Cops at a loss as kids go missing
Body found after boy missing for weeks
● Four thousand children who have disappeared since 2000 have never been found.
A total of 16,000 children have gone missing since the turn of the millennium, but new research says the police database is confusing and unreliable, making it difficult to understand and analyse the scale of the problem.
A source in the police family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit said: “The situation around missing children for the entire country is dire.”
The issue was catapulted back into the headlines this week by the discovery in Durban of what is believed to be the body of nine-year-old Miguel Louw, more than a month after he disappeared.
The anguish of Miguel’s mother, Raylene, is replicated in thousands of homes across the country, and now Missing Children SA has revived dozens of cold cases in an attempt to draw attention to the crisis.
Durban mom Raylene Louw clutched a flickering candle at a vigil for her missing son, Miguel, on Thursday night, brushing away tears as a gospel song struck a chord deep within her.
By then Louw had endured a nightmarish 49 days since Miguel, a few months shy of his 10th birthday, went missing on July 17 near their home in Sydenham, Durban.
From dozens of media interviews, to distraught court appearances where she begged her former colleague Mohammed Ebrahim — arrested three days after the child disappeared — for information about his whereabouts, to the grim discovery on Monday of a decomposing body 100m from Ebrahim’s home, Louw has lived every mother’s worst nightmare.
Miguel is one of 18 children who have gone missing in KwaZulu-Natal since January.
Now Louw and the family are awaiting the results of a DNA test which would confirm
Every day they are waiting for the phone to ring because they think that the DNA results will come, but the reality is that it will take weeks Vashti Williams Family attorney
her worst fear — that the body of a boy found in Phoenix is that of her son.
Family attorney Vashti Williams told the Sunday Times: “Every day they are waiting for the phone to ring because they think that the DNA results will come, but the reality is that it will take weeks.”
The Louws are also looking into who is behind malicious voice notes being circulated on WhatsApp about Raylene.
“We are investigating who they are and we will be taking action. There will be legal repercussions. This is secondary at the moment, but we will deal with this later,” Williams said.
Ebrahim‚ who lived in a Wendy house on his father’s property‚ was arrested three days after Miguel was last seen entering a KFC outlet near his school and home.
CCTV footage placed the boy with Ebrahim, who told the court he left Miguel to board a taxi into Durban.
In his bid for bail‚ which was ultimately successful‚ Ebrahim was painted by prosecutor Calvin Govender as a drifter‚ who had been banished to the shed after a family fight in 2016.
Ebrahim, a butcher by trade, had lived with Miguel and his mother for two weeks before he and Louw also had an altercation, the court heard.