What if William Tyrrell was black?

WHAT IF WILLIAM TYRRELL WAS BLACK?

While we are still on the lookout for William, perhaps we have forgotten that 20,000 children are reported missing in Australia every year. 

You'd be living under a rock if you didn't know who William Tyrrell is. 

The smiley (then) 3-year-old boy in his spiderman costume captured the attention of the masses when he suddenly disappeared on 12 September 2014from the front of his parent's house while playing hide and seek. 

Anyone who is a parent (or not) most likely has sympathy for the Tyrrell family. It would be heart wrenching, gut wrenching, full of sleepless nights wondering what on earth has happened to your chid. The family still do not have closure as William is still missing without a trace. 

Police have grave concerns surrounding the disappearance. It is common knowledge that afterthe first 72 hours of a person's disappearance, if they are still not found, it is unlikely they will survive. 

Four years after his disappearance there has been no real breakthrough. Police have managed to find a toy in the bushland near the Tyrrell's residence in Kendall, NSW butit is unknown whether this toy is linked to William. 

The question is not whether or not you have sympathy for the Tyrrells... of course, most of us do. It just seems as though every now and then the public becomes infatuated with one particular case of a missing child. Another international example of this is Madeleine McCann. 

Dig a little deeper into our unconscious bias and then we may see why we are infatuated with the Tyrrell case. We can do this by asking some questions and by making some small changes in the circumstances...

What if William was Aboriginal? 

What if he was Muslim? 

What if he was poor? 

What if his mother was a single parent on benefits?

What if he was overweight?

What if he was non-Caucasian?

What if he was autistic?

What if he had down syndrome?

If the answers to the above questions changed, would it dim the level of media exposure? Maybe. 

But while we are still on the lookout for William, perhaps we have forgotten that 20,000 children are reported missing in Australia every year.Not all of those children have the same leverage with the media.

Many of these cases will mean that parents will never see their children again. 

William Tyrrell is one of 20,000.

Rahma El-Dennaouithe 18 month old Lebanese girl who went missing from her cot, had some media exposure but not to the extent of William Tyrrell. 

The reward for Rahma El-Dennaoui was $250,000.

Bradford Pholi went missing in 1982 as a 10 year old boy. His family was Aboriginal, but he has not been found to this day and the reward for him was a mere $100,000.

Currently, the price for information on William Tyrrell is one million dollars, but who decides this amount? and why hasn't this amount been evenly spread amongst other missing children? 

We cannot evaluate certain children as being 'worth more' than others. The NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Police suggested that this case was unique. This is the highest reward ever offered in NSW. 

That is easy to forget when we see pictures of him in his spiderman suit. We've personalised it. We empathise with the Tyrrells. We want him found. 

Every child deserves a chance to be found. Yes, the Tyrrells are suffering, but they are suffering like every other family that has a missing child. 

The media spotlight should be shared with other missing children particularly ones that are less known to the public. Our unconscious bias needs to be put aside, we cannot be selective when it comes to missing children and put different prices on children's worth.

They are all worthy of being found.

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