A recent senate inquiry into missing indigenous women and children threw a light on the abuse and violence they suffer, with perpetrators often not held to account. Now, the ABC's indigenous affairs team has revealed first nations men are also over-represented in long-term missing person statistics. But there's hope police technology will be able to identify unknown human remains to solve many outstanding cases.
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00:00W.A. police are searching for a 37-year-old man who disappeared in Geraldton three weeks ago.
00:11Brenton Shah was last seen on May the 1st.
00:14As his father, I felt like it should have been my thing to find him.
00:20Almost a year after his son Brenton's disappearance, Jimmy Mongu continues to search.
00:26I just break down just thinking whether I'm going to find anything or not and how I will react.
00:34At the time he went missing, he was a stay-at-home dad with two daughters under three.
00:39He was a fun dad. Always playing.
00:44One night, Brenton went to buy cigarettes with his nephews. Later, he separated from them.
00:51When Brenton didn't come home, his family became concerned.
00:56Straight away, I just know something was wrong and I just started to go driving, looking for him, asking people if they've seen Brenton.
01:07But no one's seen Brenton.
01:11Casey found Brenton's shorts at the beach.
01:14After they were confirmed to be his, police divers entered the water.
01:19By this time, he had been missing for three weeks.
01:23WA Police told the ABC they conducted extensive inquiries into Brenton's whereabouts, including patrols, drones and police divers.
01:33We're still looking for Brenton at this time, every day, all day long.
01:36It's a heartbreaking reality for so many families like Brenton's right across the country, to have a loved one go missing and to never come home.
01:45If you're an Indigenous man, you are far more likely to go missing than a non-Indigenous man.
01:51And we don't know nearly enough about why.
01:53There are at least 150 Indigenous men missing long-term in Australia, just like Brenton.
02:01There could be many more, but in New South Wales and the ACT, police said they can't always record the Indigenous status of a missing person.
02:10And without national data, it's impossible to know the full scale of the problem or how to address it.
02:17It matters because every statistic is a person, a person that is part of a family.
02:24There's a story about their life that they've lived.
02:28The key to solving hundreds of missing persons cases could be in labs just like this one,
02:34where the Australian Federal Police have been testing unidentified human remains.
02:38You were able to solve 19 long-term missing persons cases.
02:42How was that able to happen?
02:44A majority of those cases were actually solved via DNA analysis, so matching DNA profile that
02:51was recovered from the remains against reference samples that were provided by the families
02:56of missing persons.
02:57It's believed none of those identified are Indigenous people.
03:01There are more than 700 unknown human remains held across the country that are yet to be examined.
03:07The unambiguous loss that families feel whilst they ever wonder what happened to their loved
03:13one can never, ever be understated.
03:16Federal government funding for the AFP's DNA testing program ended last year.
03:22The remains will now only be examined when requested by police or coroners.
03:26I have come a long way from where I was when all this first happened.
03:37You know, I've got my little kids to worry about, go look after them and stuff, so if I let
03:42it all get to me, yeah, it won't be good for them, you know.
03:45My mindset is strong, you know what I mean?
03:47I've got to have that.
03:51It's always in my mind that I'm going to see him.
03:56Sit out there all night and come in, have a cup of tea or go to bed for a couple of hours
04:03and just go back and sit there just watching up the road in case he comes up the road.
04:17I'm going to see you next time.