Suzie Ratcliffe grew up in the shadow of sadness. During an Australian rules football game at Adelaide Oval in 1973, her sister Joanne, 11, and family friend Kirste Gordon, 4, disappeared during a visit to the toilet. Alongside the disappearance of the three Beaumont children from an Adelaide beach in 1966, it became one of South Australia’s most impenetrable mysteries. “My mum, Kathleen, used to say, ‘You can’t move on, it doesn’t get easier,’” Ratcliffe, 47, tells WHO. “She learned to live with that pain.”
It’s an agony suffered by thousands of families in Australia. Each year, 38,000 people go missing, and while most cases are solved within the first week, there remain more than 2000 long-term missing person cases in Australia.
In 2005, Sydney toddler Rahma el-Dennaoui went missing…
