Murder and missing persons at the office : dealing with grief, uncertainty and trauma

A word of caution : this topic will inevitably be triggering and traumatic to some. Please proceed carefully, and make sure you have someone to help you if you need them.

Shootings, hate crimes, accidents, a pandemic...are enough for us all to wonder how safe we really are. The more people you know, I find, the more what happens anywhere in the world affects you. And yet, we rarely, if at all, speak about how statistics alone, the cold, hard numbers, influence us in daily life - including at work.

Hate crimes are on the rise - but even without them, even excluding shootings, domestic and other terrorism, the pandemic and targeted behaviour that results in suicide or suicide attempts, like bullying, the world can be a dangerous place. From time to time, news reach us of missing children, murdered women. Men who went somewhere and never returned. Elderly who vanished without a trace in suspicious circumstances. The list goes on, and it always did...and to some extent, it likely always will. No amount of safety measures, whatever you feel those to be, can 100 percent prevent crime, because there will always be people who want to hurt someone else. All we can do, I hope, is to lower the numbers.

But numbers are still people. They are a someone - not just an awkward smile in a birthday or wedding photo or a grainy snapshot, used to showcase humanity, to make these people less than numbers, to make us remember them in case we see them or hear about them in ways that can assist the investigation. They are spouses and partners, parents and caregivers, someone's children, someone's schoolmate and work colleague. And often, we forget that a disappearance or a death can touch more people than we think - colleagues, for instance, may become very close, forming real bonds and deep friendships, and thus, someone else's misery certainly touches them. Equally, blood family is often preferred to the chosen family by society, and given preferential treatment where grief or expected grief is concerned, despite the fact that sometimes, a person may have little to nothing to do with their blood kin due to abuse, and so much more with anyone who represents their chosen family - people who love and accept them for them -, but that fails to be perceived by society as a "real" family. This can mean that those people are given less time to heal and less help to do so, because their feelings are not expected and therefore seem out of place. Minorities, too, can end up treated that way, because their very existence is presented as out of place and therefore an emotional reaction isn't "allowable".

Unlike other forms of PTSD, that related to violent death or disappearance is somewhat different. PTSD from events that were harrowing, that hurt us badly, can definitely have flareups on significant dates or incidentally, when we meet with a trigger, but it is to be hoped that it will be at least lessened. Those with complex PTSD, survivors of multiple and/or prolonged periods of traumatic events, may learn to live with it until they are highly functional, which, ironically, can be a detriment, because when we do meet with a trigger, it may come as a surprise to those who thought we were "normal"; still, it can be lived with and with proper help, we can thrive. But nothing can change an event, especially an unresolved event. A disappearance or a murder is scarring in ways that very few if any other events can be. They are bewildering, agonising. And they cast long shadows.

For many, the initial investigation doesn't end anything. Even if a body is found, the circumstances might be such that closure is impossible. A family, a friendship, may be torn apart by suspicion (even unfounded) or by an actual deed. And, solved or unsolved, but especially unsolved, the case can drag on. A month. Two months. Several months. A year. More than a year. A decade. All while dreading the moment, in unsolved cases, when the investigators will give up to devote resources to other, more recent cases...cases that stand a chance of being solved quickly. Those cases will bring closure to someone, or save someone's life; but those with cold cases in their lives will be left with none.

Put that into context at work. If a loved one is murdered or disappears, we tend to put all our energy into them in some way, because nothing else makes sense. This is as human a reaction as someone who tries to simply go on because their coping mechanisms may be different...like someone trying desperately to preserve a semblance of normal. Whichever way we end up adopting, it is almost impossible that the case will not weigh on us in some way. After all, there is a hole where someone used to be in our lives. Even a colleague. But the sad truth is that, not only does this come with a hierarchy of who is expected to grieve, it also comes with an expectation of cessation.

Surely, grief must stop at some point, and we can go on, right?

In reality, going on is complicated. Not only can an active investigation, or struggling to keep the investigation open, influence our lives for a prolonged time, as can the associated emotions; every year, there will be multiple times when we are disrupted by memories that can become triggers because of the unresolved trauma. A birthday, a graduation that goes past without them attending, significant anniversaries in their lives, significant dates in the investigation, and of course the date of murder or disappearance itself, can be torturous. There is no limit to grief, no expected due-by date humanity abides by, though we certainly make spirited social attempts to do so, condemning some for experiencing grief when we think they should not and others when we think they should be. This will not only influence our work on and around those dates. We may also have to face people who, like ourselves, are reminded of the incident by the date. Maybe they are a curious neighbour or perhaps a local newspaper remembers our story. Maybe there is a similar case that makes people say, by the way, that other case...

And there is another side to this, which I consider to be on the rise and even darker than just the usual mess of condemnation, suspicion, trauma and misunderstanding combined. The rise of true crime genre has made tragedy a commodity. Human misery is often perceived as a sort of real-life drama, maybe a reality show, for users to consume. This may mean all kinds of associated negative behaviours, ranging from "sleuths" who think they are called to solve the crime to harassment of people who have had some form of connection to the case; that can be because someone forms a suspicion about a person or persons involved (and on the internet, it is very easy to create an echo chamber of those who support a "theory") or because of morbid fascination with grief, the place, the victim(s) and their home and family and friendship circle. Events that should terrify us are presented as useful fodder to gather followers, and almost treated as a campfire tale aimed to give a little fright for amusement and to create an Other to a group that feels its cohesion because it is frightened. Stalking and disrupting of victims' loved ones is no longer odd. It's all, it would seem, a game, and one that never ends, because there is always another source, another murder, another disappearance, another obscure "mystery". This, in itself, can influence how (and how well) we not only process our trauma, but also cope with life after the event, not to mention create unpleasant (and I would say potentially dangerous, especially in cases where conspiracies develop about it) situations that we may need to get through over and over again.

A murder or a disappearance does not happen simply. It is not linear, it is not a single event. Rather, it is complex in more ways than I can discuss here, and it leaves more secondary and tertiary victims than we are often capable or willing to acknowledge. At the same time, however, we may always find ourselves in a situation where we directly knew a victim or are connected to one in some way. So, while this list isn't exhaustive, here's a few dos and don'ts for the office should you find yourself in that situation.

DOS:

• even if you count as tertiary victims (people who are in some way associated with the event), treat the event seriously. It will influence everyone in some way; therefore, being prepared for that fallout makes good sense.
• consider and reconsider how well your workplace offers help. Not only will a person likely need all the help they can get if they are a secondary victim (so directly influenced, eg by death or disappearance of a child), others may be triggered by the event in some way, eg parents may feel anxious about their children, or someone may be triggered by an assault that resulted in death. Treat all people with respect and compassion - do not create a hierarchy of who has the "right" to feel what and for how long.
• consider and reconsider your bullying and hate speech policies. Especially crimes against minorities can result in bad jokes, apologism and threats when someone feels ideologically upset by another person's experience and grief. It is necessary to have a no tolerance policy for this eventuality, but I also suggest counselling. People can become aggressive and standoffish when they come, often for the first time, face to face with factual results of beliefs that they often had instilled in them very early on. This can make anyone feel unsafe, uncertain, aggressive because they suddenly do not know where they stand. Alternatively, with hard-core hate crime supporters, an event and their reaction to it should be your warning bell for what potential problems your office and office culture may be facing in the future, let alone during the event. Most people, whatever they believe, are at least somewhat capable of empathy when something terrible happens. Beware of those who do not.
• offer compassion; don't push people into it
• offer to help in any way possible, be it by redistributing the work load during the worst times or even by actively helping put up missing posters. How and how far you can help is often different, as you may need to consider the wishes and discomfort of those directly involved, as well as the investigation itself.
• remember that even once a lot of time has passed, it's never really over for those most involved. Be mindful and respectful of times someone has it hard because of a trigger.

DON'TS

• don't try to act as if nothing happened, deny it happened or bully the secondary/tertiary victim(s) into not reacting to or discussing the event. Not only is that deeply wrong and inhumane - you will just add to the tension. When a bad event happens, acknowledging it makes it easier to survive and deal with the trauma involved.
• don't allow for the event to become trauma tourism. What that means may differ in context - it may be someone getting "invested" in the case and harassing a co-worker for some reason, or offers of sympathy that are not sincere, but aim to raise an emotional reaction instead; it may also be someone new in some way trying to get to "facts" after years have passed.
• don't force people to open up. Give them the option and the psychological safety to do so, but don't try to push. How and when we open up is personal and depends on how well we can cope.
• don't judge how someone responds to trauma. People are different.
• don't allow for the event to become activist fodder for someone. As it is, even sincere expressions of sympathy can be clumsy, expressed poorly or come at a wrong moment; but when an event that is traumatic for someone is promptly picked up by another person who deems themselves an activist, the results can be dire - not only does this suddenly upend the events in a confusing, painful way, an activist may also try to get involved in how the situation is being handled or get angry if the person does not see the event the way they do. In rare cases only, when someone can use their connections to actually help, can activism like this be of use. Otherwise, it's just another form of trauma tourism
• don't allow for the event to be ridiculed, politicised and otherwise twisted to serve any form of divisive argument at the office (see hate speech under DOS). The situation is bad enough; it can only get worse, with longer shadows, if it becomes a matter of ideological disagreements or plain hate speech.
• don't try to get people to behave as if nothing happened when time has passed, or get impatient with them when they have bad moments or days. Put yourself in their shoes and try to understand.
• don't let the secondary/tertiary victim become a matter of hushed, hidden conversations. While nobody likes to be introduced with "this is X, they lost their...two years ago", eventually, new employees will likely stumble upon the story. Treat the story as you would any sad story - with calm respect and by sticking to facts you know. Make it brief. That should make the message clear - this is private.

We likely all know someone or of someone who has been a victim of a crime or has loved ones who were. While crime often seems faceless, it's not, and once we acknowledge that, it's perhaps easier to understand that we are all involved with how we deal with it. But I think it takes conscious reminding of ourselves, in this day and age of true crime consumption, that this is not an elating kind of second-hand celebrity, but a sombre fact instead...a fact that whispers, this could as well have been us.