Torment of parents with lost loved ones abroad

By Julia Citron

BERLIN (Reuters) - Erica Duggan treasures her son's black canvas wallet, found with his body at the side of a busy highway in Germany four years ago. It is one of the last tangible connections she has with him.

Like Kate McCann, who clutches her missing four-year old daughter Madeleine's pink toy cat at news conferences, Duggan is holding on to the shreds of evidence of a child she lost in mysterious circumstances.

But unlike Madeleine's disappearance -- which triggered a massive search campaign backed by high-profile figures including David Beckham, J.K. Rowling and Pope Benedict and pledges of over 2.6 million pounds in reward money -- 22-year-old Jeremiah's death has gone largely unexplored.

The British student was attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany and telephoned his mother in a state of panic, saying he was "in big trouble" around 35 minutes before his body was found.

Any parent would be desperate to find out what happened, but the ordeal is worsened by the difficulties of dealing with a foreign system.

"We are people in torment," Duggan told Reuters by phone from London, where she lives. "There is the terrible suffering because of the loss, but in addition, there is all the pain of being in a foreign country because you don't have the support which you need."

Unlike Madeleine's case which attracted international media coverage, financial backing and political support, most such cases go unheard of.

The UK National Missing Persons Bureau estimates 210,000 people are reported missing each year in Britain alone, of which around four percent are missing abroad.

According to Marsha Gilmer-Tullis from the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: "Nobody knows how many children go missing abroad worldwide. There are very few statistics."

HURDLES

Faced with practical hurdles like language barriers, red tape and spiraling lawyers' fees, many parents lack the means to stop their child's case from fading into obscurity. Many more still lack the means to mount a campaign in the first place.

"Even with the best will in the world, I don't see how you could start a battle without money," said Briton Tim Blackman, who organized a high-profile campaign to find his daughter Lucie, 21, who went missing in Japan in 2000.

"A flight to Tokyo costs around 1,300 pounds," he said.

Erica is still campaigning to have her son's death investigated: German police declared it a suicide and did not look further, as suicide is not considered a crime in Germany.

A retired teacher, she had to sell her house to fund the campaign: "Those funds ran out. Now I rely on donations.