Missing boy’s impersonator only doubles pain for hopeful family

Only in the last few years have posters of missing young people been wrapped around lampposts in Ireland, accompanied by friends and family handing out leaflets in the street in the sadly wilted hope that some stranger will remember something.

Most of those posters show girls and boys in their late teens or early twenties, whereas, in the US, milk cartons carry photographs of children as young as four, in some cases alongside pictures, computer-enhanced, of some approximation of how they might look today. Which, in turn, hammers home the length of time they have been missing.