The worst thing a parent can go through had already happened to Christine Durand. Her son Steven was missing, and she had no idea if he was even alive. But what Christine, who is now 70 years old, did not realize was that things would get worse in the months and years to come.
“I feel like they didn’t think anything of it, it’s like I was left on the shelf,” she says The Independent. “I used to have to go down to the police station every day about my son, crying. He left me on many occasions.”
Steven was meant to be traveling from his sister’s flat to his home in Preston on the day he disappeared – 19 October 2018. He had lost his phone, so all he had on him was his bus fare.
After Christine reported Steven missing, Lancashire Constabulary issued public appeals for the 31-year-old, who Christine said was known to officers as he suffered from mental health problems. But they misidentified his ethnicity twice, describing him as white when he is mixed race.
Steven Durand lost at the age of 31. The police identified his ethnicity twice, describing him as white when he is mixed race (Christine Durand)
“Everything I asked the police to do, they did the opposite,” says Christine, citing incidents such as the police breaking the door of Steven’s apartment when she told them she had an extra key. “I think the police are racist – I think they don’t care about my son because he was mixed race.”
Christine, from Leyland, believes her son, who she describes as “the kindest person you could ever meet”, could have been found if police had handled the investigation better.
Only 31 per cent of missing black people, and 35 per cent of missing Asian people, are found by the police, compared to 39 per cent of white people who go missing, according to research by the charity Missing People.
Christine Durand believes her son could have been found if the police had handled his case better (Christine Durand)
That report also found that black and Asian children are more likely to be missing for longer periods of time than white children. One in five missing persons incidents involving Black children lasted more than 48 hours, compared to 14 percent of those involving Asian children, and 13 percent for white children.
Missing People has now launched its new SafeCall service, a national lifeline designed to support the 72,000 children who go missing in the UK each year. The Independent reached its fundraising target of £165,000 last month, enabling the free, confidential and 24/2003 service to go live.
Christine says the police ‘arrested me on many occasions’ (Christine Durand)
Evidence Joel’s experience mirrors Christine’s. Her son Richard Okorogheye, then 19, went missing from Ladbroke Grove, London, on 22 March 2021. The witness, 43, says she reported Richard missing to the police the next day, telling them he was away from home without his medication for sickle cell anaemia.
But she maintains that the officials did not deal with her concerns urgently, and describes the investigation as a “disaster”, where she claims they told her: “Don’t worry, he will come back home”, and even: “If you don’t find your son, how do you expect us?”
Richard was found dead in Epping Forest two weeks later, on 5 April.
Richard Okorogheye, then 19, went missing from Ladbroke Grove in March 2021. His body was found two weeks later (Evidenza Joel)
The witness, a nurse, believes that her son could have been found alive if the investigation had been conducted properly. “I felt the whole thing was ruled by discrimination and racism,” she says. “Every day I have to go through this agony in my heart, I know that maybe something could have been done, but nothing was done. I remember having sleepless nights, walking naked from my house to the Ladbroke Grove police station, crying, asking them to look for my child.”
The Metropolitan Police apologized to Evidence for providing a level of service that “is not at a level that the public expects from us”, but did not acknowledge any discriminatory treatment. An Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation identified several failings by the police and described the level of service the Evidence received as “unacceptable”, but found that “the evidence did not indicate that any delay in updating Richard’s risk level was due to his or Ms Joel’s race”.
In Christine’s case, she made a complaint, and an internal investigation by Lancashire Constabulary found there was “insufficient evidence” that Steven had been discriminated against on the basis of his race or mental health. The force declined to comment on this.
Evidence Joel believes that her son could have been found alive if the police had acted properly (Evidenza Joel)
Lancashire Constabulary also disputed Christine’s claims about the door falling, but the IOPC upheld her claim following a review of her complaint. She added that the constabulary had apologized for misidentifying his ethnicity.
Josie Allan, head of policy and partnerships at Missing People, says the charity has heard from a number of families who felt discriminated against because of their race. Explaining why investigations may come to competing conclusions, she says an “underlying systemic bias” will be affecting police responses, but that its “insidious” nature makes it difficult to identify.
“There are inherent issues in being able to identify discrimination in the complaints process,” says Allan. “We know that the data shows that there are disparities for Black missing people, so there is a gap between the evidence about the disparities and their recognition… The data and the large amount of families that are raising concerns should be raising very serious concerns within the police that there is a pattern.”
Evidence says “I felt the whole thing was ruled by discrimination and racism” (Evidenza Joel)
She notes that the IOPC has recently revised its guidance in an effort to improve the “problematic” handling of discrimination complaints.
In 2021, the “Macpherson: 20 Years On” inquiry of the home affairs select committee suggested that police services had largely failed to overcome perceptions of institutional racism following the initial inquiry into the killing of Stephen Lawrence, which found consistent evidence of “over-policing” and “under-protection” of Black, Asian and minority communities.
Regarding the matter of Steven Durand, a spokesman for Lancashire Constabulary said: “We carried out extensive inquiries in relation to CCTV, telephony, searches of open land and canals, inquiries with associates, witnesses, health agencies and financial controls and numerous media appeals, before the decision to archive the investigation.”
The force said that sometimes “difficult” decisions have to be made, such as archiving a case, but that “any new information will be fully investigated”.
Regarding the case of Richard Okorogheye, a spokesman for the Met Police said: “When Richard went missing in 2021, hundreds of officers worked tirelessly over 15 days as part of the extensive search, which also included specialist search teams, dogs and horses, and colleagues from Essex Police, before unfortunately his body was found.”
They said the force accepted all the IOPC’s recommendations from its 2022 investigation, and had “made a significant number of changes to the way we respond from the moment a person is reported missing”. They added: “This includes putting more emphasis on engaging with the person who reports someone missing, so we can better understand the risks they face.”
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For advice, support and options if you or a loved one goes missing, get in touch safecall.org.uk