Unknown Teenage Girl
Dragged by the hair but where is she now?
June 10, 2007 - The Age
Three weeks after an apparent abduction police are still baffled. Mark Russell
reports.
IT IS a mystery to strike fear into any parent's heart.
A teenage girl gets off a bus about 9.30am and is walking along Bamfield Road,
Heidelberg Heights, with another girl she has just met, when a black late-1990s
VT Commodore suddenly swerves into a driveway in front of them.
A muscular, olive-skinned, clean-shaven man in his late 20s gets out of the car
and grabs both girls.
The younger girl, 13, would later tell police the man pushed her to the ground
and tried to choke her but she managed to get away unscathed, apart from a few
scratches to her neck. But, she says, the terrified older girl — said to have
yelled out "Don't run away. Help me. Help me" to the younger girl — was not so
lucky.
The man dragged her by the ponytail towards his car and neither have been seen
since.
The police helicopter was called in and officers door-knocked the area for
information without success. It is now 23 days since the 13-year-old reported
the incident and there has been no breakthrough — and, intriguingly, no missing
person reports made to police.
Detective Inspector Kim West, of major crime division unit Taskforce 500, said
he believed the girl was telling the truth about what happened and rejects any
suggestion it may have all been a hoax.
"We don't believe that for a second," he said. "We've followed probably in
excess of 60 leads to try to identify the girl.
"We've had phone calls from two fathers who said they had 15-16-year-old
daughters who were on heroin and had left home and were living with boys in that
area.
"Both of them said they thought the identikit photo (of the missing girl)
resembled their daughters but they have both since been found and deny they were
the girl involved.
"We had another case where a girl, who is under the care of the Department of
Human Services and is wanted on warrants for failing to appear in court, was
said to look like the missing girl. We tried to find her without success."
Inspector West said it was possible that the girl broke away from the man before
he got her in the car and she might be too scared to report the incident to
police. "The witness said the man grabbed them both and dragged them towards his
car," he said. "She fought him and broke away. When she last saw the second
female she was screaming for help.
"The witness has run around the corner and jumped in the phone box and rung the
police but she heard the squeal of the tyres as the car took off."
He said it was possible the girl had known her abductor and it had been a
domestic dispute between boyfriend and girlfriend or a fight between brother and
sister. The problem with this theory, Inspector West said, was that the
13-year-old girl saw or heard nothing that made her think the victim and the
suspect were not strangers.
"There was none of this: 'You shouldn't have left me', or 'Are you coming
home?"' he said "There was no apparent recognition."
He thought the case may never be solved.
"The way we're going I don't think we'll ever know. We've spent some
unbelievable man hours on this case and we'll keep going until we've
investigated every possible lead."
Thousands of teenagers go missing each year but, in contrast to this case, most
are found within 48 hours.
Victoria Police statistics show 6908 people were reported missing between July
1, 2005, and June 30, 2006. Almost half of these — 3116 — were aged 17 or
younger. In 2004-05, 2717 Victorian kids went missing.
One area of frustration for police is that if a missing teenager is found,
police can only tell their family that they have been found, not where they are.
Police do not have the power to arrest a missing teen unless they are considered
to be at risk; only then can they be returned to their parents.
An independent study of missing people in Australia found that the most common
reasons that young people went missing involved asserting independence and
rebellion against parental authority. Many were also escaping physical and/or
sexual abuse. But the problem for children who do go missing is that they
unwittingly expose themselves to circumstances where they are at risk of being
preyed upon by others.
The missing Heidelberg Heights girl is described as having a long, blonde
ponytail with distinctive blonde streaks. She has fair skin, is 170cm tall, and
was wearing a black top, pink jacket with pockets, denim jeans and light brown
thongs.
The abductor was wearing a white hat with brown writing, brown and white baggy
T-shirt, dark, baggy jeans and new Nike runners.
Anyone with information is urged to contact CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000 or
online. National Missing Persons Week will be held from August 5-11.