When 16-year-old Damien Nettles disappeared, his mother Valerie Walker was too afraid to leave the house. She stayed inside waiting, convinced that every set of footsteps outside meant her son was finally coming home.
But Ms Walker is now 73, and on 2 November, it will be 30 years since she last saw her child. With no meaningful leads and a stalled investigation, she fears she may never learn the truth about what happened to him before she dies.
Damien’s disappearance devastated his entire family and caused his parents and three siblings’ lives to be irrevocably altered. “Thirty years is going to be hard to swallow,” Ms Walker said. “But so was 29 years, so was 28 years, and so was one year.”
As The Independent has raised £165,000 to launch SafeCall – a free new service to help missing children find support and safety no matter what – and continues to raise more, we spoke to Ms Walker, who still hopes she will one day find out what happened to her son.
Donate here or text SAFE to 70577 to give £10 to Missing People – enough for one child to get help.
Damien’s grandparents and uncle died not knowing what happened to him, and Ms Walker fears she will face the same fate too. Even now, she still keeps his teddy bears in his room and hangs up his stocking at Christmas.
“I don’t buy him presents anymore because one year I found the presents from the year before,” she told The Independent.
“It doesn’t go away, it’s on my mind all the time and it’s worse because we have no conclusion as to what happened. It’s an open sore.”
Damien, a “kind and funny” Isle of Wight teenager, went to a party with his friends on a wintry Saturday night in 1996.
His mother had given him a curfew of 10pm, which he persuaded her to push back to midnight. She thought she didn’t have to worry about Damien, as the island was a small place where everybody knew everyone.
Damien and his friend left the party and began walking home at 10.30pm, but after taking separate routes, Damien returned to town to look for his older sister Sarah.
CCTV captured him at Yorkies Fish and Chip shop in Cowes at 11.40pm that night, and shortly after, he was seen walking alone on the high street in footage which Hampshire Police later lost.
When Ms Walker realised he wasn’t in his bed the next morning, she had assumed he was staying with a friend. But as the hours wore on and Damien didn’t come home, she knew something was deeply wrong.
After filing a police report, Ms Walker said she was told that Damien would be home by tea time and that his disappearance was something “all boys do at the age of 16”.
She claimed the first 48 hours of his disappearance, vital in a missing person investigation, were not taken seriously by the police and the family had to launch their own search party and obtain CCTV themselves.
While the investigation ticked on for several years, and still remains open today, Ms Walker feels Damien’s case was always sidelined.
She is now living 5,000 miles away in Texas, in the United States, but still makes every attempt to get any answer that she can.
Not one day has gone by that she hasn’t thought about Damien. “It’s terrible, it’s horrible, it’s altered the shape of our lives,” Ms Walker said. “Damien came first. It’s always been Damien. I think about him every single day. It doesn’t go away.”
Without any answers, she worries that her children, who have had to grow up without their brother, will be left with the legacy of his disappearance.
In 2011, police arrested eight people, but all suspects were later released without charge.
“Someone is going to have to walk in their door and confess before [the police] are going to do anything,” Ms Walker said.
“I would much prefer for somebody to tell me where he is so we can go find him, and I can bring him home, and I can give him a funeral, and I’ll have a spot where he is so that I can go and visit.
“I’m not going to give up hope, I’m always going to have a glimmer of hope. I can only hope that if there is a heaven, I’ll find him up there.”
Detective superintendent Nick Plummer from Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said: “Our shared objective with the Nettles family remains finding out what happened to Damien.
“We understand the concerns raised by members of the Nettles family about the standards of our initial investigation. A complaint was received in 2016, where two elements raised were upheld following an investigation. A detailed apology was subsequently provided to Damien’s family.
“It’s important to stress that this is still an open case and any new credible information will be explored for any viable lines of enquiry.”
Please donate now to The Independent and Missing People’s SafeCall campaign, which has raised £165,000 to create a free, nationwide service helping vulnerable children find safety and support.
For advice, support and options if you or someone you love goes missing, text or call the charity Missing People on 116 000. It’s free, confidential and non-judgemental. Or visit missingpeople.org.uk/get-help
