Website offers hope to parents of missing children
It was also the day Rory Aherne, who lived in the shadow of the stadium, went missing.
Twenty years on, his disappearance remains a mystery, with no definite sightings or leads.
Rory, 16, left his home in Drumcondra at 8pm that Sunday.
"We assumed he was going to meet his friends," his mother Brigid said, as a website was launched yesterday that shows what Rory would look like now, aged 36.
For Ms Aherne, it's hard to see her son as anything other than the skinny teenager who left the house on September 23, 1984.
"I don't think much of it," She said of the age-enhanced image that stares out from the new website, www.missingkids.ie.
"I don't think it is much like Rory. Rory was very thin. But they got his hair colour right, his red hair."
Rory is one of eight missing children featured on the website. Four disappeared many years ago, the others in more recent times.
Ms Aherne is hopeful her son is still alive "We hope he's safe and happy and doing well, that he just wanted to get away off. It's easier to think like that," she said. Another mother has no
illusions that her daughter will be found alive.
Bernadette Breen is the mother of Ciara, 17 when she went missing from her Co Louth home in 1997.
She does not believe her daughter is alive but feels the website has a role.
"I have no illusions what is waiting for me. I hope this photograph might twig the conscience of someone. My daughter was a teenager when she disappeared. This is an image of a young woman I never got to know," said Ms Breen.
Of the eight featured on the site, four are non-national children who went missing more recently.
Lisa Nwole was 16 when she disappeared two years ago. Her mother Angela has heard nothing from her since. "I was in prison waiting to be deported when they came to tell me that she was missing," she said.
Lisa told friends she feared being sent back to Nigeria and that was the reason she disappeared.
Angela a mother-of- five whose deportation is pending legal action does not understand why Lisa does not get in touch.
"Please come home," she pleaded yesterday.
By chance, on the day the website was launched, one of those featured was found. Madalina Rosu, 16, was recognised as she stepped off a boat at Dublin Port. She had been missing since April.
