Australian Story: April 26

Monday’s Australian Story revisits “Forever Young” an update on the 1987 disappearance of Ursula Barwick.

This episode is introduced by Loren O’Keeffe, founder of the Missing Persons Advocacy Network.

A litany of errors and a blatant lack of investigation by NSW Police has been laid bare during evidence at a recent coronial inquest into the disappearance of Ursula Barwick.

The bubbly 17-year-old vanished without a trace in 1987.

Her family dropped her to the train station on the NSW Central Coast, where she was headed to Sydney to start a new job. But they never saw her again.

Police failures in Ursula Barwick’s case were first raised in an Australian Story program in 2019. Evidence presented to the Coroner last month upheld many of the family’s concerns and documented a trail of errors and missed opportunities to piece together what had happened to her.

“We now know through the evidence from the inquest that the missing persons report that Pete put in, there was no record of it. It appears that there was no investigation into her disappearance from day one,” says stepmother Liz Barwick.

Despite the evidence being available to locate Ursula weeks after she disappeared it took police 29 years to connect the dots.

“This inaction, this carelessness has led to three decades of absolute unnecessary, preventable torment for the family,” says Loren O’Keeffe from the Missing Persons Advocacy Network.

In the wake of widespread criticisms, the NSW Police Force launched a new Missing Persons Registry in 2019 and have updated procedures in relation to missing persons cases.

Monday 26 April at 8pm on ABC.