Marianne Merten
The mother of Renata Ismail, snatched on March 27 from a modest block of flats in Kuils River, Cape Town, spent the little girl’s fifth birthday on Easter Monday at her husband’s hospital bedside.
Messages of support were stuck on her living room wall, and cars parked in the road in front displayed posters of her missing child in their windows. But for Heidi Ismail, whose husband has been in a coma since a traffic accident some weeks ago, there was little to say. “When you hope and pray, you can’t get other thoughts into your head.”
The heartbreaking road the Ismail family is on has been travelled by many Western Cape families. Last year 157 children were reported missing; 131 were found, several of them dead. In the first three months of this year, police have received 42 reports of missing children in the area. Thirty-one have been found so far, but 11 are still missing.
There are four broad categories of people who abduct children, says Dr Sean Kaliski, forensic psychiatrist at Valkenberg Hospital. There are those who kidnap for criminal gain; there are others, like paedophiles, who hold their victims captive, kill them and satisfy their own needs. A third category are people, usually fathers or relatives, who take children because of a dispute with the mother. Those who are on their own, idiosyncratic missions make up the final category of kidnappers.
Often an abducted child returns. Ten-year-old Bulani Mondi, for example, arrived bruised and shaken at the Milnerton police station in March 1998 after having disappeared for three months. Apparently Bulani had been taken to a Milnerton informal settlement following the death and funeral of his foster mother.
The boy had seen his mother killed on her way home from a taxi rank in Tafelsig, Mitchell’s Plain.
Bulani was fortunate to be found, but there are many cases that end in tragedy – like five-year-old Brondeleen Pitt, snatched out of bed in her Manenberg home in January 1998, her body discovered naked and bruised in a pool of water near her home days later.
Within days, the body of seven-year-old Natasha Diedericks from the Wallacedene informal settlement was found half-naked and mutilated in a shallow grave.
And there are the others, where the family is left in limbo.
The family of Anastasia Lucas from Westridge, Mitchell’s Plain, is still waiting for news about their daughter. She was seven years old when she was taken from a playground near her home on November 16 1997. Mathew Ohlsson’s family has not heard anything about him since he went to fetch a dustbin from the pavement near his Mitchell’s Plain home on March 24 1997 and disappeared. He was nine.
Director of the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture Nomfundo Walaza says there are no easy answers on how to cope with the trauma of a child who has been abducted.
Walaza says there are many emotions which the whole family might experience. There would be denial of the possibility that the child might not return, and hope, perhaps, even if chances of a return are diminishing.
There is usually guilt involved, Walaza says, where parents ask themselves: “Maybe if I did this. Maybe if …” Anger at their own actions, as well as the kidnapper’s, could sometimes take a long time to surface.
Support for the families of missing children and opportunities to allow them to talk are important parts of the healing process. Everyone in the family needs to be part of this and they must feel comfortable about the steps they are taking to come to terms with their grief.
Walaza adds that once it becomes clear there is little chance an abducted child will return, families could consider a ceremony to help them close the traumatic event in their lives and to let go.