Analysis: As we devour news stories and true crime content, the families of a missing person are left behind to deal with the ambiguous loss
The poet Emily Dickinson wrote: ""Hope" is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all -" But what happens when that hope has to survive years of media scrutiny, probing police questions and repeated exposure to trauma? Is hope really a positive or a negative?
In 2019, nearly 9,500 people were reported as missing to the gardaí; while 99.7% of those individuals were found dead or alive, there is still that 0.3%. That sounds small, but think about it: How many families, friends, and colleagues did those people have? The number of lives irrevocably altered goes far beyond 0.3%.
From RTÉ, trailer for the Where is Jón? podcast series
In 2019, Icelandic poker player Jón Jónsson was among those missing who never returned. The father of four was last seen exiting the Bonnington Hotel in Dublin during the Dublin Poker Festival at the venue. He was never heard from again. That investigation went cold until a podcast produced by RTÉ Documentary on One, in collaboration with RÚV in Iceland, and aided by Jónsson's family, renewed interest in the case and even identified a potential murder suspect.
But how much do we think about the families of the missing, as we devour news headlines and true crime content, and project our own judgments onto a viral case? Before you get all high and mighty, ask yourself, did you question whether the McCann parents had something to do with their daughter Madeleine's disappearance in 2007?
We tend to skim the details and let our ingrained biases and true crime exposure do the talking. But what happens mentally and physically to those left behind and often left out of the headlines? Professor of Social Work at CQ University Dr Sarah Wayland is an expert on missing person cases and specialises in a unique type of trauma known as ambiguous loss. When applied to families of missing people, this refers to a sense of unresolved loss, where there isn't the necessary information to suggest that a loss is finite.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's News At One in 2024, family of missing Icelandic man appeal for information
"Ambiguous loss is knowing that you've lost something, but being uncertain if that loss is forever," Wayland explains. When someone goes missing, families do not experience grief but rather a type of trauma. The person going missing is the trauma, but so too is the day-to-day of what happens to a family in the aftermath. "How the police respond, of searching, the reality of being out in a forest or on the streets of somewhere, searching for a loved one is a traumatic event in itself."
Sometimes the reason why a person goes missing can inform a family’s reaction. If a third party is involved in the disappearance, families usually spend less time dwelling on why their loved one left them or why they will not come back. But mental health cases or people disconnecting because of family challenges can bring a host of additional questions, like why won't the missing person put their family out of pain when they may have the capacity to do so.
In the early stages of someone going missing, families often assume they will grow accustomed to the feeling of ambiguity. However, according to Wayland, families struggle for around a decade with "that day-to-dayness of, where is this person?". When people think about missing person investigations, they mostly go straight to Hollywood: nationwide alerts, helicopters, drones and every available police officer being deployed within 24 hours. But. like most things, reality and televised fiction rarely match up.
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From RTÉ Doc on One, episode one of the Where Is Jón? podcast
In the early days of a case, the family is fixated on trying to understand the limited clues left behind and how to spread their community network effectively. Wayland calls this an "active phase". For most families, this is their first time engaging with police. So, not only are people trying to understand what happened to their loved one, they are trying to work out how to navigate the justice system.
"I think that that's really difficult for families to accept, like, 'what do you mean? You can't track that piece of information, or there isn't a drone that's going to search there, or you haven't got all the dogs out looking for somebody who might be missing in a forest?'" says Wayland.
Before going into academia, she worked as a therapist for families of missing people and says the first year tends to consist of the "bigger picture" shattering. "That sense of 'I thought that if I told enough people' or 'if I worked with the police closely' or 'if we had an appeal' or 'if we put a monetary reward, that that would trigger somebody to do something, to do the right thing'. That sense of 'nobody's coming to help u's was when things started to shift for people."
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From RTÉ News, new database launched to help search for missing people
Once a case starts trending or becomes long-term, the local sleuths emerge from the woodwork, and a personal tragedy suddenly becomes Kevin-from-next-door's new hobby. Our discomfort with the unknown is why Wayland thinks people attempt to rationalise why someone has gone missing and "what they did to create their missingness."
Because if you know what to avoid, then it will never happen to you, right? As opposed to the truth: that sometimes things happen at random, and no logic can be applied. But in doing this, an 'us’ vs ‘them’ narrative emerges, ultimately stigmatising victims, as if crude preparation comes with immunity attached.
Wayland believes we are only about to start to see the long-term implications of essentially gamifying people’s trauma. In an instant, you not only lose the person closest to you but also your identity as a family. You’re no longer, for instance, the Jónsson family but the family of Jón Jónsson, the missing person. "We don't sometimes accept what we do as a community when we label people and we become invested in their lives, because it stops them being able to fully reflect on the loss that they've experienced because we make them into a product."
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From RTE 2fm's Laura Fox Show, interview with Where is Jón? podcast producers, RTÉ's Liam O'Brien and RÚV's Anna Marsibil Clausen
When someone goes missing, it impacts family members differently, especially children. The desire to spare children from the trauma often means they remain on the periphery of the situation, which can have consequences, says Wayland.
"They overhear stories. They might see something on the TV. They might be creating their own stories that are very different to what's happening right now, and that sticks for a long time, that sense of not being involved, of not being included, means that the ambiguity is both that sense of being excluded from the story as well as the ambiguous loss of having someone missing." It also impacts how people form attachments later in life, she says, as attachment styles in relationships are based on parental attachment, which is really challenging in a space where there is ambiguity.
Hope is rarely a word attached to negative connotations; it's what keeps many of us going through life's great hardships, but sometimes it can be both a survival mechanism and something a bit darker. Wayland has found that none of the families she has worked with could verbalise what their hope was. She says people hope their person will return, but that "kind of G-rated version it gets worn out pretty quickly."
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From RTÉ Six One News, families of missing people urged to give DNA samples
In her work, Wayland found families had a public and a private hope narrative at play, as they were almost forced to become content creators of their own experience. They understood that when talking to the media, the community or even other families of missing people. "They were on the hope train," is how Wayland describes it.
However, behind closed doors without a journalist or podcaster present, families are more open about what hope really looks like. It could be just hoping they survive the ambiguity of not knowing what happened to their loved one, she explains.
But what happens when someone does not return after a year, 10 years, or 20 years? What does that do to a family? Wayland said a woman with a missing son told her, in the beginning, it felt sharp, like a stark tree in winter with pointed branches and no life around it. After 15 or 20 years of her child being missing, the woman said the tree remains, but some of the leaves have grown back. It’s a little bit softer - and it no longer hurts to look at.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
