Anybody in Bloomington for more than about 5 or 10 minutes will immediately figure out that somebody named Lauren is missing, thanks to the posting of 10,000 fliers on everything from empty store fronts, random lamp posts, and everything else you could imagine.
She’s been missing since June 3, 2011, and her family is seeking to take advantage of classes restarting to paper the town with fliers reminding people of her disappearance and asking people to come forward if they have the slightest bit of information about her – and that a small thing could make a big difference in the police investigation.
Now for sure, I know nothing.
But what fascinates me is that Lauren’s Mom doesn’t seem to realize that she’s hurting her own cause at getting information. My distinct impression is that Mom needs to stop talking – or at a minimum, since she seems incapable of stopping, change her message.
To me it really comes across in a letter that she wrote to students begging people to put an “ICE” (In Case of Emergency) contact in their mobile phones (which is good advice) and that,
You owe it to yourself to choose your friends wisely and know that they will do the right thing if you need their help.
My distinct impression after reading this letter, and an article in the Bloomington Herald Times, is that, basically speaking, Mom is accusing Lauren’s friends of not protecting her.
Let me be clear here, lest there is any room for misunderstanding: nobody should go missing and that this really is an awful situation. I feel for Mom, Dad, and the rest of Lauren’s family and friends.
However I don’t think it’s particularly wise for Mom to go out and explicitly say that you need to choose your friends wisely because the message I got is that Mom thinks that Lauren’s friends are not worthwhile friends – perhaps even bad friends.
I would suspect that this kind of message from Mom is probably inhibiting the very people that she needs and wants to come forward from coming forward.
Think of the depths of anguish and suffering parents are forced to endure when a child goes missing. I know the panic and dread of losing sight of my own for a couple of minutes on a crowded street full of shoppers. Just imagine that stretching out to weeks, months, years even, never knowing where they are, never being able to grieve because you don’t know whether you should – not getting closure, basically. Through it all, I seriously doubt I’d be able to stay focused and, in desperation, would probably start clutching at straws. I think that’s what these people are doing, and I understand it completely.
I guess she feels they’re not going to help her at this stage anyway. She’s accusing them of a “heinous crime” so it sounds like she has little hope of getting her daughter back. I’d say she’d try anything and everything to get her back, even if that’s – as Ian says – clutching at straws. I’d be clutching every damn straw I could find if I was in that situation.