Author Description

The blurry CCTV footage picks up some small children skipping, walking, wearily making their way home from school. A bigger figure in a white top and dark trousers approaches one such traveller. This tiny child is walking alone. He or she, we can just make out, is dressed in something dark, and has a pink school bag slung over their shoulder. It is, we can just about deduce, a young girl.From this distance it is only by studying closely that we can hazard a guess at the gender of either character. But by straining hard we eventually tell that the taller figure is also female. Working out this much takes longer than the running time of the footage we are watching. The process we witness lasts just eleven seconds. There is no violence, no struggle. Even so, we have watched an abduction. The camera, though, could just as easily be recording an older brother or sister approaching their sibling. They could be simply catching them up to talk or just walk them home. Those eleven seconds look that innocent.But they changed lives forever. If we possessed the technology to improve the picture quality of that footage one hundred fold, and to zoom in, we would see that the larger figure is little more than a girl herself. She is eighteen year old Terri-Lynne McClintic.