Britain's Missing Young People Panorama

I love you, Josh, and I miss you. I just want you to come home, Josh.

Every day, hundreds of young people go missing in the UK. Nobody can

feel the pain you are in, except for people that have been in the same

situation. We join the relatives searching for clues. What age was

Olivia when you found the letter? 14. 14, and this is a 25-year-old

man writing to her. How do you feel when you find that letter? I felt

sick to the stomach. We meet the families who have been waiting for

years. And this is his blazer? That's the last thing I saw him

wearing as he went out the door. And we find out why the police can no

longer cope. Do you accept that children are being laughed at risk?

I fully accept that. We simply don't have the resources or the capability

and capacity to deal with so many missing episodes.

Sawley Marina, Leicestershire. Home to hundreds of boats of various

shapes and sizes, and home, two, four Josh Cotton. Until one

afternoon in March, when the 22-year-old couldn't be found. The

barge Josh lived on was locked up and he was,. We are hardly sleeping.

Eating is hard enough as well so you are having to force yourself.

Parents Mick and Jan have looked everywhere but there's no sign of

Josh. What do you think happened? That the Golden question, isn't it?

We don't know. We get scenarios going through a head all the time.

What if this happened? What if that happened? You just don't know. It is

just a waiting game, isn't it? How long has he been missing now? 19

days. It gets harder every day. Josh seemed happy. He was known for

always having a smile on his face. Last year, he bought a barge and

restored it himself. The Spirit was Josh Cotton's pride and joy. It was

the first time he had lived in his own home and his family say he loved

his independence. 95% of missing people are found within a week. But

after that, the chances of you coming to harm increase. The family

knows that every minute that passes without good news can only bring bad

news closer. It is this not knowing. This is what drives you mad, not

knowing. It is ripping our hearts apart, isn't it question mark not

knowing, waiting for a phone call or the time. You check the house phone

as with your mobile phone, take it to bed, hoping for a phone call

overnight. You worry that he is lying dead in a ditch somewhere and

you don't know, all these weeks later. It is just horrible.

The National Crime Agency says there were more than 200,000 reports of

missing people last year. Well over half were about children. That's

around 350 kids every day. Are you OK? We understand it's going to be a

very worrying time for you. Yes. The first details are often reported

here. So since then, no one at all has heard from him? The Missing

People Helpline takes 54,000 calls annually. Thanks very much. Will get

to work on that straightaway, thanks a lot. Staff say there's always a

reason why people walk out on their lives. I've been here for over four

years and I have no idea how many hundreds of different people I've

spoken to and I've never once had someone said, "I just fancied

leaving this morning". There's always a reason. It's never a simple

thing to just walk out. It's not an easy thing to leave everything

behind you. The reasons people leave are often complex. 16-year-old

Olivia Burton Taylor left home in February. Now number 1561, Olivia

Burton Taylor on Frosthills Jackaroo.

This is Olivia, four years ago, competing in the Horse Of The Year

Show. Her mother Louise won the stable yard in Kent. She and Olivia

used to be a team. -- runs a stable yard. I would come out here about

3am and get the ponies ready and everything and load them all up and

I would go and get her. She was still asleep. I would take her and

wrap her in a blanket and pop into the bed in the horse and we drive to

an half hours, three hours. We had brilliant times together. We were

really close. She never wanted to go anywhere without me, ever. And we

just did everything together. I just miss her so much.

Louise says her world began to fall apart two years ago, when she found

a love letter addressed to her little girl from a 25-year-old man,

sent from prison. What age was Olivia when you found the letter?

14. 14? And this is a 25-year-old man writing to her? How do you feel

when you find the letter? I felt sick to the stomach. I just couldn't

believe it. It is your little girl, your child. You know, how can a man,

possibly, a groan, adult man want anything to do with a little child?

Olivia was 15 when she first ran away with convicted criminal Jimmy

Connors. They were found after a police chase. Connors was charged

with child kidnapping but was found not guilty and Olivia ran away with

him again. The next time Louise saw Olivia, she was in hospital,

recovering after a serious car crash. She had ruptured her spleen,

smashed her arm and she had already had a major five-hour surgery on her

arm, with pins and plates. Mother and daughter met but there was no

reunion. I tried talking to her. She was just looking through me. It

wasn't my little girl. It was like somebody else was there. It was like

somebody else. Olivia has since run away twice

more. It is not unusual. 39% of people who come home will walk out

again. The experts say missing people need much more support when

they do return. There's no one necessarily out there that will pick

up this vulnerable person and work through with them what going missing

has meant, what caused it, what the experience was like and what happens

next. All children are supposed to be interviewed by local authorities

when they return home. But the service is patchy at best and

nonexistent for adults. We need help, guidance, education, public

campaigns around missing so that families are better able to talk

about those experiences, as people return. It was what we have heard if

there is just silence. So we need to do much, much better on point of

return. Back at Sawley, the search continues for 22-year-old Josh

Cotton. Josh, this is totally out of character for you. You've never left

the phone on the boat before. Please get in touch soon. His family make

an appeal on Facebook. I love you Josh, and I miss you. I just want

you to come home, Josh. His sister Abi has led the family's

search. They are getting more worried by the day because they have

discovered easy-going Josh was leading a double life. The police

have found along the way speaking to neighbours and residents that he's

been depressed. He hasn't been to work since December. So there was

fictitious Josh's life, bless him, where everything was OK, and then

reality, where it truly was in. The family knew none of this? He'd bend

out the odd few times I've seen them, said he just felt a bit down.

Everyone has down days. But I feel bad because I feel I should have

seen something or I feel I should have seen the signs. For him.

Divers, a helicopter and dozens of police officers from three forces

have been looking for Josh. Searching for missing people is

time-consuming and expensive. The police don't know how much they

spend each year. But one academic study has come up with a figure.

Well we estimated around ?800 million annually is the cost of a

missing persons investigation. It's three times more than robberies.

It's four times more than burglaries. It's at an incredible

cost to the police. Even with as much as ?800 million being spent,

police Chief Mike Veale admits they are still overwhelmed by the numbers

of missing people. We simply do not have the resources or the capability

or capacity to deal with so many missing episodes. It's almost

sucking the resilience of the police service at this moment in time. It

is shopping, the amount of time that we spend looking for missing people.

-- shocking. 152, two Sierra, just confirming

there is a missing person reported from the Royal Edinburgh. I am with

EE division in Edinburgh. Here, searching for missing people takes

up more police time than any other matter. This, the south side of

Edinburgh, it's probably one of the busiest places for missing persons.

We have two hospitals and they phone us often because patients failed to

return or they walk out before they have been seen. On top of that, so

many young children's units and their policy is to report kids

missing the minute they failed to come back at the time agreed. When

it gets reported, it is over to the police, really. Children in care are

three times more likely to run away than other kids. Is it difficult? Is

it difficult? It's one thing chasing bad guys, it's another thing looking

for maybe don't want to be found. Frustrating sometimes, yes. It is

the same... We have kids you have been reported 49, 50 times so far

this year. I would also like to check the CCTV and search the ground

around the hospital, just in case she is still there. Today, there are

11 officers on shift at Howden Hall station. Most are out looking for

missing people. We have two officers at the hospital looking at CCTV, two

going to her home address and another two officers going to the

hospital as well to supplement the first two. So six officers involved

in one missing case? Two involved in another case which has been

resolved. Is this typical? Yes, this is very typical. The night shift

gets even busier when vulnerable youngsters are more likely to go

missing. Report of a missing person? 15-year-old missing person reported

this evening about an hour ago by her mother. She was last seen about

9am by her mum, refusing to go to school. I've got SCT going down.

This time it is a child from the family home. It's the third time

she's gone missing this week. Police expect to find her safe but must

treat every report seriously. Despite the fact she has been found

safe and well on both occasions so far this week, we can't allow

ourselves to become an basin. What we have got is a 15-year-old girl

who has been reported missing at this time of night. It is our

priority to find safe and well soon as we can and return her home. -- to

find her. It is enormously challenging. There is an element of

frustration that creeps in. But over and above all that, our primary

function is to find these people and get them home. So it may or may not

be a long night? It could be a long night for them.

Back at the station, the scale of the problem is clear. Every officer

on duty is now looking for missing people. Between sleeping tonight and

coming back, a further three people have been reported missing in

Edinburgh. Two children and one adult. This is a typical night. The

15-year-old girl was returned to her family a few hours later. All others

who had been missing were also found safe. This is Andrew's bedroom. But

some families never get an answer. We have stored all our family photo

albums, because we thought, let's have all the nice memories in one

room. We have redecorated since he disappeared. We were conscious of

doing a cover which we thought he would be comfortable with if he came

back. Andrew Gosden was just 14 when he walked away from his home in

Doncaster. That was nine years ago, and his family haven't seen him

since. And this is his blazer? That was his school blazer. The tyre is

there as well. That is what he was wearing the morning he went missing?

That was the last thing I saw him wearing as he went out of the door.

Andrew was, or is, I wish I knew what tends to speak about him in,

very bright, very academically gifted. He was funny, witty. He made

me smile all the time. When Andrew's disappearance was discovered, family

and friends immediately started searching. People got in their cars,

people from the church had a look around the area whilst it was still

light. But it soon became apparent that we couldn't find Andrew. When

it started to get dark, we went back home and produced a leaflet, which

we took out the following day. So you had a leaflet in production

within three hours of the alarm being raised? Yes, with his

photograph on. Some leaflets were handed out at Doncaster train

station. Three days later, they heard from a woman who worked at the

ticket office. Andrew had bought a one-way ticket to London. We knew he

had gone to King's Cross. We need a platform number, time. We knew he

was on his own and that he was safe and well when he reached King's

Cross. But the trail quickly ran cold. It took three weeks for the

police to track down CCTV images of Andrew at King's Cross. These

pictures were taken on Friday the 14th of September, 2007. Andrew

exits the station and disappears into the city. It's the last image

the family have of their son. It's not the last image I want in a photo

album of our Andrew. It's just makes me really sad. Sometimes you look at

it and think, what on earth was going on in your head? Where we knew

going? What were you thinking about? The shocking truth is that nobody

knows exactly how many youngsters go missing each year. Her Majesty is

Inspectorate of can be say the police figures are unreliable. It

also says that police failings are leaving children who go missing at

risk of serious harm. We identified unacceptable inconsistencies in the

way that the police service deals with missing children. As a result,

children are being left at risk of harm and I are at risk of

exploitation, be it sexual expectation, economic or criminal

exploitation. This is a very serious issue. Do you accent that right now,

children are being left at risk? I fully accept that. That is quite

shocking, isn't it? Just to be able to say, we have a problem here. We

have got a problem here. My responsibility is to raise the

problem up the agenda so that we can have the same responses we are now

creating in relation to child sexual exploitation. I want missing people

to go up everybody's agenda, not of the police service, but the

government agenda and our local authority's agenda.

96% of missing people are eventually found safe and well. But sometimes,

the search doesn't have a happy ending. Is this the boat you would

normally use? This is the fastest boat you can row and still be able

to lift a 20 odd stone person straight over the gunwales. George

Parsonage has spent a lifetime searching Glasgow's River Clyde for

missing people. Can anybody have you taken from the River, do you think?

500 or 600. That is an awful lot. It is a lot, but that's a guess. You

don't count. What goes through your head when you bring the body to the

surface? There is a lot of relief. You have brought closure to the

family, and to see the relief on the family's phase is very rewarding.

But it can be very sad. George has spent thousands of hours searching

over the past 57 years. That is what we use. It's like a very small

anchor. It doesn't look much. Today, he's looking for an 18-year-old

woman who went missing on Friday night. Saturday morning, we started

the search. We searched Saturday, Sunday, Monday and yesterday. Are

you confident that she will be found? She will be found. How can

you be so sure? The river always gives up its dead. Three weeks

later, the river does just this when George recovers the body of

teenagers Sarah Goldie, the young woman he was searching for. 300

miles south, another river has also given up its secrets. We are on our

way to Leicestershire. I have just spoken to the family of Josh Cotton

and they are utterly devastated. They told me that last night, they

got a call from the police telling them that the body of the man

retrieved from the River Trent has been formally identified as that of

Josh. This is the spot. Oh, God, is it

really? Josh's dad and sister Abi have come

to the place his body was found just 48 hours ago. Josh was just in

there. The family now believe Josh was unhappy because he was being

bullied. Here you are, my little Josh. The police are not treating

his drowning as suspicious. Josh, I will read you a card I have done

you. " Dearest Josh, can't believe we will never see your face again,

or hear your annoying laugh. Gone, but not forgotten. Sleep well,

sweetheart. Until we meet again, resting piece, all our love always,

Abi, Johnny, Brendan, Harvey and your little smelly moo".

Why? Why didn't he speak to somebody? What on earth was so bad?

That's all you can think, why? That is going to be the killer question

for the rest of our lives. It's a big word. Why? For Josh's family,

the search is now over. But nine years after schoolboy Andrew Gosden

disappeared, his family still don't know what happened to him. It is the

not knowing that is the worst thing, because it just cycles round and

round and round your head the whole time, every single day. A new

missing strategy is due from the government later this year. It is

expected to deal with criticisms of the police, but will also look at

the responsibilities of other agencies. The factor of the matter

is that the number of episodes of missing is going up year-on-year. So

I would say by default, the summary could be that none of us are doing

as much as we could do, and we need to work gather to reduce that

number. 16-year-old Olivia is thought to be in north-east London,

and police are not just looking for her, they have got an arrest warrant

for the man she is believed to be with, convicted criminal Jimmy

Connors. I'm just living every day, wondering where she is. It's just

your worst nightmare. And the worst thing is, you never ever think it

will happen to you. It can happen to anyone, absolutely anyone. Even if

the police do eventually bring Olivia home, her mum knows she will

still have to find a way to persuade her to stay. She will come to her

senses, won't she, one-day? Do you think she will, really? Or will she

just live a life of misery with that bustard?

Sucked a waste of life -- such a waste of life, isn't it?