The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has chosen to focus on long-term missing persons for this year’s National Missing Persons Week (NMPW) which began Sunday (4 August).
AFP Commander Justine Gough said NMPW sought to create awareness throughout the wider Australian community, targeting those who had never thought about a missing person or the impact it had on families and friends.
“In its 31st year, National Missing Persons Week aims to continue this narrative by focusing on Individuals Not Statistics — the theme of this year’s campaign,” Commander Gough said.
“It’s about going beyond the statistics of Australia’s missing population and focusing on the individuals.”
She said it was sometimes easy to generalise the 2,600 long-term missing persons in Australia and lose the essence of the individual.
“The people captured in the statistic are not just ‘missing persons’, they are fathers, daughters, and sons; students, chefs and academics,” Commander Gough said.
“We don’t want people to forget that.
“As part of the National Missing Persons Week campaign for 2019, the National Missing Persons Coordination Centre is profiling eight long-term missing persons from around the nation.”
She said unlike previous years, the new design removed the ‘persons’ from the week and replaced it with the name of the real person being profiled.
She said the eight profiles had been selected in consultation with State and Territory Missing Persons Units and include Andrew Dymott (Victoria); Ashley Bindon (NSW); David Mansell (South Australia); Martyn Tann (Western Australia); Michael Lorenz-Schrader (Queensland); Nazrawi Woldemichael (Tasmania); Rebecca Hayward (Northern Territory); and Wendy Dalla (ACT).
