Madeleine McCann: How Jaycee Dugard Became The Benchmark For Missing Children
Jaycee Dugard Watch – Anorak’s at-a-glance look at Jaycee Dugard in the news: Nancy Garrido not happy in jail, Melanie Hall is found and Madeleine McCann is no longer the benchmark for missing children.
In Melanie Hall and the missing, Cassandra Jardine asks:
Why are we so bad at keeping tabs on missing people, asks Cassandra Jardine.
Depends who’s missing? Anorak has been keeping you updated with every mention of missing Madeleine McCann in the news for over two years. Other missing people are not so well covered, like Melanie Hall:
The young hospital clerk, last seen in a Bath nightclub on June 9 1996, was in a rubbish bag under a bush by the slip road to exit 14 of the M5.
Melanie Hall was missing for thirteen years:
Thousands of people have driven past her while having map-reading debates or answering “How much longer?” queries from the back seat. The very banality of the scene is shaking. Even more troubling is the question that inevitably follows: how many more bodies of missing people have we glided past without knowing?
Jardine soon does as all journalists must and speculates:
It could be hundreds, even thousands, for every year at least 200,000 people go missing. The vast majority – 99 per cent – are found within a year, most of them within 48 hours. That leaves 2,000 people each year who never reappear. Sixty per cent of them are thought to be dead. But where are they?
Newspaper reporters might well investigate, or feature the missing in their pages. Or just get on with writing their copy for a deadline:
They could be victims of crime, like Melanie. They might be living it up in Panama, in the style of John Darwin, who notoriously faked his own death in a canoeing accident. Or, like Jaycee Dugard, the 11-year-old American girl who was found in August, they may have spent 18 years as the prisoner of a stranger.
And there is it. No Madeleine McCann. The only other high(ish)-profile missing person features is Andrew Godsen, who has been featured by Anorak before. But Andrew Godsen is of less interest to the mainstream media than his parents are:
Three months after his 13-year-old son Andrew left home with a one-way ticket from Doncaster to London King’s Cross, Kevin Gosden found the tension so unbearable that he attempted to hang himself from a balustrade. He would be dead now if the vicar, who had a key, hadn’t picked that exact moment to pay a visit. Nearly two years on, he still suffers suicidal urges: only the thought of his daughter stops him carrying out his plans.
When people go missing we get to watch the ones they leave behind. And what of Jaycee Dugard, the new benchmark for missing children?
Ski Channel: “Other suspect in Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping case having a tough time in prison”
Nancy Garrido: She is currently in prison, and according to sources, she has had to be put in isolation for her own protection. Other inmates have been threatening to rape and kill her, so Garrido was moved to isolation and has been described as “very lonely.”
Lonely. Like the ones the missing leave behind…
Posted: 9th, October 2009 | In: Madeleine McCann Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
