September 14, 2025 • 53 mins
Dr. Sarah Wayland is a social work professor and leading researcher who has spent decades working with families of missing people. From frontline support to shaping national conversations on ambiguous loss and trauma, she brings unique insight into what it means to live in the “missing” space and why these stories matter
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appodjay production.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So everyone, welcome back to the Missing Matter today. I'm
very privileged to be joined by doctor Sarah Wayland, a
researcher professor of social work. Sarah has decades of experience working, supporting,
and researching the lived experience of distress and trauma, particularly
in this Missing space, and I'd like to welcome her
today to the Missing Matter podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Welcome Sarah, Thanks so much, Sally.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I just wanted to bring you on today, Sarah because
of your extensive work in the Missing Space, with the
hope that you can share some further insight into what
you understand it means to be living in the missing world.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background
and what you've been doing over that last thirty.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Years of course, and also whenever I think about when
I actually started working in Missing it's like only a
moment in time, but it has been a really long time,
and I think that that has kept me really curious
and made me always think about what else we need
to do rather than what have we done? So by background,
(01:19):
I'm a social worker. I became a social worker in
the late nineties, and lots of social workers because I
teach a lot of them. Now, I finished my degree
and I didn't really have a strong sense about what
I wanted to do. It had just been something that
I'd been interested in, but I guess I hadn't really
switched on my sense of what I could do in
(01:41):
terms of the work that I chose to do. So,
like lots of young people, I wandered around for a
few years, did a lot of work in child protection
and domestic violence, both here in Australia and overseas. Social
worker is a great degree to travel with. Everyone needs
a social worker, and when I finally came back to
Australia about five years later, I can remember it as
(02:03):
clear as anything and think that it's a bit like
you know that Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors. You know
where you have this moment where you look back and
you can see that a small decision that you made
really shapes the complete way in which your life will
pan out. And so I was working on a crisis
line with the Domestic Violence Service in New South Wales.
(02:26):
Was on the night shift and we used to work
by ourselves on the night shift, and it was back
in the olden days where jobs were advertised in the
newspaper and there was a job that was for twelve
weeks working in a newly funded service for New South
Wales Attorney Generals called the Families and Friends of Missing
Persons Unit, which these days is now called the Families
(02:48):
and Friends of Missing Person's Service. I had a background
in working with people that were experiencing sudden and traumatic loss,
but not in the way that missing persons presents. So
the bonus for me in applying for that job, first
of all, I was a young person, so a twelve
week contract was fine for me to think about is
(03:11):
that they indicated in the job ad that you didn't
have to have experience working with families of missing people
because it was the very first service of its kind,
but that it needed to be somebody that understood grief
and loss but also was able to I guess, co
design or co construct what the service could be with
the families because it was so new. So I went
(03:32):
along had the interview, really connected with the manager of
the service, Leoni Jakes, who had just done a Churchill
fellowship to look at how to set up the service.
She traveled internationally and I got the job, and the
very first day on my job there was a book
on my desk that was Pauline Boss's book Ambiguous Loss,
(03:55):
and that was basically my training, a small book that
talked about the American approach to acknowledging ambiguous loss, and
a whole heap of families that had already called and
left their details because they wanted somebody to call them back.
So that started the job, and within a couple of
weeks we had about thirty families that we were working with,
(04:18):
and the position then got extended and extended, and after
a couple of years became a permanent role. So I've
been working in missing since that time, and working alongside
families and really thinking about not just what I could
deliver to them one to one in the counseling room,
but I recognized really quickly that what I was learning
(04:41):
from them needed to also be shared with other people,
not in terms of my profile, but about what it
meant to collect stories and then share them with others,
because I knew, given this was a new South Wales
only service, that other states and territories needed some awareness
about what it meant after someone was reported missing to
(05:02):
the police.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So I've been in the field since then.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I eventually moved on from that direct service delivery after
almost ten years and decided to start my PhD and
since then have been working in the university research space
because I recognized that you can only get so far
talking to other service providers. Making sure that I contributed
(05:27):
to the evidence base has kind of led me to
where I am today.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, well, you've done amazing things, like I've been reading
up about you as well, like to get some background
into what you have done pre me meeting you. It
was like three years ago we met in person in Melbourne,
and I feel like that time has just flown because
I think we were just I was in the inquest
or we'd pause the inquest and it was just my
(05:51):
head was spinning a million miles an hour. But we'll
talk about it that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I can remember that really clearly.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
I remember when I first stumbled across your name actually,
and I was in when I was reading my brief
of evidence. Your name popped up on a handwritten document
with a reference to Ashton's Removals, which is a REMOVALSS
company on the Gold Coast, and it was in relation
to my mum's missing belongings and her shipping container. And
(06:19):
I didn't know who you were at that time, so
it meant I had no reference to that. I just
assumed that you maybe worked for missing persons or something,
or rather in that field. Can you tell us a
little bit about when you first heard about my story
or about Mum's story.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
It's really interesting, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I never take for granted that you don't even have
to interact sometimes with families of missing people across Australia,
but there's often these little connection points that means you
cross the life of somebody without sometimes ever meeting them,
and it's always really interesting for me. And I talked
to my social work students about this a lot, about
(06:57):
recognizing the power of those micro moments and how you
can always think about how to better support people so
I can remember your name really clearly. I often think
about my career like lots of women do, in terms
of the ages of my kids at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I'm pretty sure that's a good time.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
My timeline of my career is not my career, but
at what point was on maternity level? You know, what
were my kids in daycare or school by then? So
my daughter's about to turn twenty this year, and I'm
pretty sure she was two or three at the time,
so it's a long time ago. I was working for
the Australian Federal Police at that time it was called
(07:39):
the National Missing Persons Unit, and I was secondered from
my job at New South Wales Attorney Generals because I'd
done a Churchill fellowship and what my goal had been
was to travel to the US in particular and spend
time with Emeritus Professor Paul M. Boss And what I
wanted to do was replicate her book, but from an
(08:01):
Australian context in terms of if you were account how
could you think about the ways in which you could
better support families of missing people? And so when I
came back from that trip, you have to write up
your report, and the AFP said, would you like to
come and work with us? I'm pretty sure it was
for about eighteen months, and what they were going to
(08:24):
support me to do was to take those findings turn
them into a resource that would be available online as
well as then think about how the AFP, given they
were coordinating services across Australia, how they could combine their
policing response with that therapeutic response as well. How could
(08:45):
they support me to travel and talk to lots of
counseling services so that families knew what else was on
offer for them after the police. But one of the
key points was, like it still is, every year National
Missing Person's Week, and each year there would be like
probably six or seven months out some ideas around who
(09:07):
would be profiled that week, who would be either the
missing person's case that would be profiled, and like lots
of work that I still do around the ways in
which media engage with families of missing people. Who would
the family be that would receive that profile. And it
was quite a few years ago now, but I do
(09:28):
remember that Rebecca Cots, who sadly is no longer with us,
was my colleague at the AFP, and she had said
that she had been talking to you and connecting with
you over the phone and wanted to ensure that your
mum's story was part of National Missing Person's Week that year.
So it must have been like two thousand and seven
(09:49):
or two thousand and eight, I think, And because I
was doing lots of building up a profile around what
was really good practice in family media liaison, because I'm
sure you know sal how traumatic it can be to
engage with media if they're not well versed in understanding
your lift experience. And so part of that step was
(10:10):
verifying which police were involved and recognizing like where the
case was up to so that it meant then that
you had a profile to tell your story as well
as the investigative response needed to be correct and up
to date and to know well who were the police
that needed to be involved in media, And when I
started making some calls, it became almost ambiguously ambiguous that
(10:33):
nobody could verify exactly who was in charge of the case,
where the case actually was, and what it was defined as.
And that was where that ambiguity around was this a
case that had been closed without a resolution or was
this an ongoing investigation that nobody was investigating. And so
that was where I first started to learn about you
(10:57):
and start to you know, I've listened to your story
over the years about where not just your great for
around the loss of your mum, but that traumatic grief
of engaging with police around trying to understand who is
looking after this case and who is actively investigating it.
(11:17):
So that was my very first interaction with you, despite
never having met you at that stage.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, right, So that's I had never heard that before.
Like this is where these conversations are so great, because
you would know probably if you'd listened to me on
the Lady Vanishers. We talk a lot about beck Cott's
She actually interviewed through the AFP. Actually I went into
the AFP building here in Brisbane, but we managed to
have an interview with beck in that facility here, and
(11:44):
I'm really glad that we had the opportunity to do
that because, as you know, she was quite unwell for
a lot of her journey. Meeting me, she came up
and took me out for lunch and she said she
offered me to be the face of missing persons. And
then I also remember the call she made only a
couple of days before we were due to fly down
where she said to me, I'm so sorry, but they've
(12:06):
pulled you. And I said, Who've pulled me? Because I
had no idea. And this is probably the bit I
wanted to get more awareness out there for families and
also for people working in that field, so they have
a better understanding of how your words and how your
communication can affect someone living in the missing space. And
I guess that's where you and I connect quite well
(12:27):
because you're on the same same journey. And you know
when she said to me, well, the police have said
that you can't be the face of missing persons this
year because we're doing mental health and your mum didn't
have mental health issues, so therefore you're not allowed to
do it. But come anyway, because we've already got your
flights and everything, and they could said to me, we're
(12:48):
going to bounce you from one state to the other.
And I think Caleb was only like six weeks old.
I just had my third sesarian. I think she was saying, oh, well,
you know, we'll go to Melbourne and we'll be in Sydney,
so make sure that you know prepared. So Chris was
with me and I'm storing my breast milk so that
we could he could feed him if I was on
TV at the time or being interviewed. So it was
quite a layered trauma in multiple different ways.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
But I think that these like exactly that you said,
that these are the stories that are the hidden stories
behind missing, because you know, we often think of missing
around the lost and found concept, but the emotional and
the physical labor of being the family and being the
spokesperson time and time again is really poorly understood.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And I just think it was just such a time
in life. And then if I fast forward even to
the inquest, this actual moment in time was a point
of question at the inquest because we have the Cops event,
which is the insertion of notes and notation through the
Cops police system, and we could clearly see and my
(13:57):
lawyer we sort of talked about this and noted it,
and it was brought up at the inquest that you
can clearly see that Rebeccat's rings New South Wales Police,
they have a conversation and then straight away my mum's
case has changed from accurrence to missing literally in the
(14:17):
same sentence. And the coroner did question that and say,
you know, is this because you'd realize that Marion actually
wasn't registered as missing And they were like, oh no, no, no,
that's not what it was. But the factsa it's right
there in paper, so we can see very clearly what
the timeline tells us. Right, So that's fine, whatever you
(14:40):
made errors, just acknowledge it and let's move on and
let's do that next time. That's my mantra. But it
did happen to me, and that was a really big
moment because at that point they were then able to
put a new OIC on the case. So this is
what stemmed all of that and we moved forward from there.
(15:01):
I then had to work with him for over a
decade and he firmly believed that my mum went missing
on her own account, so it was an assumption made
by him, not by fact, and that's a difficult path
to follow to as a missing person. So I think
that's it's rough.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
It is rough, and I think and I won't labor
the point, but I think those moments where someone else
outside of the family asking questions of police are also
really important from an advocacy perspective because asking that simple question,
can you verify that this is a long term missing
person because this is our intention for missing Person's Week
(15:44):
was the catalyst for that move from occurrence to missing
And I think that really connects in with the name
of your podcast about recognizing that even the way that
we define people is an important reflection of the fact
that they're missed.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Sarah, I wanted to ask you your opinion on missing
persons cases throughout Australia being handled under the one umbrella,
Like what's your thoughts on that, Like, obviously we've got
states and territories all over the place, and there for
people who don't understand each state and territory are responsible
for each case and they don't usually work together. And
(16:27):
this is why I bang on about being on the
National Missing Person's Register and the DNA being on the
national register, because Western Australia is not talking to New
South Wales police if they find bodies or bones, if
the person's not on the register, they're not looking at
that person and they don't know that that person's missing
from New South Wales. So what's your thoughts on working
together collectively to have one sort of umbrella in the
(16:50):
missing space.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
I feel like from the moment I started working and missing,
the discussion around a national approach to missing person was prominent.
You know, I've spent a lot of years and I
always come back to the point that I'm a social
work and it's a very odd space sometimes for a
social worker to work in a law enforcement setting and
to engage. Like there was always two parts very much
(17:14):
of my job. One side of me was being an
advocate and a support for families of missing. The other
part of me was learning and understanding and then providing
advice whether or not it was accepted or not, to
law enforcement about the ways in which they work and
how it can sometimes further the trauma for families of
(17:36):
missing people.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
You know, Australia is a really big place geographically.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I think that having a national approach is really important
in terms of standard operating procedures as to how information
is shared across states and territories, because, like you know,
you almost lose the battle as a family member if
someone that you love has gone missing near a border
(18:01):
or has clearly traveled across that border. I think that
there's a little bit more of certainty, and this is
anecdotal from talking to families of missing people that if
it all occurred within that state, then you can really
engage with the policies and procedures of that policing service.
If you happen to be someone unlucky where the person
(18:24):
traveled or it's right on the edge of a border,
then the need to engage with two jurisdictions means two
lots of administrative burden for families, and that burden then
makes people worried about what is being missed and what
happens if they get one service from one side of
the border and a really different service from the other
(18:45):
who's in charge of helping them navigate that space. So
I think from that perspective, I think it's always really
important to have a national approach to missing persons, and
that's in terms of data collection. Data collection is really
important in terms of knowing the numbers, but knowing how
many people came back and where they were found, and
(19:07):
how they got to be found.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
On what date they were found and exactly. You know,
there's so much information that's a bit skewy if I
think from what we've been researched exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And I think that, you know, ambiguous loss is a
great term for talking about what happens to families left behind,
but there is so much ambiguity in terms of investigations
and expectations because of that individual response in each of
the states and territories. I've always wondered why, because I
don't work in policing, why that national approach hasn't really
(19:40):
taken off in terms of the ways in which cases
are handled. And I know that when Jody Ward in
particular was it the AFP and working on that national
DNA project, I felt really hopeful because it meant then
that it put it on a national platform. And I
think so much of missing is explored in a local, community,
(20:03):
state based context in terms of knowing that that young
person went missing from that state, rather than saying this
is the missing person's problem in Australia. We need to
look at this collectively and we need to think about
a prevention as well as a better support lens. And
that can only happen from a national platform, So I
(20:24):
think it needs to be dealt with locally, but local
then needs to connect in with the bigger picture if
we're going to think about reducing the amount of people
that go missing. As well as saying to families, this
is the expectation of what you should be in receipt
of because of the awful traumatic loss that you've experienced,
(20:45):
there needs to be a baseline and I think at
the moment it's a bit of luck sometimes as to
where the incident happened and what you get in return
for that.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, and I know firsthand right because my mum's case
is a New South Wales case, but she lived in
Queensland and I was fighting that for a very long time.
Actually where the New South Wales Police was saying, oh,
well it should be a Queensland coronial inquest because she
lived in Queensland. So we had all this fight on
our hands and comments like oh well, I'm not just
(21:16):
going to dump you over the border, I mean speak,
I'm like, why would you even say that? Like, this
is a case that spreads over both jurisdictions. I don't
understand why everyone kind of internationally and internationally like that.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Correct, Like my stomach would drop if I was hearing
from a family for the first time in relation to
how far away their loved one could be from them,
because I knew that there was that jurisdictional challenge of
where the person was that would create further trauma for
the family.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, it just adds a load onto what shouldn't should
be quite easy. Let's talk about the National Missing Person's
Coordinations Center. They funded you actually to do an updated
version of their book from your Churchhill. So that's ignowledging
the empty space. What was that about? And is that
still a thing today within the Coordination Center?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I work as an academic now, so a lot of
the ways in which we indicate like almost like our
KPIs of Our job is where our publications are and
how many people have cited them or utilized them. So
the book that I updated and wrote that was really
nicely funded by National Missing Person's Coordination Center. As an academic,
(22:35):
we also spent half of our lives trying to locate
money to explore our research areas. So that allowed me
to really consider what had I learned between two thousand
and seven when the first book was published, and how
had the world changed. Interestingly, writing it in twenty nineteen,
we all know what happened the year after that in
(22:55):
the world, and I think that the pandemic has also
shaped the ways in which we manage loss and trauma.
But that book allowed me to really think about I
always like to imagine that what happens if you have
someone missing and you don't have a counseling or support
service available to you. How could I write something that
(23:19):
a counselor or a social worker or a psychologist or
anybody who was in that kind of service delivery role
could pick it up and work out immediately, Okay, what's
really important in the first session with that person? What's
the evidence base that I need to connect with? What
should I not do? With families submissing people. That was
almost an easier book to write because over the years,
(23:42):
families have shared with me the traumatic impact of seeking
support and getting the wrong support from somebody. So that
was what that book was utilized for as a bit
of like a warm introduction for counselors who already have
their qualifications to quickly upscill them so that families had
someone to talk with. So over the years I've utilized
(24:04):
it in the space I hear from families still on Facebook,
on Instagram, different places saying my loved one is missing
and I don't know how to find a good counselor
can you suggest someone. Most of the time I can't
suggest someone because I don't know everybody, but I can say,
here's this book, here's this resource. Take that with you
to the person that you know, ask them to read
(24:25):
it before they connect with you.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So that was the purpose of the book.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, amazing. And I think what I find important in
a lived experience space is that you know, when my
mum went missing, there were certain terms and phrases that
didn't exist or I hadn't heard of as a twenty
four year old, like coercive control and gas lighting and femicide.
An ambiguous loss was something I hadn't heard about until
(24:50):
I actually met you and Lauren and we started working
on another project, which we'll talk about in a minute.
But you've mentioned before Pauline Boss. So she's known as
and described, I guess as a leading expert in ambiguity
and ambiguous loss, and she's quoted as saying, is you know,
ambiguous loss is described as a loss where a person
(25:12):
is physically absent, but it is unclear if the loss
will be permanent. And that really resonated with me because
and I wanted to sort of bring that back in.
I know you spoke earlier, and obviously did you actually
meet Pauline when you went over to America.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
I did.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
I spent a whole week with her, and even yesterday
I got an email from her. So we have stayed
close for the last twenty years. She's in your nineties now,
Oh blessed, she's still publishing, she's still doing a lot
of work.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
We collaborate on things.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
So yes, I was really privileged to be able to
spend a whole week with her at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah. Wow, how that's really priceless, isn't it when you've
got someone who just understands and has a deep understanding
and is able to help and share and teach. I
think teaching is part of this too, right, because yes,
people need to be taught things. There is no expectation
in my head that people know things straight up. You
(26:10):
are learning all the time.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
All the time.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
And you know, I still publish a lot, and I
still have lots of ideas about what to write next
or what to do next, because I'm also on that
learning journey with everybody else. There is no concept of
an expert on anything, because human beings are weird and
wonderful people. And every time you think you've heard a
story from a family member of a missing person, you'll
(26:34):
meet the next one and think, wow, never thought you'd
approach it like that.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But you've always got to be open to hearing.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Those yeah, one hundred percent. And every story is different.
And even in this space now, I know a lot
of people in the missing space through my journey, and
you know, wanting to just open my door to people
to come in and chat if they wanted to. From
a different perspective, I'm not an expert, but I am
a friend and I am someone who has a lot
of experienced myself personally through this journey. But I think
(27:05):
it's important, I think the learning side of it and
just keeping an open mind and doing these new podcasts
that I'm doing where I'm bringing people in. I'm hating
to do a little bit of deep diving into their
stories because I know I know a lot of their stories,
but it's important to actually have a good understanding because
I want to be able to show empathy and care
and kindness to these people who are you know, I
(27:28):
always call it trauma on repeat when we're talking about
your story again and again and again and again, and
it is hard, and especially when you do have a
lot of media or even if you just have a
media poke in, you know, that can open up the
door to you know, the next twenty people asking you
about your missing person and where are you at and
asking questions that person potentially doesn't really understand, right, so, oh,
(27:52):
you know, so what do you think happened to your mum?
Like I constantly see on Facebook people saying I believe
Marian didn't come back to Australia. I believe her passport
was used by somebody else and coming back in and
everyone's entitled to an opinion, right, Like that's fine, but
making assumptions we don't know for a fact, like we've
actually have her passport coming back into Australia and I
(28:14):
actually have seen the document that has her handwriting on it,
making assumptions about whether somebody else gave her the card
before she got on the plane to handwrite her incoming
passenger card. Like it's just extra extra that you have
in your heads and it's on repeat sometimes and it
can be quite hard and challenging to manage that, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
So one of the most pervasive memories I have from
that week of being with Pauline Boss and I had
my daughter with me there. She was seven months old
as a single mum. Pauline had me in her home
and would be like feeding my daughter dinner while we
were chatting about all of these ideas, Like sometimes people
come into your life as well where you think this
(28:56):
person's a really good egg. You know, I can learn
a lot from this person. I was only in my
late twenties at that stage, and I think that I
can remember, in terms of finishing up work that week
with her, that the thing that she said to me
was that the skill that I needed to work on
the most in order to work in this space was
(29:17):
that I needed to be okay with tolerating the unknown.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
That I needed to lean into all aspects of my life.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Like I needed to lean into the idea that there
aren't always answers for everything, and that if I'm thinking
in my head all of the time when a family
comes to talk to me for the first time, or
I think this might have happened with their loved one,
I think that that was not the point of the interaction.
The interaction was to hear the story, to acknowledge the pain,
(29:47):
to work out the teasing journey ahead of navigating, like
hopefulness and hopelessness was the really important aspect. And that
part that you said before about trauma on trauma is
that people have gone on.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
To do more research work over the years.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Great because it means that it also gives me a
community to lean into. And there was a work that
was done by a really amazing researcher called Leniki Lenfrink,
and she looked at the imagined trauma of families of
missing people. So she explored like an imagined PTSD that
(30:25):
that constant, repetitive notion of trying to navigate what is
known and what is unknown meant that all those unknown
stories were just all of these traumatic layers of what
could have happened that in the body feel like they
actually happened when you live through those kind of imaginings
all of the time. And I think that that's the
(30:47):
part that people don't understand on social media and commenting
where they say I think this, I think the person
was out walking in the desert and probably died of
heat stroke. That they don't understand that they are either
adding another layer of imagine trauma or articulating an imagine
(31:09):
trauma that the family might have already started to panic about.
I think that it tells us that as a community,
we cannot tolerate the unknown. The pandemic showed us that
everyone was like, when is this going to be over?
I can cope with being locked at home if I
know when it'll be over, because as a community, we
don't sit with not knowing at all.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
So let's talk back about when we met again. So
we're back in May twenty twenty two and I was
invited along with some other amazing humans to come to
Melbourne and meet with you and Lauren. That was all
about creating this project called Hope Narrative Cards. Now I
did bring them with me today, so they sit on
my desk at work. And these cards are about different
(31:55):
elements of going through a process when someone is missing
or you're living with the ambiguous loss or ambiguity of
not knowing. This one says coping. This is from a
sister who has a missing person of six years. So
we've also put those on the cards down the bottom.
And time is more precious to me now I take
more photos, I create more moments, more experiences. I hug
(32:19):
my children tighter, never forget, and I love you. And
these are just little cards that you can pull out
if you happen to be sadly in this space that
give you just an element of support or a hug
or just something in your own space. You don't have
to have someone sitting there talking to you or telling you.
(32:40):
You can just do it in your own care and space.
And I think there's a lot of power in that.
So let's talk a little bit about that. How did
you and Lauren meet and how did this project sort
of start?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Lauren and I met a really long time ago a
couple of months after her lovely brother Dan went missing.
Whilst I was doing my PhD. I was on a
scholarship to do my PhD, which in Australia is not
the hugest amount of money. It equates to about twelve
dollars an hour, tax free to do a PhD. And
(33:17):
so part of that was I had a lot of
side hustles, like you were talking about, in terms of
other work that I did, you know, to feed my
kids and pay my mortgage. And one of those was
I was doing a lot of freelance writing for different spaces,
and not necessarily about grief and loss and missing, but
you know, parenting articles like all of those sorts of things,
(33:39):
because I like writing and it was an easy space
to work in. So one of the very first articles
that I actually had published was on Meya Friedman's site,
Mama Mia, and it was just after the location of
Daniel Morcambe's remains, and I had been working with the
family for a really long time, and I reflected on
the ways in which the resolution isn't always a course
(34:03):
for celebration. It's just another piece of the puzzle for
families of missing people. So because of that article, I
was connected really closely with the editor at the time,
and Lauren had written a story about Dan being missing,
and that editor reached out to me and said, I'm
really concerned about this lovely young woman who's talking and
(34:23):
doing a lot of media about her brother. Can I
connect to you with her? Because she knew what my
PhD was about, and so we connected via email and
then we started chatting on the phone. And I'm not
Lauren's counselor we've always in those early days, I was
just a sounding board for her, you know, because she
was so desperate for information and how to navigate the police.
(34:44):
And so we've been friends ever since then. I finished
my PhD in twenty fifteen, and my focus had been
like a storytelling research project around what is the space
between hopefulness and hopelessness when someone's missing? And I had
worked with almost twenty families navigat their stories. One of
(35:07):
them had someone missing for under a year, and then
the family with the longest ambiguity was about thirty five
years missing. And so we looked at this timeline around
what it means to live alongside hope. How complicated hope was.
I asked my supervisors if I could call my thesis
(35:29):
hope is shit, but they wouldn't let me write that.
But it really was about how to live alongside hope.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And what I.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Uncovered was that people's private stories of their ambiguous loss
were different from their public stories because they knew that
people didn't want to hear their dark trauma, that they
had their outward facing. Yes we're holding on to hope.
Yes we're remaining hopeful. Yes we want this person back
and we believe it. And then the dark stories were
(35:56):
either only shared with counselors or with other family members
where it was safe.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
So Lauren really.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Connected with my thesis and it took us until twenty
twenty two, but we found an opportunity to be able
to turn the thesis into what we call the hope narratives,
which is that box that you're talking about. But as always,
we wanted to make sure that we had new reflections
(36:24):
and new opportunities to connect with more families, which became
those two days in Melbourne to really plot out those
four components of what does it mean to sit with
those hard truths about the reality of your missing person,
what does it mean to engage in ideas of hope,
and what does it mean to look to the future
(36:47):
when you know that on the horizon you might not
get the answers that you want. And so we wanted
to create a toolkit that families could use themselves, but
also could be used in counseling as well. As we've
had a lot of interest from police over the years
as well to upskill their teams to say this is
(37:07):
the lived experience reality in one box of what it
means to exist in all of these spaces with different
types of missing, which is why that description is on
the back.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah. And I mean when you look at those that
box of cards, there's so much in there that is
just an absolute hub of knowledge and power and hope
and stress that we can try and maneuver and help
people understand better. I mean, we've got forty four members,
(37:40):
eight countries. We had more than five hundred years of
lived experience, which we referred to as l E both
suspicious and not suspicious circumstances and ranging from two years
to forty four years missing, so exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
And I think you know, the intention was not to say,
let's condense this down to one lived experience. Let's say
this is the most common reality. I mean like you
would have. I get contact by lots of media, and
sometimes the questions are so simple and so reductive about
oh so does it mean that all families hold on
(38:15):
to hope or is the goal to find a body
and that equals closure. The purpose of it being such
a large toolkit is also then visibly a reminder that
it's an individual journey that everybody is on and these
are the ways that people move through that individual journey.
So by being able to be in that room for
(38:37):
two days and plot out, you know, we were very
old school, weren't we, with post it notes and mapping
the ideas in small groups.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Going out and recording ourselves talking about things in private,
you know, reflection in that space. And also for me personally,
like being around those people. It's not very often that
us who have a missing person get to interact with
somebody else who has the understanding that we have. And
(39:09):
we all have different stories, right, We've got people missing overseas,
we've got people missing from all different states in territories
in Australia in different ways, and it was very powerful.
We've all stayed friends and connect from time to time,
which is nice to know it's there.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Exactly, and I think, you know, as a researcher and
a social worker, I see firsthand the unexpected benefits of
being invited to tell your story that have nothing to
do with what the outcome is or what the output is,
what product is made from it, or does it end
up being a journal, paper or a movie or whatever,
(39:46):
Because just that simple notion of being in that room
for those two days, you could see the sparks that
were created between people. People who were nervous about being
there and eased into the process. People that have remained
connected to each other. Love the fact WhatsApp group that
we have, you know, a little bit of a mascot,
(40:08):
so that when we see a flamingo out in the community,
it's our reminder of, you know, those invisible ties that
connect us. And I think that's the power of making
sure that families of missing people are not forgotten, because
from my perspective, it's a silent, lonely grief, and any
(40:29):
chance to remind people that they're not alone, whether it
be through a podcast or an article or those sorts
of activities, that's the stuff that keeps people going.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Can you share with us, Sarah, a couple of your
new projects or the latest projects that you're working on.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Definitely. I think, as you can probably hear in a
lot of my sharing about my experiences is I've always
been really intrigued about the role of media and the
ways in which media professionals engage with families submissing people,
because I have firsthand experience of really great media interviews
(41:08):
and really rubbish media interviews no matter how much I
prepped someone about what I will and won't say. And
so a couple of years ago I got some grant
funding from the University of New England to start a
project that's almost at the stage where we've got quite
a few papers under review in journals which I can
(41:29):
then share, but about trying to understand what would it
look like to have safe reporting guidelines around the ways
in which missing persons media is undertaken. And that's because
in Australia we have safe reporting guidelines in the media
for how we talk about suicide, how we talk about
drugs and alcohol, and how we talk about mental health.
(41:51):
Yet media and missing is a huge industry and we
don't have guidelines around how we make sure that we
don't further traumatize both families of missing people, but also
people who are currently missing, particularly in that short term stage,
around how we don't further alienate them or traumatize them
in the ways in which their stories are presented. So
(42:14):
over the last eighteen months, I undertook a survey, just
random population survey with the Australian community to say, what
do you think the intention of media is in missing
person stories? And the overwhelming majority of people said it's
to help locate people, and that media locate people. And
so I thought, that's a really interesting perception because from
(42:37):
my perspective, I see that media happens, yet I'm not
quite sure sometimes that it's the exact link that leads
to an outcome. It leads to lots of new clues,
but there isn't much data on what it actually does.
So then I took that data and I hosted a
focus group for family members who had done media but
(43:01):
that often had not been involved in research projects activities
like the Hope Narratives.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
We hosted a focus group.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
With Missed Foundation because it's always important to have lived
experience inclusion in that space. It was a two hour
focus group that actually went for five hours, and we
plotted out what enables people to do media, what stops
people from doing media, and if they could propose what
media guidelines would be best for them, what would that
(43:31):
look like. So that paper is currently under review to
be published at the moment, But what was really clear
is that families who already had some connections in the community,
or were well spoken, or were from middle class or
upper class communities had more of an opportunity to share
(43:53):
their story because people wanted to see their story, as
well as people where the person who was missing didn't
look like they were involved in their own disappearance, that
they didn't just walk away, or that they were not
the perfect victim.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
So it was really.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Interesting to understand that perspective, as well as the energy
that was required by families over the years to constantly
put on a happy face, say yes to all media opportunities,
perform in a way that meant that their story was
going to be shared, that people would click on it,
that they would like it. But that what was most
(44:32):
significant from that was families didn't say media helps locate people.
All of them said, we have to do media because
we are concerned about the deficits in the police investigation.
We engage media to bridge the gap between what we
know was done to find the person versus what we
(44:52):
think needs to happen to actually find our person. And
then the third stage was two more focus groups, one
with police media and then one with mainstream media to
ask them what they think they are doing in terms
of why they do their work in terms of media
and what police media think they're doing with their media alerts.
(45:15):
So that paper's already under review as well to get
a better understanding. But from that it really showed that
police make that decision in their risk assessment. Yes, will
do a media alert and they push it out. Once
they do that, they very much lose control because media
will pick it up, and it's the editorial decisions of
(45:35):
that media outlet that will decide how the story is told,
what elements of the story they'll tell, whether or not
they'll just decide nobody wants to hear that story, we
just won't share it. So there's no equity. All families
are missing, people aren't on an even playing field. Yet
media makes sometimes police more accountable or other organizations more accountable.
(45:58):
But if not everyone gets the chance, then it's not fair.
So that's the we're moving towards the creation of some
media guidelines with every mind who's a mental health organization.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
That's our big picture goal.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
But it really shows that everyone thinks they're doing the
same work, but the community, the families of the missing people, police,
media and media are all taking different approaches as to
why media is being used. So it's been a really
interesting project.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, well, very interesting actually, and I kind of got
a little bit of trauma there and you were saying
a few things. I'm like, yes, yes, definitely, and yes,
it is a case of like I have done a
lot of media now over the years, and you know,
to reflect, for twenty two years, I had no media.
I did two articles in a magazine and it went nowhere.
(46:48):
I never heard from the magazine to say we didn't
get anybody come forward, or we did, or we've passed
us on or we've done this. So that has been
interesting as a journey as well. And you know, people
do pick and choose. You know, I'm in a position
now where I would like to go and do things
like I've had lots and lots of people when there
(47:08):
was a massive flurry of things happening, and I had
people begging me to come on and do stories with
them on TV and whatnot, and then the flurry has finished,
and now I'm at a position where I can talk
to them and say hey, I'd like to come on,
and they're like, oh, pass. You know, your story is
not important now because there's no trauma behind it, And
(47:33):
that is very difficult to manage. It is because my
story is not over yet, and.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
The expectations that people have about will they or won't
they do media doesn't set them up well for what
happens if media don't want to tell your story. Yeah,
but that's crushing for families and how manybody cares and
how many stories are people are interviewed, and.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
As you say, they don't make it because the editor goes, oh,
that doesn't actually cut the cheese today, We're not going
to put that on.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
There exactly, or it's edited in a way that meets
the editorial interest of the story, or it gets connected
to other missing persons stories, but that's not the story
that the family thought they were doing.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
We did a story we Channel seven on Spotlight actually,
and it ended up going over two nights and there
was two different stories that I sort of were featured
on the same night. So instead of doing mum's story
all on one night. It was broken up over two
weeks and probably to extend the audience. I don't know
what their mindset is, but let's just use this as
(48:36):
an example. And Kathleen Fulberg, she had just been released
from jail, so that was the big story that then
my story came in after her. So the first part
of part one, which was my side of that story,
and then the second week was when Allison and the
team went overseas with Rick Blum's daughter and they traveled
(48:59):
through Belgium and whatnot. And you know what was really interesting.
Jonie then started talking to someone who actually knew someone
and she said, oh, have you seen the Spotlight program?
And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, that's the story about
the daughter who's disgrunted because her dad left her a
debt in Belgium. So I think my mind just blew
(49:20):
because I went wow. So there was no concept or
thought process in that space about my mum's actually a
missing person, and this is why that story was done.
Their focus was purely about the daughter who went to
Belgium looking to try and find documents and saying that
she was progrungent of her dad. Yes, and that was
really telling for me, Like that was a moment for
(49:42):
me where I went, Wow, the interpretation is so different
and so important. And I bang on about this all
the time, Sarah, that you know your words.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Matter, they do well.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Listen. I think I've taken up a lot of your
time this morning. Thank you so much. I think that
you're a true champion in my eyes, and I'm personally
very grateful one that we've met in per We've had
a good chat and good time. You've taken time to
hear me and listen to me and now extending that
and doing more and more all the time. And you know,
(50:15):
I think that's awesome. I do believe. You've got a
book coming out in twenty twenty six. What is the
book called and what is that about.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
It's called Living in the Liminal Space, and it's actually
a book for how to teach about ambiguous loss in
social work, counseling and psychology, because as much as we
can try and reach out to people who are already
out there working in the field, it needs to be
part of our foundational understandings. So it's a book that
explores my journey of being a social worker as well
(50:46):
as strategies to teach, and then case studies from families
to use in teaching material, because I think that we
need to get people early so that they recognize that
there are lots of places that you will interact with
families of missing people over your career, and you should
be able to link it back to remembering things that
you were taught.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
So that's the intention of the book.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Yeah, amazing, and I think what an important tool to have.
And I really would like to see that the older
generation of the police force take time to actually listen
and understand some languages that potentially weren't around as I
spoke before. Like things have changed and there's lots of
new terms and things like that that have come to
(51:29):
the space, but even today, I'm still getting language to
me that is quite traumatizing for me from the older
experienced detectives who are leading the cases and their language.
They just don't seem to be understanding or hearing or
taking advice on better ways to manage that. And I
(51:49):
really would like to see that change. Actually, it's not
just about the new recruits coming in. We need to
change and help and support the ones making the calls
because they're the ones usually making assumptions and making decisions
that aren't good for the missing person, and that feeds
back down through into those new recruits who are coming
(52:10):
into the police force, and that needs to change too.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
So, yeah, that language culture is really important. And you
would know that every family member that you've ever spoken
to has their one, two, three, or four or five
statements that have really stuck with them over the years.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
That was said as a throwaway.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Line from an investigator that has really changed the trajectory
as to how they live with their trauma.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, well, let's hope that that book and your hard
work and Lauren, I know she's working hard in that
space too, and you know, hopefully will have her come
on the missing matter because I think she's got a
lot to talk about later. I think she said to
me maybe in the new year we can have a
catch up because she's so busy at the moment, But
can we finish today? Can you tell me in your
own words? You know why the missing matter.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
That matter because the missing person themselves is often absent
from the story. Person that can humanize or animate that
stories the people who are left behind. So we all
need to be really careful and sensitive with making sure
that when we include people that we look after them
in terms of how they share their story, how they
(53:21):
live long term with not knowing, and how they get
the opportunity to talk about their missing person other than
being a missing person.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
So that's why they matter.
Appodjay production.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So everyone, welcome back to the Missing Matter today. I'm
very privileged to be joined by doctor Sarah Wayland, a
researcher professor of social work. Sarah has decades of experience working, supporting,
and researching the lived experience of distress and trauma, particularly
in this Missing space, and I'd like to welcome her
today to the Missing Matter podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Welcome Sarah, Thanks so much, Sally.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I just wanted to bring you on today, Sarah because
of your extensive work in the Missing Space, with the
hope that you can share some further insight into what
you understand it means to be living in the missing world.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background
and what you've been doing over that last thirty.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Years of course, and also whenever I think about when
I actually started working in Missing it's like only a
moment in time, but it has been a really long time,
and I think that that has kept me really curious
and made me always think about what else we need
to do rather than what have we done? So by background,
(01:19):
I'm a social worker. I became a social worker in
the late nineties, and lots of social workers because I
teach a lot of them. Now, I finished my degree
and I didn't really have a strong sense about what
I wanted to do. It had just been something that
I'd been interested in, but I guess I hadn't really
switched on my sense of what I could do in
(01:41):
terms of the work that I chose to do. So,
like lots of young people, I wandered around for a
few years, did a lot of work in child protection
and domestic violence, both here in Australia and overseas. Social
worker is a great degree to travel with. Everyone needs
a social worker, and when I finally came back to
Australia about five years later, I can remember it as
(02:03):
clear as anything and think that it's a bit like
you know that Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors. You know
where you have this moment where you look back and
you can see that a small decision that you made
really shapes the complete way in which your life will
pan out. And so I was working on a crisis
line with the Domestic Violence Service in New South Wales.
(02:26):
Was on the night shift and we used to work
by ourselves on the night shift, and it was back
in the olden days where jobs were advertised in the
newspaper and there was a job that was for twelve
weeks working in a newly funded service for New South
Wales Attorney Generals called the Families and Friends of Missing
Persons Unit, which these days is now called the Families
(02:48):
and Friends of Missing Person's Service. I had a background
in working with people that were experiencing sudden and traumatic loss,
but not in the way that missing persons presents. So
the bonus for me in applying for that job, first
of all, I was a young person, so a twelve
week contract was fine for me to think about is
(03:11):
that they indicated in the job ad that you didn't
have to have experience working with families of missing people
because it was the very first service of its kind,
but that it needed to be somebody that understood grief
and loss but also was able to I guess, co
design or co construct what the service could be with
the families because it was so new. So I went
(03:32):
along had the interview, really connected with the manager of
the service, Leoni Jakes, who had just done a Churchill
fellowship to look at how to set up the service.
She traveled internationally and I got the job, and the
very first day on my job there was a book
on my desk that was Pauline Boss's book Ambiguous Loss,
(03:55):
and that was basically my training, a small book that
talked about the American approach to acknowledging ambiguous loss, and
a whole heap of families that had already called and
left their details because they wanted somebody to call them back.
So that started the job, and within a couple of
weeks we had about thirty families that we were working with,
(04:18):
and the position then got extended and extended, and after
a couple of years became a permanent role. So I've
been working in missing since that time, and working alongside
families and really thinking about not just what I could
deliver to them one to one in the counseling room,
but I recognized really quickly that what I was learning
(04:41):
from them needed to also be shared with other people,
not in terms of my profile, but about what it
meant to collect stories and then share them with others,
because I knew, given this was a new South Wales
only service, that other states and territories needed some awareness
about what it meant after someone was reported missing to
(05:02):
the police.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So I've been in the field since then.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I eventually moved on from that direct service delivery after
almost ten years and decided to start my PhD and
since then have been working in the university research space
because I recognized that you can only get so far
talking to other service providers. Making sure that I contributed
(05:27):
to the evidence base has kind of led me to
where I am today.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, well, you've done amazing things, like I've been reading
up about you as well, like to get some background
into what you have done pre me meeting you. It
was like three years ago we met in person in Melbourne,
and I feel like that time has just flown because
I think we were just I was in the inquest
or we'd pause the inquest and it was just my
(05:51):
head was spinning a million miles an hour. But we'll
talk about it that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I can remember that really clearly.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
I remember when I first stumbled across your name actually,
and I was in when I was reading my brief
of evidence. Your name popped up on a handwritten document
with a reference to Ashton's Removals, which is a REMOVALSS
company on the Gold Coast, and it was in relation
to my mum's missing belongings and her shipping container. And
(06:19):
I didn't know who you were at that time, so
it meant I had no reference to that. I just
assumed that you maybe worked for missing persons or something,
or rather in that field. Can you tell us a
little bit about when you first heard about my story
or about Mum's story.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
It's really interesting, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I never take for granted that you don't even have
to interact sometimes with families of missing people across Australia,
but there's often these little connection points that means you
cross the life of somebody without sometimes ever meeting them,
and it's always really interesting for me. And I talked
to my social work students about this a lot, about
(06:57):
recognizing the power of those micro moments and how you
can always think about how to better support people so
I can remember your name really clearly. I often think
about my career like lots of women do, in terms
of the ages of my kids at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I'm pretty sure that's a good time.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
My timeline of my career is not my career, but
at what point was on maternity level? You know, what
were my kids in daycare or school by then? So
my daughter's about to turn twenty this year, and I'm
pretty sure she was two or three at the time,
so it's a long time ago. I was working for
the Australian Federal Police at that time it was called
(07:39):
the National Missing Persons Unit, and I was secondered from
my job at New South Wales Attorney Generals because I'd
done a Churchill fellowship and what my goal had been
was to travel to the US in particular and spend
time with Emeritus Professor Paul M. Boss And what I
wanted to do was replicate her book, but from an
(08:01):
Australian context in terms of if you were account how
could you think about the ways in which you could
better support families of missing people? And so when I
came back from that trip, you have to write up
your report, and the AFP said, would you like to
come and work with us? I'm pretty sure it was
for about eighteen months, and what they were going to
(08:24):
support me to do was to take those findings turn
them into a resource that would be available online as
well as then think about how the AFP, given they
were coordinating services across Australia, how they could combine their
policing response with that therapeutic response as well. How could
(08:45):
they support me to travel and talk to lots of
counseling services so that families knew what else was on
offer for them after the police. But one of the
key points was, like it still is, every year National
Missing Person's Week, and each year there would be like
probably six or seven months out some ideas around who
(09:07):
would be profiled that week, who would be either the
missing person's case that would be profiled, and like lots
of work that I still do around the ways in
which media engage with families of missing people. Who would
the family be that would receive that profile. And it
was quite a few years ago now, but I do
(09:28):
remember that Rebecca Cots, who sadly is no longer with us,
was my colleague at the AFP, and she had said
that she had been talking to you and connecting with
you over the phone and wanted to ensure that your
mum's story was part of National Missing Person's Week that year.
So it must have been like two thousand and seven
(09:49):
or two thousand and eight, I think, And because I
was doing lots of building up a profile around what
was really good practice in family media liaison, because I'm
sure you know sal how traumatic it can be to
engage with media if they're not well versed in understanding
your lift experience. And so part of that step was
(10:10):
verifying which police were involved and recognizing like where the
case was up to so that it meant then that
you had a profile to tell your story as well
as the investigative response needed to be correct and up
to date and to know well who were the police
that needed to be involved in media, And when I
started making some calls, it became almost ambiguously ambiguous that
(10:33):
nobody could verify exactly who was in charge of the case,
where the case actually was, and what it was defined as.
And that was where that ambiguity around was this a
case that had been closed without a resolution or was
this an ongoing investigation that nobody was investigating. And so
that was where I first started to learn about you
(10:57):
and start to you know, I've listened to your story
over the years about where not just your great for
around the loss of your mum, but that traumatic grief
of engaging with police around trying to understand who is
looking after this case and who is actively investigating it.
(11:17):
So that was my very first interaction with you, despite
never having met you at that stage.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, right, So that's I had never heard that before.
Like this is where these conversations are so great, because
you would know probably if you'd listened to me on
the Lady Vanishers. We talk a lot about beck Cott's
She actually interviewed through the AFP. Actually I went into
the AFP building here in Brisbane, but we managed to
have an interview with beck in that facility here, and
(11:44):
I'm really glad that we had the opportunity to do
that because, as you know, she was quite unwell for
a lot of her journey. Meeting me, she came up
and took me out for lunch and she said she
offered me to be the face of missing persons. And
then I also remember the call she made only a
couple of days before we were due to fly down
where she said to me, I'm so sorry, but they've
(12:06):
pulled you. And I said, Who've pulled me? Because I
had no idea. And this is probably the bit I
wanted to get more awareness out there for families and
also for people working in that field, so they have
a better understanding of how your words and how your
communication can affect someone living in the missing space. And
I guess that's where you and I connect quite well
(12:27):
because you're on the same same journey. And you know
when she said to me, well, the police have said
that you can't be the face of missing persons this
year because we're doing mental health and your mum didn't
have mental health issues, so therefore you're not allowed to
do it. But come anyway, because we've already got your
flights and everything, and they could said to me, we're
(12:48):
going to bounce you from one state to the other.
And I think Caleb was only like six weeks old.
I just had my third sesarian. I think she was saying, oh, well,
you know, we'll go to Melbourne and we'll be in Sydney,
so make sure that you know prepared. So Chris was
with me and I'm storing my breast milk so that
we could he could feed him if I was on
TV at the time or being interviewed. So it was
quite a layered trauma in multiple different ways.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
But I think that these like exactly that you said,
that these are the stories that are the hidden stories
behind missing, because you know, we often think of missing
around the lost and found concept, but the emotional and
the physical labor of being the family and being the
spokesperson time and time again is really poorly understood.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And I just think it was just such a time
in life. And then if I fast forward even to
the inquest, this actual moment in time was a point
of question at the inquest because we have the Cops event,
which is the insertion of notes and notation through the
Cops police system, and we could clearly see and my
(13:57):
lawyer we sort of talked about this and noted it,
and it was brought up at the inquest that you
can clearly see that Rebeccat's rings New South Wales Police,
they have a conversation and then straight away my mum's
case has changed from accurrence to missing literally in the
(14:17):
same sentence. And the coroner did question that and say,
you know, is this because you'd realize that Marion actually
wasn't registered as missing And they were like, oh no, no, no,
that's not what it was. But the factsa it's right
there in paper, so we can see very clearly what
the timeline tells us. Right, So that's fine, whatever you
(14:40):
made errors, just acknowledge it and let's move on and
let's do that next time. That's my mantra. But it
did happen to me, and that was a really big
moment because at that point they were then able to
put a new OIC on the case. So this is
what stemmed all of that and we moved forward from there.
(15:01):
I then had to work with him for over a
decade and he firmly believed that my mum went missing
on her own account, so it was an assumption made
by him, not by fact, and that's a difficult path
to follow to as a missing person. So I think
that's it's rough.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
It is rough, and I think and I won't labor
the point, but I think those moments where someone else
outside of the family asking questions of police are also
really important from an advocacy perspective because asking that simple question,
can you verify that this is a long term missing
person because this is our intention for missing Person's Week
(15:44):
was the catalyst for that move from occurrence to missing
And I think that really connects in with the name
of your podcast about recognizing that even the way that
we define people is an important reflection of the fact
that they're missed.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Sarah, I wanted to ask you your opinion on missing
persons cases throughout Australia being handled under the one umbrella,
Like what's your thoughts on that, Like, obviously we've got
states and territories all over the place, and there for
people who don't understand each state and territory are responsible
for each case and they don't usually work together. And
(16:27):
this is why I bang on about being on the
National Missing Person's Register and the DNA being on the
national register, because Western Australia is not talking to New
South Wales police if they find bodies or bones, if
the person's not on the register, they're not looking at
that person and they don't know that that person's missing
from New South Wales. So what's your thoughts on working
together collectively to have one sort of umbrella in the
(16:50):
missing space.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
I feel like from the moment I started working and missing,
the discussion around a national approach to missing person was prominent.
You know, I've spent a lot of years and I
always come back to the point that I'm a social
work and it's a very odd space sometimes for a
social worker to work in a law enforcement setting and
to engage. Like there was always two parts very much
(17:14):
of my job. One side of me was being an
advocate and a support for families of missing. The other
part of me was learning and understanding and then providing
advice whether or not it was accepted or not, to
law enforcement about the ways in which they work and
how it can sometimes further the trauma for families of
(17:36):
missing people.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
You know, Australia is a really big place geographically.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I think that having a national approach is really important
in terms of standard operating procedures as to how information
is shared across states and territories, because, like you know,
you almost lose the battle as a family member if
someone that you love has gone missing near a border
(18:01):
or has clearly traveled across that border. I think that
there's a little bit more of certainty, and this is
anecdotal from talking to families of missing people that if
it all occurred within that state, then you can really
engage with the policies and procedures of that policing service.
If you happen to be someone unlucky where the person
(18:24):
traveled or it's right on the edge of a border,
then the need to engage with two jurisdictions means two
lots of administrative burden for families, and that burden then
makes people worried about what is being missed and what
happens if they get one service from one side of
the border and a really different service from the other
(18:45):
who's in charge of helping them navigate that space. So
I think from that perspective, I think it's always really
important to have a national approach to missing persons, and
that's in terms of data collection. Data collection is really
important in terms of knowing the numbers, but knowing how
many people came back and where they were found, and
(19:07):
how they got to be found.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
On what date they were found and exactly. You know,
there's so much information that's a bit skewy if I
think from what we've been researched exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And I think that, you know, ambiguous loss is a
great term for talking about what happens to families left behind,
but there is so much ambiguity in terms of investigations
and expectations because of that individual response in each of
the states and territories. I've always wondered why, because I
don't work in policing, why that national approach hasn't really
(19:40):
taken off in terms of the ways in which cases
are handled. And I know that when Jody Ward in
particular was it the AFP and working on that national
DNA project, I felt really hopeful because it meant then
that it put it on a national platform. And I
think so much of missing is explored in a local, community,
(20:03):
state based context in terms of knowing that that young
person went missing from that state, rather than saying this
is the missing person's problem in Australia. We need to
look at this collectively and we need to think about
a prevention as well as a better support lens. And
that can only happen from a national platform, So I
(20:24):
think it needs to be dealt with locally, but local
then needs to connect in with the bigger picture if
we're going to think about reducing the amount of people
that go missing. As well as saying to families, this
is the expectation of what you should be in receipt
of because of the awful traumatic loss that you've experienced,
(20:45):
there needs to be a baseline and I think at
the moment it's a bit of luck sometimes as to
where the incident happened and what you get in return
for that.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, and I know firsthand right because my mum's case
is a New South Wales case, but she lived in
Queensland and I was fighting that for a very long time.
Actually where the New South Wales Police was saying, oh,
well it should be a Queensland coronial inquest because she
lived in Queensland. So we had all this fight on
our hands and comments like oh well, I'm not just
(21:16):
going to dump you over the border, I mean speak,
I'm like, why would you even say that? Like, this
is a case that spreads over both jurisdictions. I don't
understand why everyone kind of internationally and internationally like that.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Correct, Like my stomach would drop if I was hearing
from a family for the first time in relation to
how far away their loved one could be from them,
because I knew that there was that jurisdictional challenge of
where the person was that would create further trauma for
the family.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, it just adds a load onto what shouldn't should
be quite easy. Let's talk about the National Missing Person's
Coordinations Center. They funded you actually to do an updated
version of their book from your Churchhill. So that's ignowledging
the empty space. What was that about? And is that
still a thing today within the Coordination Center?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I work as an academic now, so a lot of
the ways in which we indicate like almost like our
KPIs of Our job is where our publications are and
how many people have cited them or utilized them. So
the book that I updated and wrote that was really
nicely funded by National Missing Person's Coordination Center. As an academic,
(22:35):
we also spent half of our lives trying to locate
money to explore our research areas. So that allowed me
to really consider what had I learned between two thousand
and seven when the first book was published, and how
had the world changed. Interestingly, writing it in twenty nineteen,
we all know what happened the year after that in
(22:55):
the world, and I think that the pandemic has also
shaped the ways in which we manage loss and trauma.
But that book allowed me to really think about I
always like to imagine that what happens if you have
someone missing and you don't have a counseling or support
service available to you. How could I write something that
(23:19):
a counselor or a social worker or a psychologist or
anybody who was in that kind of service delivery role
could pick it up and work out immediately, Okay, what's
really important in the first session with that person? What's
the evidence base that I need to connect with? What
should I not do? With families submissing people. That was
almost an easier book to write because over the years,
(23:42):
families have shared with me the traumatic impact of seeking
support and getting the wrong support from somebody. So that
was what that book was utilized for as a bit
of like a warm introduction for counselors who already have
their qualifications to quickly upscill them so that families had
someone to talk with. So over the years I've utilized
(24:04):
it in the space I hear from families still on Facebook,
on Instagram, different places saying my loved one is missing
and I don't know how to find a good counselor
can you suggest someone. Most of the time I can't
suggest someone because I don't know everybody, but I can say,
here's this book, here's this resource. Take that with you
to the person that you know, ask them to read
(24:25):
it before they connect with you.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So that was the purpose of the book.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, amazing. And I think what I find important in
a lived experience space is that you know, when my
mum went missing, there were certain terms and phrases that
didn't exist or I hadn't heard of as a twenty
four year old, like coercive control and gas lighting and femicide.
An ambiguous loss was something I hadn't heard about until
(24:50):
I actually met you and Lauren and we started working
on another project, which we'll talk about in a minute.
But you've mentioned before Pauline Boss. So she's known as
and described, I guess as a leading expert in ambiguity
and ambiguous loss, and she's quoted as saying, is you know,
ambiguous loss is described as a loss where a person
(25:12):
is physically absent, but it is unclear if the loss
will be permanent. And that really resonated with me because
and I wanted to sort of bring that back in.
I know you spoke earlier, and obviously did you actually
meet Pauline when you went over to America.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
I did.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
I spent a whole week with her, and even yesterday
I got an email from her. So we have stayed
close for the last twenty years. She's in your nineties now,
Oh blessed, she's still publishing, she's still doing a lot
of work.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
We collaborate on things.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
So yes, I was really privileged to be able to
spend a whole week with her at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah. Wow, how that's really priceless, isn't it when you've
got someone who just understands and has a deep understanding
and is able to help and share and teach. I
think teaching is part of this too, right, because yes,
people need to be taught things. There is no expectation
in my head that people know things straight up. You
(26:10):
are learning all the time.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
All the time.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
And you know, I still publish a lot, and I
still have lots of ideas about what to write next
or what to do next, because I'm also on that
learning journey with everybody else. There is no concept of
an expert on anything, because human beings are weird and
wonderful people. And every time you think you've heard a
story from a family member of a missing person, you'll
(26:34):
meet the next one and think, wow, never thought you'd
approach it like that.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But you've always got to be open to hearing.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Those yeah, one hundred percent. And every story is different.
And even in this space now, I know a lot
of people in the missing space through my journey, and
you know, wanting to just open my door to people
to come in and chat if they wanted to. From
a different perspective, I'm not an expert, but I am
a friend and I am someone who has a lot
of experienced myself personally through this journey. But I think
(27:05):
it's important, I think the learning side of it and
just keeping an open mind and doing these new podcasts
that I'm doing where I'm bringing people in. I'm hating
to do a little bit of deep diving into their
stories because I know I know a lot of their stories,
but it's important to actually have a good understanding because
I want to be able to show empathy and care
and kindness to these people who are you know, I
(27:28):
always call it trauma on repeat when we're talking about
your story again and again and again and again, and
it is hard, and especially when you do have a
lot of media or even if you just have a
media poke in, you know, that can open up the
door to you know, the next twenty people asking you
about your missing person and where are you at and
asking questions that person potentially doesn't really understand, right, so, oh,
(27:52):
you know, so what do you think happened to your mum?
Like I constantly see on Facebook people saying I believe
Marian didn't come back to Australia. I believe her passport
was used by somebody else and coming back in and
everyone's entitled to an opinion, right, Like that's fine, but
making assumptions we don't know for a fact, like we've
actually have her passport coming back into Australia and I
(28:14):
actually have seen the document that has her handwriting on it,
making assumptions about whether somebody else gave her the card
before she got on the plane to handwrite her incoming
passenger card. Like it's just extra extra that you have
in your heads and it's on repeat sometimes and it
can be quite hard and challenging to manage that, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
So one of the most pervasive memories I have from
that week of being with Pauline Boss and I had
my daughter with me there. She was seven months old
as a single mum. Pauline had me in her home
and would be like feeding my daughter dinner while we
were chatting about all of these ideas, Like sometimes people
come into your life as well where you think this
(28:56):
person's a really good egg. You know, I can learn
a lot from this person. I was only in my
late twenties at that stage, and I think that I
can remember, in terms of finishing up work that week
with her, that the thing that she said to me
was that the skill that I needed to work on
the most in order to work in this space was
(29:17):
that I needed to be okay with tolerating the unknown.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
That I needed to lean into all aspects of my life.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Like I needed to lean into the idea that there
aren't always answers for everything, and that if I'm thinking
in my head all of the time when a family
comes to talk to me for the first time, or
I think this might have happened with their loved one,
I think that that was not the point of the interaction.
The interaction was to hear the story, to acknowledge the pain,
(29:47):
to work out the teasing journey ahead of navigating, like
hopefulness and hopelessness was the really important aspect. And that
part that you said before about trauma on trauma is
that people have gone on.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
To do more research work over the years.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Great because it means that it also gives me a
community to lean into. And there was a work that
was done by a really amazing researcher called Leniki Lenfrink,
and she looked at the imagined trauma of families of
missing people. So she explored like an imagined PTSD that
(30:25):
that constant, repetitive notion of trying to navigate what is
known and what is unknown meant that all those unknown
stories were just all of these traumatic layers of what
could have happened that in the body feel like they
actually happened when you live through those kind of imaginings
all of the time. And I think that that's the
(30:47):
part that people don't understand on social media and commenting
where they say I think this, I think the person
was out walking in the desert and probably died of
heat stroke. That they don't understand that they are either
adding another layer of imagine trauma or articulating an imagine
(31:09):
trauma that the family might have already started to panic about.
I think that it tells us that as a community,
we cannot tolerate the unknown. The pandemic showed us that
everyone was like, when is this going to be over?
I can cope with being locked at home if I
know when it'll be over, because as a community, we
don't sit with not knowing at all.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
So let's talk back about when we met again. So
we're back in May twenty twenty two and I was
invited along with some other amazing humans to come to
Melbourne and meet with you and Lauren. That was all
about creating this project called Hope Narrative Cards. Now I
did bring them with me today, so they sit on
my desk at work. And these cards are about different
(31:55):
elements of going through a process when someone is missing
or you're living with the ambiguous loss or ambiguity of
not knowing. This one says coping. This is from a
sister who has a missing person of six years. So
we've also put those on the cards down the bottom.
And time is more precious to me now I take
more photos, I create more moments, more experiences. I hug
(32:19):
my children tighter, never forget, and I love you. And
these are just little cards that you can pull out
if you happen to be sadly in this space that
give you just an element of support or a hug
or just something in your own space. You don't have
to have someone sitting there talking to you or telling you.
(32:40):
You can just do it in your own care and space.
And I think there's a lot of power in that.
So let's talk a little bit about that. How did
you and Lauren meet and how did this project sort
of start?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Lauren and I met a really long time ago a
couple of months after her lovely brother Dan went missing.
Whilst I was doing my PhD. I was on a
scholarship to do my PhD, which in Australia is not
the hugest amount of money. It equates to about twelve
dollars an hour, tax free to do a PhD. And
(33:17):
so part of that was I had a lot of
side hustles, like you were talking about, in terms of
other work that I did, you know, to feed my
kids and pay my mortgage. And one of those was
I was doing a lot of freelance writing for different spaces,
and not necessarily about grief and loss and missing, but
you know, parenting articles like all of those sorts of things,
(33:39):
because I like writing and it was an easy space
to work in. So one of the very first articles
that I actually had published was on Meya Friedman's site,
Mama Mia, and it was just after the location of
Daniel Morcambe's remains, and I had been working with the
family for a really long time, and I reflected on
the ways in which the resolution isn't always a course
(34:03):
for celebration. It's just another piece of the puzzle for
families of missing people. So because of that article, I
was connected really closely with the editor at the time,
and Lauren had written a story about Dan being missing,
and that editor reached out to me and said, I'm
really concerned about this lovely young woman who's talking and
(34:23):
doing a lot of media about her brother. Can I
connect to you with her? Because she knew what my
PhD was about, and so we connected via email and
then we started chatting on the phone. And I'm not
Lauren's counselor we've always in those early days, I was
just a sounding board for her, you know, because she
was so desperate for information and how to navigate the police.
(34:44):
And so we've been friends ever since then. I finished
my PhD in twenty fifteen, and my focus had been
like a storytelling research project around what is the space
between hopefulness and hopelessness when someone's missing? And I had
worked with almost twenty families navigat their stories. One of
(35:07):
them had someone missing for under a year, and then
the family with the longest ambiguity was about thirty five
years missing. And so we looked at this timeline around
what it means to live alongside hope. How complicated hope was.
I asked my supervisors if I could call my thesis
(35:29):
hope is shit, but they wouldn't let me write that.
But it really was about how to live alongside hope.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And what I.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Uncovered was that people's private stories of their ambiguous loss
were different from their public stories because they knew that
people didn't want to hear their dark trauma, that they
had their outward facing. Yes we're holding on to hope.
Yes we're remaining hopeful. Yes we want this person back
and we believe it. And then the dark stories were
(35:56):
either only shared with counselors or with other family members
where it was safe.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
So Lauren really.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Connected with my thesis and it took us until twenty
twenty two, but we found an opportunity to be able
to turn the thesis into what we call the hope narratives,
which is that box that you're talking about. But as always,
we wanted to make sure that we had new reflections
(36:24):
and new opportunities to connect with more families, which became
those two days in Melbourne to really plot out those
four components of what does it mean to sit with
those hard truths about the reality of your missing person,
what does it mean to engage in ideas of hope,
and what does it mean to look to the future
(36:47):
when you know that on the horizon you might not
get the answers that you want. And so we wanted
to create a toolkit that families could use themselves, but
also could be used in counseling as well. As we've
had a lot of interest from police over the years
as well to upskill their teams to say this is
(37:07):
the lived experience reality in one box of what it
means to exist in all of these spaces with different
types of missing, which is why that description is on
the back.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah. And I mean when you look at those that
box of cards, there's so much in there that is
just an absolute hub of knowledge and power and hope
and stress that we can try and maneuver and help
people understand better. I mean, we've got forty four members,
(37:40):
eight countries. We had more than five hundred years of
lived experience, which we referred to as l E both
suspicious and not suspicious circumstances and ranging from two years
to forty four years missing, so exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
And I think you know, the intention was not to say,
let's condense this down to one lived experience. Let's say
this is the most common reality. I mean like you
would have. I get contact by lots of media, and
sometimes the questions are so simple and so reductive about
oh so does it mean that all families hold on
(38:15):
to hope or is the goal to find a body
and that equals closure. The purpose of it being such
a large toolkit is also then visibly a reminder that
it's an individual journey that everybody is on and these
are the ways that people move through that individual journey.
So by being able to be in that room for
(38:37):
two days and plot out, you know, we were very
old school, weren't we, with post it notes and mapping
the ideas in small groups.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Going out and recording ourselves talking about things in private,
you know, reflection in that space. And also for me personally,
like being around those people. It's not very often that
us who have a missing person get to interact with
somebody else who has the understanding that we have. And
(39:09):
we all have different stories, right, We've got people missing overseas,
we've got people missing from all different states in territories
in Australia in different ways, and it was very powerful.
We've all stayed friends and connect from time to time,
which is nice to know it's there.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Exactly, and I think, you know, as a researcher and
a social worker, I see firsthand the unexpected benefits of
being invited to tell your story that have nothing to
do with what the outcome is or what the output is,
what product is made from it, or does it end
up being a journal, paper or a movie or whatever,
(39:46):
Because just that simple notion of being in that room
for those two days, you could see the sparks that
were created between people. People who were nervous about being
there and eased into the process. People that have remained
connected to each other. Love the fact WhatsApp group that
we have, you know, a little bit of a mascot,
(40:08):
so that when we see a flamingo out in the community,
it's our reminder of, you know, those invisible ties that
connect us. And I think that's the power of making
sure that families of missing people are not forgotten, because
from my perspective, it's a silent, lonely grief, and any
(40:29):
chance to remind people that they're not alone, whether it
be through a podcast or an article or those sorts
of activities, that's the stuff that keeps people going.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Can you share with us, Sarah, a couple of your
new projects or the latest projects that you're working on.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Definitely. I think, as you can probably hear in a
lot of my sharing about my experiences is I've always
been really intrigued about the role of media and the
ways in which media professionals engage with families submissing people,
because I have firsthand experience of really great media interviews
(41:08):
and really rubbish media interviews no matter how much I
prepped someone about what I will and won't say. And
so a couple of years ago I got some grant
funding from the University of New England to start a
project that's almost at the stage where we've got quite
a few papers under review in journals which I can
(41:29):
then share, but about trying to understand what would it
look like to have safe reporting guidelines around the ways
in which missing persons media is undertaken. And that's because
in Australia we have safe reporting guidelines in the media
for how we talk about suicide, how we talk about
drugs and alcohol, and how we talk about mental health.
(41:51):
Yet media and missing is a huge industry and we
don't have guidelines around how we make sure that we
don't further traumatize both families of missing people, but also
people who are currently missing, particularly in that short term stage,
around how we don't further alienate them or traumatize them
in the ways in which their stories are presented. So
(42:14):
over the last eighteen months, I undertook a survey, just
random population survey with the Australian community to say, what
do you think the intention of media is in missing
person stories? And the overwhelming majority of people said it's
to help locate people, and that media locate people. And
so I thought, that's a really interesting perception because from
(42:37):
my perspective, I see that media happens, yet I'm not
quite sure sometimes that it's the exact link that leads
to an outcome. It leads to lots of new clues,
but there isn't much data on what it actually does.
So then I took that data and I hosted a
focus group for family members who had done media but
(43:01):
that often had not been involved in research projects activities
like the Hope Narratives.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
We hosted a focus group.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
With Missed Foundation because it's always important to have lived
experience inclusion in that space. It was a two hour
focus group that actually went for five hours, and we
plotted out what enables people to do media, what stops
people from doing media, and if they could propose what
media guidelines would be best for them, what would that
(43:31):
look like. So that paper is currently under review to
be published at the moment, But what was really clear
is that families who already had some connections in the community,
or were well spoken, or were from middle class or
upper class communities had more of an opportunity to share
(43:53):
their story because people wanted to see their story, as
well as people where the person who was missing didn't
look like they were involved in their own disappearance, that
they didn't just walk away, or that they were not
the perfect victim.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
So it was really.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Interesting to understand that perspective, as well as the energy
that was required by families over the years to constantly
put on a happy face, say yes to all media opportunities,
perform in a way that meant that their story was
going to be shared, that people would click on it,
that they would like it. But that what was most
(44:32):
significant from that was families didn't say media helps locate people.
All of them said, we have to do media because
we are concerned about the deficits in the police investigation.
We engage media to bridge the gap between what we
know was done to find the person versus what we
(44:52):
think needs to happen to actually find our person. And
then the third stage was two more focus groups, one
with police media and then one with mainstream media to
ask them what they think they are doing in terms
of why they do their work in terms of media
and what police media think they're doing with their media alerts.
(45:15):
So that paper's already under review as well to get
a better understanding. But from that it really showed that
police make that decision in their risk assessment. Yes, will
do a media alert and they push it out. Once
they do that, they very much lose control because media
will pick it up, and it's the editorial decisions of
(45:35):
that media outlet that will decide how the story is told,
what elements of the story they'll tell, whether or not
they'll just decide nobody wants to hear that story, we
just won't share it. So there's no equity. All families
are missing, people aren't on an even playing field. Yet
media makes sometimes police more accountable or other organizations more accountable.
(45:58):
But if not everyone gets the chance, then it's not fair.
So that's the we're moving towards the creation of some
media guidelines with every mind who's a mental health organization.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
That's our big picture goal.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
But it really shows that everyone thinks they're doing the
same work, but the community, the families of the missing people, police,
media and media are all taking different approaches as to
why media is being used. So it's been a really
interesting project.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, well, very interesting actually, and I kind of got
a little bit of trauma there and you were saying
a few things. I'm like, yes, yes, definitely, and yes,
it is a case of like I have done a
lot of media now over the years, and you know,
to reflect, for twenty two years, I had no media.
I did two articles in a magazine and it went nowhere.
(46:48):
I never heard from the magazine to say we didn't
get anybody come forward, or we did, or we've passed
us on or we've done this. So that has been
interesting as a journey as well. And you know, people
do pick and choose. You know, I'm in a position
now where I would like to go and do things
like I've had lots and lots of people when there
(47:08):
was a massive flurry of things happening, and I had
people begging me to come on and do stories with
them on TV and whatnot, and then the flurry has finished,
and now I'm at a position where I can talk
to them and say hey, I'd like to come on,
and they're like, oh, pass. You know, your story is
not important now because there's no trauma behind it, And
(47:33):
that is very difficult to manage. It is because my
story is not over yet, and.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
The expectations that people have about will they or won't
they do media doesn't set them up well for what
happens if media don't want to tell your story. Yeah,
but that's crushing for families and how manybody cares and
how many stories are people are interviewed, and.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
As you say, they don't make it because the editor goes, oh,
that doesn't actually cut the cheese today, We're not going
to put that on.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
There exactly, or it's edited in a way that meets
the editorial interest of the story, or it gets connected
to other missing persons stories, but that's not the story
that the family thought they were doing.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
We did a story we Channel seven on Spotlight actually,
and it ended up going over two nights and there
was two different stories that I sort of were featured
on the same night. So instead of doing mum's story
all on one night. It was broken up over two
weeks and probably to extend the audience. I don't know
what their mindset is, but let's just use this as
(48:36):
an example. And Kathleen Fulberg, she had just been released
from jail, so that was the big story that then
my story came in after her. So the first part
of part one, which was my side of that story,
and then the second week was when Allison and the
team went overseas with Rick Blum's daughter and they traveled
(48:59):
through Belgium and whatnot. And you know what was really interesting.
Jonie then started talking to someone who actually knew someone
and she said, oh, have you seen the Spotlight program?
And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, that's the story about
the daughter who's disgrunted because her dad left her a
debt in Belgium. So I think my mind just blew
(49:20):
because I went wow. So there was no concept or
thought process in that space about my mum's actually a
missing person, and this is why that story was done.
Their focus was purely about the daughter who went to
Belgium looking to try and find documents and saying that
she was progrungent of her dad. Yes, and that was
really telling for me, Like that was a moment for
(49:42):
me where I went, Wow, the interpretation is so different
and so important. And I bang on about this all
the time, Sarah, that you know your words.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Matter, they do well.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Listen. I think I've taken up a lot of your
time this morning. Thank you so much. I think that
you're a true champion in my eyes, and I'm personally
very grateful one that we've met in per We've had
a good chat and good time. You've taken time to
hear me and listen to me and now extending that
and doing more and more all the time. And you know,
(50:15):
I think that's awesome. I do believe. You've got a
book coming out in twenty twenty six. What is the
book called and what is that about.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
It's called Living in the Liminal Space, and it's actually
a book for how to teach about ambiguous loss in
social work, counseling and psychology, because as much as we
can try and reach out to people who are already
out there working in the field, it needs to be
part of our foundational understandings. So it's a book that
explores my journey of being a social worker as well
(50:46):
as strategies to teach, and then case studies from families
to use in teaching material, because I think that we
need to get people early so that they recognize that
there are lots of places that you will interact with
families of missing people over your career, and you should
be able to link it back to remembering things that
you were taught.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
So that's the intention of the book.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Yeah, amazing, and I think what an important tool to have.
And I really would like to see that the older
generation of the police force take time to actually listen
and understand some languages that potentially weren't around as I
spoke before. Like things have changed and there's lots of
new terms and things like that that have come to
(51:29):
the space, but even today, I'm still getting language to
me that is quite traumatizing for me from the older
experienced detectives who are leading the cases and their language.
They just don't seem to be understanding or hearing or
taking advice on better ways to manage that. And I
(51:49):
really would like to see that change. Actually, it's not
just about the new recruits coming in. We need to
change and help and support the ones making the calls
because they're the ones usually making assumptions and making decisions
that aren't good for the missing person, and that feeds
back down through into those new recruits who are coming
(52:10):
into the police force, and that needs to change too.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
So, yeah, that language culture is really important. And you
would know that every family member that you've ever spoken
to has their one, two, three, or four or five
statements that have really stuck with them over the years.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
That was said as a throwaway.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Line from an investigator that has really changed the trajectory
as to how they live with their trauma.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, well, let's hope that that book and your hard
work and Lauren, I know she's working hard in that
space too, and you know, hopefully will have her come
on the missing matter because I think she's got a
lot to talk about later. I think she said to
me maybe in the new year we can have a
catch up because she's so busy at the moment, But
can we finish today? Can you tell me in your
own words? You know why the missing matter.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
That matter because the missing person themselves is often absent
from the story. Person that can humanize or animate that
stories the people who are left behind. So we all
need to be really careful and sensitive with making sure
that when we include people that we look after them
in terms of how they share their story, how they
(53:21):
live long term with not knowing, and how they get
the opportunity to talk about their missing person other than
being a missing person.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
So that's why they matter.
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