missing Persons Association, which he helped establish in 2001.
Along with a dozen or more volunteers, he spends his free time searching locations where missing people were last seen. The group has been involved in two such searches over the past two months.
It played a significant role in the search for missing manslaughter victim Robert Holohan, the 11-year old boy whose body was recovered by volunteer searchers in dense scrubland near Midleton, Co Cork, in January 2005. Not all cases have a grim outcome. Most missing people turn up, Linehan said.
There has been a steady increase in the number of people going missing. In the six years from 2003 to the beginning of 2008, gardaí dealt with more than 37,800 reports of missing people. Of those, 328 people have never been found.
The Missing Persons Association is called in to assist the gardaí in searches in the Munster area, either by investigating gardaí or by family members of missing persons.
‘‘We also periodically go back to places where we have searched before. We have found bodies, or even small bits of physical evidence that are useful to gardaí, after they themselves have stopped searching," he said.
While not critical of the force, Linehan believes there is a resource problem which needs to be tackled.
The Garda Missing Persons Bureau comprises one garda sergeant, a garda and a civilian.
‘‘Gardaí have a remit to protect the peace and, if there’s no body, they can’t stay searching for someone indefinitely.
‘‘But there is a manpower problem as far as we’ve seen. For instance, the Garda Diving Unit could be called out to assist in a search and, two hours later, they could be called to a different job and they’d have to leave. That’s a problem, because a lot of searches need the use of a sub-aqua unit or a dog unit," he said.
He added that no two cases were the same.
he group has looked for older people who are senile and wander away from their homes, suspected suicide and accident victims, and people who simply vanish with no obvious explanation.
Lack of services
Relatives of missing persons have complained that dedicated services are inadequate. Some have sought the creation of a cross-border helpline to deal with cases across the entire island.
Tom Brown, whose sister Eileen Coss has been missing since November 1999, staged a demonstration outside the Department of Justice in Dublin last year to mark the tenth anniversary of his sister’s disappearance, and to call on the government to help establish an all island helpline and a dedicated missing persons Garda unit.
Among the issues Brown raised was the government’s reluctance to take part in the European Commission’s helpline for missing children.
EU states were asked to publicise a universal helpline number (116000) as a dedicated phone line for reports on missing children throughout the EU. This call has since been echoed by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The Missing Persons Helpline (1890-442552) was closed down for four years as a result of under-funding, but was relaunched in April 2009 and is now run by the Missing in Ireland Support Service (Miss).
Miss chairman Dermot Browne said that the group was originally established with the aim of providing counselling to victims, and that it did not intend to take over the running of a national helpline.
‘‘We put our name in the hat when it looked like there was some interest in getting it going again but, to be honest, I think we were the only names in the hat," Browne said. Miss has 22 volunteers trained in a certificate in missing persons support.
There are few bespoke programmes like it in the world, but until recently, the group was entirely self-funding. Since it took over the missing persons helpline, the agency has developed a ‘‘close relationship’’ (as Browne describes it) with the Garda Missing Persons Bureau.
However, unlike its British counterparts, Miss does not have a formal memorandum of understanding with An Garda Síochána on precise protocols.
Funding is also a significant issue, according to Browne. ‘‘We got €20,000 from the commission on the victims of crime. We spent €20,000 training volunteers in specific counselling, and we need to train more, but we don’t have the funds.
‘‘There is also the added problem of not having a year-to-year commitment on funding. In effect, we can’t plan for next year, because we don’t know if we’ll have any funds."
Browne cites Australia as the example of best practice, where the focus is on a mix of highly-resourced police tracing operations and follow up counselling for families.
By contrast, in Ireland and other European states, the focus is more on voluntary counselling within a funding lacuna, according to a recent report by the Australian attorney general’s office and federal police.
‘‘It’s a resources issue, really. The gardaí do not have the same resources," Browne said.
|
|
|
