Missing persons advocate: Melissa Pouliot

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The day I first met the staff in the Australian Federal Police National Missing Persons Coordination Centre set me on a path I could never have predicted. The support they have provided during the search for Ursula and then with the discovery that she had been found means more to me than I can put into words (and that’s saying something!). Although they do not play an investigative role, they were able to provide information that helped me navigate through the complex missing persons space. It was a privilege to be invited to sit down with them and share my journey and my passion for continued advocacy for missing people – this is what they wrote.

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Melissa is a woman who wears many hats; wife, mum of three, cricket mum, dance mum, media company owner, outdoors lover, book lover and keen mountain bike rider. You would think she wouldn’t have much time to relax, but around her busy schedule, Melissa manages to write crime fiction novels and speak around the country advocating on behalf of families of missing persons.

Ursula Barwick

Melissa has strong personal ties to the issue of missing persons. In 1987, when she was just 15 years old, her cousin Ursula went missing. She was on her way to the ‘big city’ to follow work and after her family said goodbye to her at the train station, they never heard from Ursula again.

Melissa’s relationship with Ursula was that of very close cousins. Melissa recalls how growing up on a farm meant that as kids, they would spend their days picking blackberries, riding motorbikes, camping and picnicking. They would ‘pack a lunch at the start of the day and head for the hills and come back at night’. They would share many chats and memories together, but it is the specific conversations that Melissa finds hard to recall. “I wish we had some recordings of her talking and laughing, as I have her voice in my head but it’s so long since I’ve heard it out loud… I miss her.”

During the many years spent searching for answers, Melissa said it was a difficult process. As she was quite young at the time of Ursula’s disappearance, she felt a very strong sense of powerlessness in being able to find her.

It took Melissa’s family 30 years to discover Ursula’s whereabouts, and a fresh investigation which started in 2014 ended last year with confirmation from police that she had sadly died in a car accident shortly after going missing.

Day for Daniel

It is this experience that clearly defines Melissa and her passion for helping others. As an advocate for missing persons, Melissa speaks regularly and is a Day for Daniel Ambassador. By generously sharing her personal insights, she hopes it will help others going through a similar uncertain journey. “I turned to writing as a creative outlet to help me work through my emotions, which I had buried for a really long time until I published my first novel inspired by Ursula in 2013, and spoke publicly about her for the first time. I really need something to help me get through the renewed investigation for her, and that’s where writing became such an essential part of my life.”

Melissa created a successful book series based on fictional characters. With five novels published, and now working on her sixth, they help her step away from her real life trauma. Drawing on her own experiences, her fast-paced novels are helping people all over the world better understand the confusing and emotional rollercoaster of having a missing loved one.

Ambiguous loss

When asked what she would like to pass on to the many families of long-term missing persons dealing with ambiguous loss, Melissa says:

The main message I try to pass on is to never give up hope. I really held onto that strongly through the past five years and that’s what drove me forward to keep speaking up for Ursula.

“The hope was initially to honour her memory and that was my driver. Then it became clear there were things that weren’t looked into, and it became hope for fresh eyes on her case. The hope kept transferring, shattering and swinging around, but I had to try to reinvigorate it continually in the hope we would discover the truth.

“Hope isn’t just one word, it doesn’t mean one thing. Hope is the pillar of small wins along the way.”

Further to everything she has so far accomplished, Melissa is running her successful business, MP Media Solutions, which aims to support her clients work and celebrate their successes.

This year she has volunteered her time to help her home community of Tathra after the devastating fires that tore through the small coastal town in March, and has collected thousands of new books to replace lost home libraries through the “Book Love for Tathra” campaign.

With so many balls in the air and such a selfless and friendly personality, Melissa is a truly inspirational person who has turned what was such a devastating loss into a lifetime of advocacy and community service with a focus and passion like no other.

We can’t wait to see what is next for Melissa Pouliot.

The letter that helped family find lost Ursula Barwick 30 years later

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NMPW, Missing Persons, Ursula Barwick, Found

This article first appeared in the Canberra Times, then Sydney Morning Herald, September 30, 2017

By Michael Inman, Canberra Times

Ursula Barwick’s simple decision to change her name for her new city life allowed her to disappear in 1987. But that new moniker also provided a hint about her whereabouts.

“It was like she was leaving little clues for us,” her cousin, Melissa Pouliot, says.

Barwick had moved to Sydney to find work and visit friends. But the city lifestyle wasn’t the only change for the 17-year-old country girl from Quirindi, on the NSW north-west slopes, who adopted the name Jessica Pearce.

She was with her new friends – who knew her only as Jessica – when she died in a car accident on the Hume Highway, near Tarcutta, in October 1987.

As far as they knew, Barwick had boarded a Sydney-bound train on the NSW central coastsoon after her 17th birthday, and disappeared.

The pain of losing her cousin never left Pouliot, who poured her experience into crime novels about a missing teenager.

“Initially thinking it was too late to solve the mystery of her disappearance, my quest started as a way to honour her memory,” she says. “To show her, no matter where she was, that I had not forgotten about her, I had not stopped missing her, I had not stopped searching for her.”

Her first novel, Write About Me, started as a way to honour Barwick’s memory, but it helped spark a fresh investigation that found her after almost three decades.

“It just exploded from there,” Pouliot says. “An amazing groundswell of support followed, and it soon became clear that Ursula wanted to be found.”

The Merimbula-based author contacted the National Missing Persons Coordination Centre and asked it to update the website with correct information. “The colour of her hair, eyes and the date she went missing were wrong.”

Pouliot says she didn’t have high hopes but thought she would feel better if the details were correct. She then collected more information from family and friends and gave it to police in a spreadsheet.

As a result, the case was reopened through Taskforce Hemingway. “It was like a tap was turned on.”

However, it wasn’t a smooth process. The investigation started and stopped, and encountered a number of dead ends, including a tip that Barwick had worked at a Randwick pub.

The shifts in momentum brought on “a real yo-yo” of emotions. Pouliot’s books reflect the highs and lows.

“For a long time, we thought she’d been murdered because we knew she’d come home if she could. We were preparing for the worst when Taskforce Hemingway started. This is what all friends and family of missing [a] person go through.”

The power of words spurred the author to keep searching. “Words have real power. Words can wound, words can heal. And in my case, words can find people,” she says.

Those words were delivered in an old letter Barwick had sent to a school friend, in which she wrote that she liked the name Jessica. The clue helped lead the search party to the Jessica Pearce – whose appearance matched Barwicks – and, through painstaking work, investigators managed to match the two files.

Her friends who had been in the car with when she died had given the fake name to investigators after the fatal accident. Authorities at the time failed to track down her family and Barwick was buried in the Emu Plains Cemetery under the name of Jessica Pearce.

The family held a graveside memorial at the cemetery in July this year.

While Barwick has been found and the police case is now closed, Pouliot says the family’s quest for closure continues.

Pouliot now wrestles with a new emotional battle. She launched her fifth novel, Found, in Canberra in July.

“Instead of the raw volcano of emotion that I expected to go with the news that Ursula is dead, I carry around a dull ache across my shoulders, behind my eyes, in my right leg, and in my lower back. My grief moves and shifts around, reminding me every now and then that she is really gone.

“There are other signs of my grief. I forget things. I fade away in the middle of an important conversation.

“We are still trying to join dots that connect Ursula and the fictional character of Jessica Pearce, who she created for her new friends in Sydney.”

The details and circumstances of Barwick’s death are now with the NSW coroner. Pouliot says she hopes for answers to her many unanswered questions.

“Maybe then I will be ready to say goodbye.”

Australia’s national register of missing persons is at missingpersons.gov.au If you have information about a missing person, contact police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

  • IMAGE: After being missing for 30 years, Ursula Barwick has been found. Author and cousin Melissa Pouliot is with Detective Sgt Justin Marks from Bega LAC at the official launch of National Missing Persons Week 2017 in Bega