Runaway child: 'How can a kid disappear from the face of the earth?'
By Anna Moore
Last updated at 8:00 PM on 23rd May 2009

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When Andrew Gosden was 14, he left home without warning. Despite national TV and radio appeals, poster and e-mail campaigns, he has not been seen since. Here his father Kevin talks about how the family is coping, while others close to Andrew explain what effect his disappearance has had on them
Andrew Gosden: the photo that appears on his missing posters


The Gosdens live on a long terraced Doncaster street – in a house pretty indistinguishable from those on either side, or from a thousand others in streets all over Britain.

Only the posters in the living room window mark it as different, posters that will flip the heart of any passing parent. They show photographs of a bespectacled boy, smiling, messy hair flopped over one eye. ‘Missing – can you help?’ reads the headline. Andrew’s father put one up the day after his 14-year-old son’s disappearance, expecting him back in a week – at most a fortnight. Time passed, the poster yellowed and was replaced by another. Then another. Now, 18 months on, the ones on display are laminated.
If you’d stepped inside this house two years ago, you’d have found the perfect family – the kind supposedly now ‘dying out’. Dad and mum were speech therapists, Kevin working with brain-injured adults and Glenys with special needs children.

They lived modestly, bought nothing on credit, and gave 15 per cent of their income to charities. Though committed Christians, they chose not to have Andrew and his sister Charlotte (now 15 and 17) baptised, as they wanted them to be free to choose for themselves. (And when both children opted, in their teens, to stop going to church, there was no argument from their parents.)

Glenys and Kevin Gosden

The Gosdens ate together as a family. Charlotte and Andrew have probably already visited more British museums and places of natural beauty than most UK adults. Until relatively recently there was no computer in the house, nor pressure from the children to get one. Just three months before Andrew went missing, Kevin had bought a computer for Charlotte’s birthday, to help with her A-levels.

Andrew rarely got a look-in, and had neither an e-mail address nor a mobile phone. The children were huge readers and high achievers. Both brilliant mathematicians, both singled out by their school to join the government’s Gifted and Talented scheme, which aims to stretch the top students. Both Oxford or Cambridge bound.

Yet, on 14 September 2007, Andrew returned from school after his parents had gone to work, and changed out of his uniform. He emptied his bank account – taking around £200 – and without leaving a note went to Doncaster station and bought a one-way ticket to London King’s Cross (refusing a return even though the cost was about the same). The last sighting of Andrew is CCTV footage from King’s Cross station – a slight boy dressed in dark clothes, a shadow moving out of his former life, vanishing on to the streets of London.

Today, stepping inside the house he left behind, you’ll find a home-in-waiting where, rather than pulling together, each family member is clinging to a different survival strategy.

On the Saturday we meet, Glenys, 44, is off to man a fair-trade stall outside Sainsbury’s. She is busy, bustly, offering tea but clearly uncomfortable with telling her story to yet another stranger.

Last year, she decided she couldn’t face any more press interviews since each one left her feeling more bereft. Though she did receive counselling, it has since ended, and she continues to work.

The missing posters in the Doncaster house's window



‘Glenys might kill me for saying this,’ Kevin, 43, tells me later, ‘but I think she’s more depressed than she acknowledges. She will say, “I’m coping,” and she’ll

There was a possible sighting of Andrew just a week or two ago in the Southend-On-Sea area,please will you look out for Andrew if you live in this area and if you see Andrew please give him my phone number,I desperatly need to talk to Andrew.Thank you.xx

0161 819 2292

07881893295

Andrew,
If you see this website and would like to talk,please contact me.
I only need to know if you are safe,well and most importantly happy.
I promise you faithfully that I do not belong to the Police, Missing Persons,your family or any other organisation,
Im just someone who spends my time raising awareness to your situation.

I never judge Andrew so please contact me and we can talk,reverse the charge if nessarsary.

Bernie 0161 819 2292

Keep safe sweetheart.x