My daughter was missing for 18 months
Sunday 5th April 2009
Stepping into Sammy's room, its lilac walls covered in Harry Potter posters, I started to tremble. I'd gone in hoping to feel close to my daughter. Instead, I felt despair. I hadn't seen her for three months. Sammy used to be hardworking and shy, but almost overnight,
she'd completely changed. First, she came home from town with some expensive make-up. 'My mate, David, gave it to me,' she shrugged. 'How did a schoolboy afford all that?' I worried to my husband, Bob, 44, that night. Then, a few days later, I heard Sammy in her room, sobbing into her mobile. Whoever was on the other end was ranting. 'I'm sorry I didn't ring on time,' she wept. 'Please David, you can't kill yourself, I love you…' 'Is everything OK?' I asked, when she finally emerged, red-eyed. 'Stay out of my business,'
she snapped. I winced. This wasn't like her.
As the gifts and the calls grew more frequent, I grew more worried. 'I'm not sure you should speak to this David any more,' I told Sammy. 'You don't understand,' she bit back and stormed off. Sammy was becoming more confrontational, rowing constantly with me, Bob and her brother, Jack, then 13. Then, a month later, she announced David was taking her on holiday to Wales. 'I don't think so, young lady!' I said firmly. 'Who is this David anyway?' David Manning. He's 19,' she huffed, rolling her eyes. 'You're 15,' I said. 'We can't let you go off for a week with a stranger.' But the next day, I got home from my job as a retail manager to find a note. Back in a week. Horrified, we called the police. 'This David could be a 50-year-old paedophile for all we know,' I panicked to Bob.
We looked at Sammy's computer and found her Bebo profile. There were photos of her with David and I could see they'd been messaging for two years. Worryingly, there were posts, apparently from him, on Sammy's friends' pages too, warning them to stay away from her. Eventually, the police turned up. 'Sammy and David have been found and taken to a police station in Bristol,' one of the officers said. He paused. 'Sammy won't be coming home for the moment,' he said. 'An allegation of abuse has been made.' Abuse! The days that followed were beyond awful, as Bob and I were interviewed by police. They'd been told I'd held Sammy down and tried to slash her wrists. Awful. Unthinkable. What possessed her to say those things? Ten days later, she came home. 'Thank God,' I said, reaching out to hug her. 'I'm going to my room,' she snapped, pushing me away. Sammy had got a new mobile from somewhere, so I took it off her and gave it to the police. But days later, she had another one. I begged social services for help, but insultingly, they just suggested parenting classes. You can't lock a 15-year-old up, so we felt powerless as Sammy came and went as she pleased, acting like we were the enemy. Then, on 3 April 2007, she went out and didn't come home. Nothing was missing from her room. She'd left her mobile and even her toothbrush.
'She can't have planned to run away,' I told the police. We assumed she was with Manning again. But when the police went to the house he shared with his dad in Bristol, there was no trace of her. She'll come home, I told myself. A week later, the police took her toothbrush away for DNA samples. Jack had been angry with Sammy at first. Now, we all felt the same. Terrified. Especially when hospitals and mortuaries were put on alert.We started giving TV and radio appeals for Sammy to come home, making sure her face was seen on missing posters all over the UK. Since she'd gone, she hadn't contacted anyone or withdrawn a penny from her bank account. I was numb with shock. 'How could she just vanish?' I said, over and over. Jack sent emails to Sammy asking: Are you alive? There was never any reply.
Too worried to eat, I lost two stone in a matter of weeks. Jack posted an appeal on YouTube hoping to find his sister, and on 25 May 2007, Missing Children's Day, her face was even projected onto Marble Arch in Central London. But there was still no word from Sammy. We were told that if she didn't make contact by her 16th birthday, the police would turn it into a serious crime investigation.
Then, 10 days after her 16th birthday, a miracle happened. Sammy rang a missing persons' helpline and agreed to meet two detectives. 'She won't say where she's been,' the officer said. 'And now she's 16, she says no one can stop her living with Manning.' I was torn. She was alive, but I still might never see her again. 'Move on,' the social workers advised us. But how could I? She was my little girl, part of my reason for living. Worse was to come. In December, social workers told us Sammy had married Manning in Scotland, where it's legal to wed at 16 without your parents' consent. All I could do was keep writing on the internet that my door was always open… Whatever's happened, I still want you back. I counselled other mums of runaways and campaigned with CROP, the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping, to raise awareness on the dangers of internet grooming. Then, last November, 19 months after she'd gone missing, I got an email. I just want to say hi. And I'm sorry. I'd had some awful hoax emails before… Prove it's you, I replied. Spotty, Happy, Furry, Boo… These are all the rabbits I had growing up, in the right order. 'It's her!' I screamed. We arranged to meet.
David and I go to Tesco on Fridays. Meet you in the ladies? I was beside myself with excitement. Then, on the day, I got a text. Just come to the house. We'll be home soon. My heart was pounding as we pulled up outside Manning's house in Bristol, and Sammy ran outside. Throwing my arms around her, the questions spilled out. 'Are you happy? How are you managing for money?' Sammy was defensive. But she admitted she'd seen the posters. 'I just wanted to be left alone,' she said sadly. A week later, life threw us another curveball when Bob's optician noticed something odd during an eye test. Tests showed he had Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia. 'We can't tell Sammy by email,' Bob said. 'She'll think we're emotionally blackmailing her to come home.' But on Christmas Eve, Sammy sent another email. I'm in the library on my own if you need to talk. Worried, I called her. 'What's wrong?' I asked. 'David and I have had a big row,' she explained. 'What are you doing for Christmas?' I asked. 'I've bought a huge turkey…'Half-an-hour later, Bob, Jack and I drove to Bristol Temple Meads station to pick Sammy up.
We were all crying as we headed home. Then, Sammy's mobile started ringing. 'I've come home for Christmas,' she told David. He kept calling her. But she insisted she was staying with us. Christmas lunch with my daughter felt like a miracle. We didn't talk about where she'd been for the past year-and-a-half. It was clear she wasn't ready. We told her about her dad on Boxing Day. 'I'd like to come home,' she said. 'But first, I have unfinished business in Bristol.' When she and her dad arrived at Manning's house, the locks had been changed. It was over. As the weeks passed, things started to get back to normal. David tried to win her back, posting on web forums that his 'darling wife' was missing. She ignored him.
Three months on, we're in the process of helping Sammy get a divorce, and she plans to go to college in September. Bob's still fighting the leukaemia, but we're hopeful he can beat it. Together, as a family, I believe we can get through anything.
Sammy says: 'I'm home for good now, but I wouldn't have blamed my parents for turning me away after the way I behaved. I thought I knew best. But now, I realise you're not ready to make those kinds of choices at 15.'