imagine having life’s most precious
gifts stolen from you and never knowing
who how where or why parents have
abducted children live this nightmare
every day as they suffer ambiguous loss
not knowing the whereabouts or fate of
their missing child we are all familiar
with the case of William Terrell that
little three-year-old boy who vanished
without a trace from his grandmother’s
home in Kendall New South Wales four
years ago but there are so many more
cases of missing children which aren’t
in the public spotlight and are in
danger of being forgotten one of those
is five year old Rene akin who was
kidnapped from her home in a rumor New
South Wales 34 years ago Rene shared a
bedroom with her older brother who will
work early on the morning of the 17th of
February back in 1984 to discover a naze
bed was empty and the back door wide
open I was a similar age to Rene
when she was snatched from her bed and I
lived in a town only an hour away but on
this particular night as I lay safe in
my bed
someone stole this little girl from her
family and she has never been seen since
she didn’t get the chance to grow up
but sadly William and Rene are just two
of the 2,600 long-term missing people in
Australia an equally confronting
statistic is that it is estimated that
there could be up to five hundred sets
of unidentified human remains
Australia many of which have been
some of our missing children amongst
these bones which have never been
identified many relatives have said that
if they had to make the choice between
seeking justice or bringing a loved one
home they would choose to locate their
with the help of DNA testing the parents
of Matthew Leverson and Daniel Malcolm
were able to do just that as the
forensic DNA specialists tasked with
pioneering a new DNA identification
laboratory in New South Wales a few
years ago I became aware of the
magnitude of unidentified and missing
persons cases across the country and
armed with that knowledge I have become
a self-declared forensic humanitarian
committed to finding and advocating for
a solution to this silent mass disaster
I am convinced that modern DNA
technology is the answer to restoring
the names and faces of many of these
Australians so a couple of years ago I
embarked on a Churchill fellowship
travelling across three continents solo
for six weeks to investigate how other
countries are using DNA technology to
identify they’re missing the fellowship
was a life-changing experience both
one of the most transformative parts of
the trip was spending time in Bosnia and
Herzegovina learning how the
International Commission on Missing
Persons developed the world’s largest
DNA identification program for missing
persons
in the wake of the Yugoslav wars in the
1990s which left up to 40,000 people
mostly men and boys unaccounted for so
what I experienced as I traveled across
this country were the residual sights
sounds and smells of one of the most
heinous human rights violations in
history the genocide in Bosnia saw
thousands of children victimized and
left thousands of mothers searching for
their missing sons and the emotions this
stirred were amplified by the fact that
I had to leave my two and a half year
old son and ten month old breastfed
so I’m now passionate about ensuring
that the personal sacrifices I had to
make to complete that journey like
missing my daughter walk for the first
time or expressing breast milk in
toilets all over the globe if I had any
chance of feeding my baby on my return
do contribute to changing the state of
play for the underserved and
under-resourced missing-person sector
I need my children to understand that my
time away from them then and many we can
sense is driven by my desire to help the
long list of families whose children
have been missing for decades and for me
it’s also about knowing that if one of
my children were missing the processes I
am championing to put in place would
ensure the timely identification of
their remains and resolution of my
so my mission was to devise a list of
recommendations for implementing an
Australian DNA identification program
for missing persons so simply if we are
able to recover DNA from the hundreds of
untested bones DNA matching could reveal
their identity and determine if they are
some of the thousands of long-term
missing people what I observed overseas
is that DNA technology is being used
successfully to identify large numbers
of victims of war genocide migration
terrorism and natural disasters yet very
few countries have implemented a DNA
testing program specifically for routine
missing-persons cases I am recommending
we establish a dedicated facility for
missing persons case work this facility
would have the human physical and
financial resources to forensic ly
examine and identify all of our archived
human remains cases also a new national
DNA database capability has just been
rolled out which will facilitate the
National searching of DNA profiles from
unknown deceased individuals missing
persons or their relatives so this means
that parents with a missing child who
live in New South Wales can now have
their DNA routinely searching against
the DNA from bones recovered anywhere in
Australia but database is only as good
as the data that’s in it that is why
it’s vital we now populate this database
with DNA profiles from all of our stored
bones and all of our long-term
people or their relatives in order for
identifications to be made tasmania’s
oldest missing persons case was solved
earlier this year after DNA testing
revealed that bones located at the base
of Mount Wellington back in 1972 were
those of Joyce Baxter Joyce was a 43
year old mother who had been missing
since 1955 an identification was only
possible after all this time because DNA
which had recently been recovered from
her skull was able to be compared to
Joyce’s living daughter we’ve also begun
to exploit areas of DNA that can predict
their ancestry and physical appearance
of an individual imagine if we could
apply this new technology to humanize a
box of bones so inform an investigator
that these remains are those of a female
missing person of European ancestry with
blond hair blue eyes and fair skin this
could provide new investigative leads
when all traditional avenues of inquiry
have been exhausted or it could add
color to the facial reconstruction of a
skull DNA testing is cheaper faster and
better than it’s ever been making a DNA
led identification approach a bloody
good option but of course there’s a cost
associated with it the exemplary
missing-persons programs across the
world are government-funded the
University of North Texas center for
human identification has received almost
40 million dollars in national institute
of justice funding since 2004 so that’s
about a million dollars a year to
provide free D
testing services for any missing persons
case in the US has that been money well
spent over 2000 missing people have been
identified with the assistance of DNA
so should the Australian Government fund
a similar national center for human
identification to analyze the remains of
all of our nameless Australians and
determine if any of our long-term
missing people are represented amongst
the deceased and in the process solve
some of Australia’s most baffling cold
cases crowdfunding initiatives are also
becoming considered a viable alternative
to shift casework backlogs for example
in California they slap the two-dollar
compulsory fee on death certificates to
fund their missing person’s DNA program
in generous Texans can now make a
voluntary donation towards the testing
of sexual assault kits when they renew
their drivers license there’s even a
charity in the u.s. called the DNA doe
project which is collecting public
donations so that law enforcement
agencies with tight budgets can use
genetic genealogy services to try and
Lauren O’Keefe the fearless founder of
the missing-persons advocacy network
charity here in Australia believes that
corporate partnerships are an untapped
resource for sharing the faces and
stories of the missing and lessening the
financial impact on those families
searching for them whilst connecting the
corporate partner with a large chunk of
the consumer market especially when we
consider that close to half a million
Ozzie’s are affected by the
disappearance of a relative friend or
colleague every year
even for a short time period so should
we be considering public corporate or
philanthropic sponsorship for this
identification effort regardless of how
these gets funded the longer we
deliberate about a path forward for
these remains the more degraded they
will become so we need to be taking
action now at the Australian facility
for taphonomic experimental research
coloca Lee known as the Sydney body farm
selfless Australians are donating their
bodies to science so that we the
forensic scientists can improve DNA
testing from degraded bones surely the
least we can do as living human beings
is commit as many resources as required
to identify our missing Australians and
ensure they are not forgotten so here is
my call to action establish a National
Centre for human identification
exclusively for Missing and unidentified
persons cases old and new commenced a
national DNA testing program for the 500
collected DNA reference sample from all
2,600 long-term missing people or their
relatives regardless of how long ago
their family member vanished
how distantly related they are or even
if they need to be exhumed and we need
to populate the national DNA database
with every single one of these DNA
profiles to facilitate the effective and
efficient DNA identification of our
the use of DNA testing for law
enforcement purposes will continue to
spark debate around the protection of
our civil liberties our privacy and our
human rights but are we violating human
rights by not affording every deceased
Australian a proper forensic examination
to establish their identity and cause of
death so they can have a dignified
burial families can get the answers they
so finally to all those involved in
investigating missing persons cases
let’s ensure we are utilizing forensic
DNA testing to its full potential to
help identify all of those children lost
and found and in the process solve some
of Australia’s most baffling cold cases
and hopefully one day we will you
reunite William and Rene with their
families I know if one of my children
were missing I would want no stone
unturned no resource spared no DNA
untested if it meant bringing them home
dead or alive thank you
[Applause] [Music]
gifts stolen from you and never knowing
who how where or why parents have
abducted children live this nightmare
every day as they suffer ambiguous loss
not knowing the whereabouts or fate of
their missing child we are all familiar
with the case of William Terrell that
little three-year-old boy who vanished
without a trace from his grandmother’s
home in Kendall New South Wales four
years ago but there are so many more
cases of missing children which aren’t
in the public spotlight and are in
danger of being forgotten one of those
is five year old Rene akin who was
kidnapped from her home in a rumor New
South Wales 34 years ago Rene shared a
bedroom with her older brother who will
work early on the morning of the 17th of
February back in 1984 to discover a naze
bed was empty and the back door wide
open I was a similar age to Rene
when she was snatched from her bed and I
lived in a town only an hour away but on
this particular night as I lay safe in
my bed
someone stole this little girl from her
family and she has never been seen since
she didn’t get the chance to grow up
but sadly William and Rene are just two
of the 2,600 long-term missing people in
Australia an equally confronting
statistic is that it is estimated that
there could be up to five hundred sets
of unidentified human remains
Australia many of which have been
some of our missing children amongst
these bones which have never been
identified many relatives have said that
if they had to make the choice between
seeking justice or bringing a loved one
home they would choose to locate their
with the help of DNA testing the parents
of Matthew Leverson and Daniel Malcolm
were able to do just that as the
forensic DNA specialists tasked with
pioneering a new DNA identification
laboratory in New South Wales a few
years ago I became aware of the
magnitude of unidentified and missing
persons cases across the country and
armed with that knowledge I have become
a self-declared forensic humanitarian
committed to finding and advocating for
a solution to this silent mass disaster
I am convinced that modern DNA
technology is the answer to restoring
the names and faces of many of these
Australians so a couple of years ago I
embarked on a Churchill fellowship
travelling across three continents solo
for six weeks to investigate how other
countries are using DNA technology to
identify they’re missing the fellowship
was a life-changing experience both
one of the most transformative parts of
the trip was spending time in Bosnia and
Herzegovina learning how the
International Commission on Missing
Persons developed the world’s largest
DNA identification program for missing
persons
in the wake of the Yugoslav wars in the
1990s which left up to 40,000 people
mostly men and boys unaccounted for so
what I experienced as I traveled across
this country were the residual sights
sounds and smells of one of the most
heinous human rights violations in
history the genocide in Bosnia saw
thousands of children victimized and
left thousands of mothers searching for
their missing sons and the emotions this
stirred were amplified by the fact that
I had to leave my two and a half year
old son and ten month old breastfed
so I’m now passionate about ensuring
that the personal sacrifices I had to
make to complete that journey like
missing my daughter walk for the first
time or expressing breast milk in
toilets all over the globe if I had any
chance of feeding my baby on my return
do contribute to changing the state of
play for the underserved and
under-resourced missing-person sector
I need my children to understand that my
time away from them then and many we can
sense is driven by my desire to help the
long list of families whose children
have been missing for decades and for me
it’s also about knowing that if one of
my children were missing the processes I
am championing to put in place would
ensure the timely identification of
their remains and resolution of my
so my mission was to devise a list of
recommendations for implementing an
Australian DNA identification program
for missing persons so simply if we are
able to recover DNA from the hundreds of
untested bones DNA matching could reveal
their identity and determine if they are
some of the thousands of long-term
missing people what I observed overseas
is that DNA technology is being used
successfully to identify large numbers
of victims of war genocide migration
terrorism and natural disasters yet very
few countries have implemented a DNA
testing program specifically for routine
missing-persons cases I am recommending
we establish a dedicated facility for
missing persons case work this facility
would have the human physical and
financial resources to forensic ly
examine and identify all of our archived
human remains cases also a new national
DNA database capability has just been
rolled out which will facilitate the
National searching of DNA profiles from
unknown deceased individuals missing
persons or their relatives so this means
that parents with a missing child who
live in New South Wales can now have
their DNA routinely searching against
the DNA from bones recovered anywhere in
Australia but database is only as good
as the data that’s in it that is why
it’s vital we now populate this database
with DNA profiles from all of our stored
bones and all of our long-term
people or their relatives in order for
identifications to be made tasmania’s
oldest missing persons case was solved
earlier this year after DNA testing
revealed that bones located at the base
of Mount Wellington back in 1972 were
those of Joyce Baxter Joyce was a 43
year old mother who had been missing
since 1955 an identification was only
possible after all this time because DNA
which had recently been recovered from
her skull was able to be compared to
Joyce’s living daughter we’ve also begun
to exploit areas of DNA that can predict
their ancestry and physical appearance
of an individual imagine if we could
apply this new technology to humanize a
box of bones so inform an investigator
that these remains are those of a female
missing person of European ancestry with
blond hair blue eyes and fair skin this
could provide new investigative leads
when all traditional avenues of inquiry
have been exhausted or it could add
color to the facial reconstruction of a
skull DNA testing is cheaper faster and
better than it’s ever been making a DNA
led identification approach a bloody
good option but of course there’s a cost
associated with it the exemplary
missing-persons programs across the
world are government-funded the
University of North Texas center for
human identification has received almost
40 million dollars in national institute
of justice funding since 2004 so that’s
about a million dollars a year to
provide free D
testing services for any missing persons
case in the US has that been money well
spent over 2000 missing people have been
identified with the assistance of DNA
so should the Australian Government fund
a similar national center for human
identification to analyze the remains of
all of our nameless Australians and
determine if any of our long-term
missing people are represented amongst
the deceased and in the process solve
some of Australia’s most baffling cold
cases crowdfunding initiatives are also
becoming considered a viable alternative
to shift casework backlogs for example
in California they slap the two-dollar
compulsory fee on death certificates to
fund their missing person’s DNA program
in generous Texans can now make a
voluntary donation towards the testing
of sexual assault kits when they renew
their drivers license there’s even a
charity in the u.s. called the DNA doe
project which is collecting public
donations so that law enforcement
agencies with tight budgets can use
genetic genealogy services to try and
Lauren O’Keefe the fearless founder of
the missing-persons advocacy network
charity here in Australia believes that
corporate partnerships are an untapped
resource for sharing the faces and
stories of the missing and lessening the
financial impact on those families
searching for them whilst connecting the
corporate partner with a large chunk of
the consumer market especially when we
consider that close to half a million
Ozzie’s are affected by the
disappearance of a relative friend or
colleague every year
even for a short time period so should
we be considering public corporate or
philanthropic sponsorship for this
identification effort regardless of how
these gets funded the longer we
deliberate about a path forward for
these remains the more degraded they
will become so we need to be taking
action now at the Australian facility
for taphonomic experimental research
coloca Lee known as the Sydney body farm
selfless Australians are donating their
bodies to science so that we the
forensic scientists can improve DNA
testing from degraded bones surely the
least we can do as living human beings
is commit as many resources as required
to identify our missing Australians and
ensure they are not forgotten so here is
my call to action establish a National
Centre for human identification
exclusively for Missing and unidentified
persons cases old and new commenced a
national DNA testing program for the 500
collected DNA reference sample from all
2,600 long-term missing people or their
relatives regardless of how long ago
their family member vanished
how distantly related they are or even
if they need to be exhumed and we need
to populate the national DNA database
with every single one of these DNA
profiles to facilitate the effective and
efficient DNA identification of our
the use of DNA testing for law
enforcement purposes will continue to
spark debate around the protection of
our civil liberties our privacy and our
human rights but are we violating human
rights by not affording every deceased
Australian a proper forensic examination
to establish their identity and cause of
death so they can have a dignified
burial families can get the answers they
so finally to all those involved in
investigating missing persons cases
let’s ensure we are utilizing forensic
DNA testing to its full potential to
help identify all of those children lost
and found and in the process solve some
of Australia’s most baffling cold cases
and hopefully one day we will you
reunite William and Rene with their
families I know if one of my children
were missing I would want no stone
unturned no resource spared no DNA
untested if it meant bringing them home
dead or alive thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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