My main comment about this is to ask how a person can go missing for weeks in Canada and nobody reports him missing? What kind of services and support do they have for people with disabilities? Did this man use those services, and if not why? If he he did use those services why did not people notice that he was gone. Did they feel it was their responsibility to do so?

What can we do?

In my church they did a recent survey of the membership and over 40%  come to church, while 30% live alone.

What should we do when we notice people missing? Can we assume they have just decided not to come to church anymore? What if they are not members and we do not know there phone number? or if we do have there phone number what do should we do if they do not answer?

Many of course have family and jobs, but some do not. 

We have many members that live a lone and come to church alone who have disabilities. Recently I became friendly with a man who had just started attending church. He came every week for a month and then he was gone. It turns out he had died. He had a roomate so he was found soon after dieing.

If you were kidnapped or died how long would it be until someone thought it important enough to go looking for you?

I also wondered why no one had noticed him gone. 

So often when people live alone there is no one checking on them.  They could be hurt and ill for days and alone.

One group who does keep a eye on things are postal workers.  they will call in if mail is not picked up and they know the person is elderly.

when i saw the title of this thread, i was going to make a joke about how just being in hamilton is torture, but wow... this is really disturbing to read.

as far as the 'how long til someone notices me missing' question, i'm a homemaker, so i imagine that after a few days the family would notice the laundry piling up, and start to wonder.

It's depressing to know that in a city in Canada someone can go missing and not notice.

If we do not know how to look out for those who are vunerable here, how are we going to get Canadians to notice and care about those in the rest of the world.

At least after they rescued this man, it was considered newsworthy.

Every see a headline saying "500,000 women die after childbirth this year" due to lack of access to a.50 cent pill that stops bleeding after giving birth.

I think my family would soon notice if I were not around to make meals, look after grandchildren, do laundry, etc.  and my husband would notice if the car was also missing (we are down to one car).

In my former little church we had a pastoral care committee.  Each member of the committee was assigned 6 to 10 families.  In theory at least they were to contact and keep in touch with these families - arrange at least one visit a year, talk to them at fellowship hour, check in on them if something seemed to be wrong, notice if they were missing for more than one or two Sundays (two Sundays would be a long time for someone kidnapped and tortured), deliver their newsletters, etc. and so on.  It was a small congregation and most of the people who attended regularly soon knew everybody.  Still, I'm aware of some people who slipped through the cracks - stopped attending for one reason or another and six months or a year later somebody would mention "what ever happened to so-and-so, I haven't seen them for awhile."

I now belong to a much bigger congregation.  I've recently been asked to join the Pastoral Care committee - I wonder what my duties will be?  If I am assigned families I hope to be able to contact them and keep in touch.

In this city many mentally handicapped people have jobs under an organization that places the mentally handicapped person in the workplace.  One man so placed works stocking shelves at the supermarket; another does the photocopying and runs errands at City Hall; another makes beds at a motel; another is a school crossing guard.  If they didn't show up for work - I would hope that their employer would find out why.  One of the advantages of having a job.

This is just horrible. I feel so badly for this man. It highlights the importance of making sure people are involved in the community in any capacity.

I believe in the ultimate goodness of humanity and trust that most people try to do the right thing...I am a bit naive or quixotic, I suppose. How can this kind of cruelty happen?

Turns out this fellow has a mother living in Alberta, and that he did talk to her a few times, and once he even told her 'he got beat up' - (understatement of the year).  Then he said 'but my friends are taking care of me'.  some friends.

Hamilton has its share of awful stories, and the northend is a sad, tired place.  

If I may, it is also the responsibility of the community to watch out for those that can not watch out for themselves.  IMHO, this is how this kind of cruelty happens. 

We turn our eyes from the plights of others, focusing only on ourselves or small inner circle.  We should be more aware of those who are in desperate need of help.

Someone somewhere along the line of this young man's life would have recognized his need, contacts to social services could have been made, invitations to support groups.  So often we assume that people do not seek help because they don't want it, but the reality for some is they just don't know how or where to look.

As a society we must stop assuming and start asking questions.

LB

Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.    

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

While this is disgusting and sick, that it happened in Hamilton is no surprise. While I live in Winona (which is really just a part of the "thriving Metropolis of Hamilton") I am glad I live far from the city center. When we moved from the escarpment, I wanted to move farther like, to Tuktoyaktuk.

Some of the posts here are quite glib (just living in HAmilton is torture, or people would notice someone missing when the laundry piles up) and I'm sad that Hamilton  has in some shifted the focus from the poster's original question.

Let's not forget that sadism and sickness can thrive anywhere, especially if two or more like minded people join together. REmember PAul BErnardo and KArla Homolka? THey met in Toronto and practiced their brand of sadism in St. Catharines.

It almost seems that if you can say something like this  happened in HAmilton, then you must be safe if you live somewhere else. Vulnerable people get abused and neglected everywhere, not just Corktown. Your next door neighbour or the person next to you at church could be a sadistic sociopath but you'd never know if they don't show you that part of themselves.

eands. Do you live in Hamilton?

I tell you. I felt safer living in Winipeg than I do Hamilton.

People with developmental disabilities are at much higher risk for abuse...sexual, physical and emotional.

As the parent of a profoundly disabled child this is something I worry about as my child grows and may eventually have to live in an arrangement outside of my total control.

Sadly our society is highly individualistic and while we talk about being a village we don't necessarily always act like a village.  We worry about things like invasion of privacy and our own busy overwhelmed lives.  In cases of disabilities we also worry and how and when to offer help and how such offers will be received.

This story breaks my heart.  It really, really does.  It screams that we, as a society, need institutite many, many more informal and formal structures to ensure the well being and safety of people with disabilities (and in some cases their families and primary caregivers).

I grew up in HAmilton and live about an hour away. I've lived exactly half my life here. I left thinking it was the worst city on earth and was even embarrassed to tell people where I was from. But now I am homesick and find people there to be kinder, more polite, more compassionate and less self serving or shallow. LAst weekend my mother almost died and so I drove down for several days. THere were more yucky neighbourhoods than I remembered, in fact it seemed I was driving alot before entering a neighbourhood I would want to live in. But I tell you,  overall it's still a place I would come home to. People there are often rougher around the edges, maybe because it's a factory town, I don't know. Yet they're right up front with you about who they are, and you know where you stand there. WHere I live now, everybody pretends to be richer, nicer, more important than they are. THere are maybe as many impoverished areas as H-ton, but people pretend they aren't here. ANd there've been a couple of similar stories that shock and are inexcusable, but they get ignored.

The man in Hamilton was in touch with his family by phone but when asked what was going on he would hang up or else they did.  His parents are no good and he ws a ward of the province. 

We really need to see these people punished.  Now his mother after not seeing him for 12 years is coming for him.  I suspect only because there are dollar signs in her eyes. She should be ashamed to admit she hasn't seen him in twelve years. She is going to make him his brothers responsibility  not hers.  She is only looking for money.  Somebody needs to step in and make sure this young man is kept safe.  His parents will never do that for him. Where was his social worker. 

He was a ward of the province until he turned 18 then he was put out into the world and left on his own with no idea how to live or take care of himself. Somthing needs to be done here