This article contains references to child abuse.
One winter's day in 1993, Rose (not her real name) recalls her mother throwing a few belongings in a bag, carrying her down the stairs and racing to the Nissan Bluebird parked outside their house.
"She's got this resolve and this look in her eyes. I'm in the front seat unbuckled, she's just shoved me in the car," Rose told The Feed.
"We are driving out of our street — and we can see him coming in the opposite direction."
Rose remembers her father, red-faced and angry, driving a different vehicle. She alleges he swerved in front of their car, trying to block them from leaving, narrowly avoiding a collision.
"I thought I was going to have a heart attack. My heart was bumping in my mouth, and I was just absolutely petrified," Rose said.
"My mum's just going through red lights and he's following us. And then, finally, we lost him."
That's how Rose was abducted by her mother at five years old.
Rose and her mother lived a life on the run after she was abducted, changing their identities. Source: Supplied
For the next 14 years, Rose would spend a very unusual childhood living as a missing person. It still haunts her to this day.
"I didn't know what was true and what was false, and I spent more time with her, and I had to live in her reality to survive," she said.
"It was a lot of isolation, a lot of coercion, manipulation — very cult-like."
What is parental abduction?
Parental abduction — also known as parental child abduction — is when one parent takes or keeps a child without the other parent's consent.
Family lawyer Gabriella Pomare from The Norton Law Group in Sydney said she's seeing more and more parental abduction cases, including parents taking children interstate or even overseas.
"This is a significant issue, particularly when parents are in breach of court orders and where a parent is seeking to disrupt a child’s relationship with their other parent by removing them," Pomare said.
"I just finished a trial last week in a matter where this occurred and the children were returned to Australia."
Rose’s parents had split up before the abduction, with her mother becoming her primary carer. But Rose said her mother always resented her father being given visitation rights by the Family Court, and painted him as an incompetent parent.
Moving constantly, Rose and her mother often stayed in share houses or properties rented under the names of her mother's boyfriends. Source: Supplied
Rose's mother maintained she left the relationship after allegedly finding child pornography material hidden in his office. Rose suspects this was a lie, but she can neither confirm nor deny it.
Not satisfied with the amount of time he spent with Rose, her father would secretly visit her at school. Rose believes her mother started hatching a plan to go missing after finding out.
"My mum was like, 'I'm going to go to jail for this, but I've got to save you … he's a bad person'."
After the pair disappeared, newspaper reports from the time said federal police issued a warrant for her mother's arrest and Rose's return. Despite an extensive investigation, the police never found them.
Rose's father made efforts to find her over the years, making several appeals in the media.
Gabriella Pomare is a lawyer specialising in parental abduction cases, working to return children home to Australia. Source: Supplied
If taken overseas, the child can be returned via the Hague Convention, an international agreement that protects children from abduction.
Although parental abduction is a crime, it can be justified in some situations.
"A parent may have a legitimate defence if they abduct the child to protect them from immediate harm, such as domestic violence," Pomare said.
"Acting in self-defence or to protect the child's safety can also be considered a valid defence."
Life on the run: Living as a missing person
Growing up as a missing person, Rose remembers living in share houses strictly paid for in cash, and a drawer at home filled with wigs and disguises.
"We were pretty skint and also had no Medicare card, no access to healthcare, no access to bank accounts," she said.
Her mother had a fake driver's licence and birth certificates made. Rose was only allowed to play in the park at night to avoid being seen.
Rose said she lived in constant terror of being caught by the police.
Rose says her childhood was isolating and "cult-like". Source: Supplied
Rose changed schools at least once a year, and due to the constant moving, found it impossible to make friends. Occasionally, they would pack up their car and start a new life in a different state.
Growing up as a missing person, Rose remembers living in share houses strictly paid for in cash, and a drawer at home filled with wigs and disguises.
Her world shrank to one person: her mother.
"I was deeply attached to my mother, but also terrified of her," Rose said.
"The way my mum reacted, if I ever questioned anything or was in any way insubordinate or didn't buy into her reality, the consequences were so dire that it was life-threatening.
"She would scream and shout and berate and go off the handle and be in a frenzied mania of anger, and it would be relentless hours and hours and hours of it … there was no one else for me to turn to."
Rose said her mother was not physically abusive, but would punish her by pretending Rose didn't exist for days on end. At other times, she would act erratically.
"The lady who wouldn't give her a refund at the dress shop, she rotten-egged her house and collected my poo to throw at her house," Rose said.
"She decided that one of the kids at my school, she just really, really hated him. She got me up in the middle of the night and was like, 'We are going to go and f- - - [his] house up'.
"We drove up there and she put prawn heads in the letterbox … and we drew pentacles [a five-pointed star often associated with witchcraft] on the bitumen outside of his house."
Looking back, Rose said it was clear her mother desperately needed mental health support.
The lady who wouldn't give her a refund at the dress shop, she rotten-egged her house and collected my poo to throw at her house.Rose
"Her depression was really intense and very lonely for me, because I knew she needed help and I couldn't reach out to anyone," she said.
"I was very afraid of misspeaking at school and getting caught in our big lie and outing her."
Who goes missing?
It's hard to track the number of parental abductions that happen in Australia — but they make up a tiny proportion of people who go missing.
The AFP says a missing person is defined as anyone who is reported missing to police, whose whereabouts are unknown, and there are genuine fears for their safety or concerns for their welfare.
Less than one per cent of missing person reports made in Australia are related to abduction, and around 20 per cent of those cases are parental or family abductions, according to child safety non-profit The Daniel Morcombe Foundation.
The federal attorney-general's department tracks international parental abductions involving Australian children — the department finalised 173 international family law matters in 2023-24.
Sarah Wayland, a professor of social work and missing persons researcher at CQUniversity, said parental abductions are sometimes viewed differently to other missing persons cases.
"A lot of people say, 'Well, at least they're with one of the parents, and they're probably fine'," she said.
"It can be almost like a double type of loss … because their child is missing to them, but the rest of the community says, 'Well, it's not that bad a loss'."
The number of people who go missing overall is on the rise: around 50,000 people are reported missing each year to police across Australia, according to the AFP.
"In the early 2000s … there were 15,000 reports made each year in Australia … so it's a pretty significant increase," Wayland said.
While there's no solid data on why there are more missing persons cases, Wayland said it intersects with trends around mental health, family dysfunction, cost of living and homelessness.
Sarah Wayland spent years providing counselling and support to the families of missing people at the NSW Governmen't Families and Friends of Missing Persons Service. Source: Supplied
"In the last five years we've lived through COVID, significant climate change, there's a lot of political instability around the world. I think that people are struggling, and I think sometimes that going missing is the only solution for some people to disconnect from life for a while."
Two-thirds of people who go missing are under 18, as they try to assert their independence. Wayland said other groups at risk include young adults who are experiencing significant mental health crises, as well as people living with Alzheimer's disease or dementia who wander off.
It's rare for someone to go missing forever — over 99 per cent of people who go missing are located, per the AFP.
If someone is missing for more than three months, they're classified as a long-term missing person — currently, there are more than 2,500 in Australia.
Wayland said it's rarer still for someone for be found alive and well after going missing long-term — they're usually either found deceased, or their family never finds out what happened to them.
"That person being located and then having to re-enter life … we actually don't really know enough about those circumstances, about how to support the person," Wayland said.
"How do you connect the dots with the parts of life that you might've missed out on, and what it might be like to come back again?"
Making up for lost time: Returning to society after going missing
Shortly after becoming an adult, Rose walked into a Centrelink office and told staff she was a missing person — to much less fanfare than she'd been expecting.
"I was like, 'Yeah, I'm a missing person, and I've been missing for 14 years, and I really need help'," she said.
"Just like Centrelink, they never break their blank expression there, they didn't give a damn. I really thought after all of this ordeal, the saga, that it would've been a much bigger deal."
Despite her mother's fears, it was frustrations like not being able to get into a club or go to the doctor that undid Rose's resolve to live as a missing person for life.
"I just couldn't keep being a missing person. I really, really tried, and I just couldn't. I dreamed of having the opportunity to go overseas or drive a car or just have a bank account," she said.
"I was celebrating for days for having a bank account … I just really was revelling and belonging in society again, it meant so much to me."
It took years for Rose to rebuild her identity. She's now 37, and expects the psychological impact of her childhood will affect her for years to come.
"There is a real sense of having missed out on growing up like everyone else my age … I … grew up in this cult-like isolated environment," she said.
"I missed out on having friends from childhood, and I missed out on growing up in a family, and I missed out on having a place that is where I'm from."
Rose's relationship with her mother became strained after she stopped being missing. The two had on-and-off contact, until her mother died a few years ago.
After all those years of absence, Rose eventually got hold of her father's phone number and called him — "He basically fell off his chair, of course!"
"I went to his house and he showed me this huge bookshelf, and it was just crammed with photo albums … they were all pictures of me … up to four, I think he documented every laugh, smile, every bath, every experience," she said.
"He never gave up, he never stopped looking and he never had any other children. And it was his great grief of his life that he didn't get to know or raise his daughter."
A different kind of grief
Rose and her father kept in touch for six months, but don't have a relationship today.
"It was difficult after all that time being indoctrinated to hate him and to believe that he was a really bad person, I just couldn't switch that off," she said.
"I think it's just too painful to think about. It's too emotionally sensitive, and I know it's not fair for him, but I am not in a place where I could deal with that."
Wayland said it can be difficult for families to make up for all that lost time.
"It's not just about reconnecting with the relationship, but the person who's older, what they've been through, all of the milestones that you might've missed, if there's been births or deaths or marriages in the family," she said.
For those who never see their missing loved ones again, it can be difficult to move on from the grief.
"It's an unresolved loss where there was no goodbye … it almost acts as an open wound for a long period of time," Wayland said.
Rose doesn't want you to think this is a story about mothers being the "bad guy".
"My mum was mentally ill and really needed support."
Readers seeking support can ring Lifeline crisis support on 13 11 14 or text 0477 13 11 14, Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged 5 to 25). More information is available at beyondblue.org.au and lifeline.org.au.
Anyone seeking information or support relating to sexual abuse can contact Bravehearts on 1800 272 831 or Blue Knot on 1300 657 380.
More information about missing persons is available on the National Missing Persons Coordination Centre website: missingpersons.gov.au.
