One mother shares about the day her daughter went missing

The photo that was distributed to the authorities after eight-year-old Sanyu Nalwoga went missing. courtesy Photo

What you need to know:

When her daughter casually walked out of church, the mother did not know it would be the beginning of a nightmare

Two minutes before the end of evening mass on Sunday, March 15, Petua Kyomugasho saw her eight-year-old daughter Sanyu Nalwoga walk out of Christ the King Church.

But she saw no cause for alarm. The mass was practically over and she would be joining her in no time.

“I often go to church with her. She goes out when she needs to but always comes back or I follow after a few minutes,” says Kyomugasho.
The mother of one says her daughter is not in the habit of wandering off.

“She cannot even cross a road by herself. Even if she saw sweets on the other side, she just waits for me,” she said.

On this day, however, Nalwoga was nowhere to be found just five minutes after walking out. “I instantly felt something was terribly wrong,” she says.

The search
She was not at all the places her mother thought she would be. “We went all the way to Communications House, Theatre La Bonita, asking everyone but no one had seen her,” says the mother.

As the church door closed with Nalwoga nowhere in sight, it dawned on Kyomugasho that her daughter was missing and that is when she started making distress calls to relatives. Her brother arrived a few minutes later and together they went to Central Police Station to report a case of missing person.

The small band of worried relatives, who had joined her, then rushed to a local TV station to put up a missing persons announcement during the prime news bulletin.

“People started calling immediately,” recalls Kyomugasho, but rather than allay her fears, these calls left her more desperate.

Different people were claiming to have seen her, at different locations within and outside Kampala. But they all had something in common; they wanted money, before they revealed further details. “They would ask if I have the reward money ready when I asked whether they can tell me more about the whereabouts of my daughter,” she continues.

The stream of callers, many of whom sounded like people out to exploit a desperate situation, went on till midnight.

But she could not afford to ignore any, patiently speaking even to the rudest of them.
At the time, she saw every caller as a possible lead to her daughter’s whereabouts.

Troubled mind
Even when her phone stopped ringing, Kyomugasho could not afford to sleep. “Every time I closed my eyes, I imagined the worst. That she was somewhere frightened, probably being raped and it would hurt,” she says.

She struggles to describe what was going through her mind during those torturous hours she had to wait for daylight. “A parent would understand. It is beyond words. I could not even begin imagining life without my daughter,” she says.

Nalwoga was diagnosed with autism. Her speech is not highly developed and she only manages a few words. Though Kyomugasho has learnt to communicate with her daughter perfectly well, she knows that it would not be possible for strangers to understand her speech.

When a call from the police came through early Monday morning that a child fitting Nalwoga’ s description was at the police station in Mukono, Kyomugasho and her troop raced to the station.

They were relieved to find it was indeed her, alive and apparently unharmed. We learnt she had been at the station since 11:30pm the previous night after being brought in by someone who claimed she was found unaccompanied in a taxi at around 11pm in the night.

Kyomugasho is still trying to comprehend the story given by the man claiming to own the taxi Nalwoga was found in. That the eight-year-old allegedly boarded a taxi from Total filling station, down the street from Christ the King Church.

Lessons
She is also wondering what happened before she was taken to the police. Was she still in a taxi to Mukono all that time?

Nalwoga’ s speech impediment means she is giving very little, though she keeps talking of an uncle in a taxi. Those who say they found her are not giving much either, and the taxi driver refuses to be identified.

This mother still does not know whether her daughter was taken for whatever sinister reason and abandoned or just went off on her own as is being said.

Still she is grateful that the daughter was found. She says, “it has taught me to pay close attention especially in church.”
She is also more convinced about the power of prayer which is all she did during those hours when she was hopeless.

She advises parents in a similar conondrum to alert authorities as soon as possible because it might prove useful.

She says although she will continue taking Nalwoga with her to church, this time round when the little girl gets up to go outside, her mother’s heart will not rest so easy.

What to do if your child goes missing

According to the 2013 crime report, that year registered 1,061 child kidnap cases, 729 child abductions and 295 child theft cases in the country.

The good news is that recovery rates of missing children are quite high. The odds are that a case involving a missing child is solved.

Herman Owomugisha, the commander of Flying Squad which responds to kidnap and abduction cases, says the unit has been able to find all the children reported missing since the year begun and returned them safely to their parents.
“There are always exceptions, but I can say the methods we use ensure we are successful,” said Owomugisha.

He cannot conclusively say there is an increase in kidnapping as a whole, but he notes that there are trends in the reported cases. For instance, the cases of children 10 and below are usually taken either for purposes of revenge or ransom.

Cases involving children in their late teens and young adults on the other hand turn out to be either eloping in the cases of girls while boys, it involves a ruse which the missing child themselves is privy to extract money from the parents.

“We have had cases where some young adults maybe university age kidnap themselves, or rather stage their own kidnap. It is painful for the parents when we get to the bottom of it,” he says.

When you realise that your child is missing, Owomugisha advises parents to contact the Flying Squad unit as soon as possible. He says, “We have a joint team at the Special Investigations Division or you can reach us direct at Central Police Station where we sit. One can also report to the nearest police station which is also able to reach us.”

While he admits that broadcasting the news of the missing child through the media could help in finding the person, he cautions parents against rushing to put up adverts with their numbers in media.

“If they can put up the advert with the police number as the contact or maybe the news outlets contact, that would be better. Otherwise putting up their own number, they open themselves up to people who start harassing them for money, giving false leads trying to extort from the distressed parents. We have arrested several characters like that,” he says.

He also advises parents to be open up and truthful to the police once they report their child missing to enable the police explore all possible scenarios.