Ben Needham before he disappeared

TWENTY years after Ben Needham was snatched his mother opens her heart

HER voice faltering, Kerry Needham is still trying to get her head around the ­unexpected events of last week.

That was when Tom Cruise joined in the battle that she has been tirelessly waging for 20 years – the search to find her ­missing son Ben, who vanished as a flaxen-haired toddler in 1991. 

Ben’s is one of the longest-running missing person’s cases in British ­history but his search has never received the same level of publicity as that of Madeleine McCann and it is one that Kerry has often felt she has had to fight alone, unaided by the authorities. There were times in the early days when she was so distraught she sought to take her own life.

So when Cruise lent his celebrity weight to her campaign last week – joining in a 24-hour Twitter marathon, “tweet 4 Ben”, set up by an official appeal website – she was overcome with emotion.

The Hollywood actor helped spread the word of Ben’s disappearance by sending a tweet to his 2.4 million ­followers on the social networking site. Other stars who joined in ­backing Kerry’s campaign included fellow US actor Tom Arnold and British actress Kym Marsh.

“I was taken aback,” says Kerry from her home in Sheffield. “I was shaking when I saw what was ­happening. There were so many ­people wanting to help find Ben. Among them were these top names from Hollywood to Coronation Street. I just couldn’t believe it.

“There was a message that Tom Cruise has ­re-tweeted. It was like a different world. It was unreal. It shows that people, whoever they are, care.”

Although it has been 20 years since Ben disappeared on the Greek island of Kos, where Kerry and her parents were living, she has never given up hope that her son will be found. She thinks Ben might have been abducted and sold to a family who could not have children of their own.

“I never think that he might have been murdered,” says Kerry, 39. “It crossed my mind years ago but the feelings that I have for him, every single day when I wake up, drive me on. If I thought for one minute that he wasn’t out there I’d give up. Something in my heart and mind keeps telling me to carry on.”

She concedes, however, that Ben – who would now be 22 – would not recognise her. “I’ve spoken to psychologists who say he will have some childhood memories but he won’t know where they have come from. He would probably have ­flashbacks but wouldn’t be able to relate them to anything.”

Ben disappeared as he was playing in the sunshine near the doorway of his grandparents’ remote farmhouse on Kos.

Kerry, then a 19-year-old single mother, had left her son in the care of his grandparents while she went to work at a hotel and they had only taken their eyes off Ben for what seemed like the blink of an eye when they could no longer see him. After frantic searches they informed the police but none of the family has seen Ben since.

“I remember it vividly,” says Kerry. “My initial thought was, ‘Well, he can’t be far away, he’s only 21 months old’ but my mum was absolutely heartbroken. She was sobbing uncontrollably but I was just trying to think of where he could have gone. Your first feelings are disbelief.

“We went back to the farmhouse and were shouting his name but there was nowhere for him to hide – there were just vast open fields with a few ­scattered farmhouses. Not for one minute did I think somebody could have taken him. I just thought that someone could have found him wandering and maybe taken him in until they could find us.

“It didn’t dawn on me then that someone might have abducted him but slowly you realise it’s getting very ­serious. But you’re in a mess, a daze. It feels like a nightmare – you’re not sleeping, you can’t think straight.”

It hardly helped that instead of shutting down airports and docks immediately, the Greek police instead decided to ­question the Needham family, viewing them as prime suspects. Kerry adds: “I was distraught and thinking, ‘Why aren’t you doing anything? You’re pointing the finger at me. Why aren’t you out there looking for him?’ It was so frustrating.”

EVENTUALLY the authorities eliminated the Needhams as suspects and started searching in earnest but not without a delay that might have given kidnappers a chance to get Ben off the island. “More should have been done by the Greek police and also the British authorities,” says Kerry, who felt ­exasperated. “I’ve written to every prime minister we’ve had since but no one has seemed interested.”

After Kerry’s family moved back to the UK Kerry found it impossible to cope and made several attempts to commit suicide – by slashing her wrists and taking an overdose.

SDLqI was feeling very alone, even though I had my family around me. It was sheer desperation. I just wanted the pain to end so badly.

“Now I’m a lot stronger but then I was a young girl and not very confident. I’d been brought up in a little village near Skegness, Lincolnshire, and didn’t have much self-esteem. Having a child at 17 was hard enough and then this happened. I just wanted a way out.”

Kerry briefly reunited with Ben’s father Simon but they separated after Kerry gave birth to their daughter Leighanna, now 17.

“It was a very difficult decision to have another child,” she says. “It was my counsellor who said it might help. I was having nightmares and hallucinations. I could hear Ben crying in the night and I’d get up and go to the bedroom thinking he was in there. All my motherly instincts were there but I had no child to see to.

“When Leighanna was born I remember thinking it was better that she was a girl because she could be her own person. I sometimes think I’ve been over-protective of her but I’ve tried not to wrap her in cotton wool.”

While Kerry has devoted herself to looking for Ben she has often felt let down by the lack of support. Recently however she has received more positive news. At the end of last year the Greek authorities ­re-opened the case and South ­Yorkshire police have visited Kos to liaise with them. Last week’s internet appeal backed by Tom Cruise has also brought Ben’s plight to a wider audience.

Kerry says: “I would never have given up on Ben anyway but now things are happening which give me even more hope. The most pain-free image I have is of Ben living with a family who wanted a child so badly that they had to resort to desperate measures. I hope he has been looked after and loved. I can’t allow myself to think of any other situation because if I thought for one minute that he was suffering that would send me insane.”

For more information and ways to support Kerry visit www.helpfindben.co.uk  

YEARS OF SIGHTINGS 

OVER two decades there have been more than 300 sightings of boys thought to be Ben. Most of them were reported shortly after he went missing but others have been prompted by computer-generated images produced over the years suggesting how Ben might have looked at the ages of 10, 13, 18 and 20.

“It’s an ongoing process of getting your hopes up and then being dashed,” says Kerry Needham, Ben’s mother. “There are not as many alleged sightings now – maybe five or six a year whereas earlier there were probably 30 or 40. We’ve investigated as many as we can – hundreds and hundreds.

“Sometimes, especially when Ben was younger, the public took pictures of fair-haired children with very Greek-looking parents, which they thought was suspicious.

“Sometimes I’ve seen a photo and been on the next plane out there.

“It is emotionally exhausting. When it’s bad news it’s one of the most heartbreaking feelings that you can have. You think, ‘This is it! This is the one! It’s not going to go on much longer.’ When it turns out not to be him it’s like losing him again. I relive the day he vanished all over again.”