t was, until the abduction of Madeleine McCann, the most notorious missing child case in British history: the unexplained disappearance of toddler Ben Needham on the Greek island of Kos in 1991.
The mystery surrounding Ben’s fate made headlines for almost a decade, with scores of false sightings, ill-fated DNA tests and stalled re-investigations, with his mother Kerry fighting against the odds as the years passed by.
Yet the consequences of Ben’s disappearance to his immediate family have never been fully detailed until now – in particular the devastating effect it had on his younger sister Leighanna – and on Kerry, who numbed the pain with alcohol.
Leighanna Needham wasn’t even born when Ben vanished while playing in the garden of his grandparent’s retirement house on the island while Ben’s mother Kerry worked in a local hotel.
But in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Leighanna, now 20, explains that his loss has cast a long shadow over her life.
Ben’s disappearance sparked an international missing person’s hunt that dominated the world’s headlines in a way that was strikingly similar to the case of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in May 2007.
Madeleine was just days short of her fourth birthday when she vanished. Ben was a 21-month-old.
But while the ‘Maddie’ campaign to find her, launched by her parents Gerry and Kate McCann, attracted millions of pounds in donations and worldwide publicity, the Needhams struggled on alone.
‘Unlike the McCanns, we haven’t had the money to pay for publicists and private detectives, we’ve just had each other and a lot of faith and determination,’ Leighanna says.
‘I think people have always seen us differently. The McCanns are GPs with money, my mum is a single mother who lived in a council house.
'I don’t want to sound bitter because we know what they’re going through and they just want Madeleine back, like we do Ben.
'Kate McCann said in the papers last week that she’s reached the stage that she would be able to forgive whoever abducted Madeleine – but we could never forgive the person who took Ben.’
More...
Only disbelief kept away the torrential and surging waves of pain: Family's heartbreak after 29-year-old diabetic dies suddenly in her sleep
'There's no stopping her': Mother's joy as her two-year-old daughter takes first steps after losing her leg to meningitis
Next month, Leighanna will help her mother launch a book about the tragedy – a searing account of how Kerry has coped with losing Ben – and hopes that it will mark the start of a new phase in their lives.
In it, Kerry admits she found oblivion in drink and nightclubs to ease her pain – so much so that Leighanna was sent to live with her grandparents.
‘We’re still waiting for the happy ending,’ says Leighanna. ‘But the book has been cathartic for Mum. It’s her story, something she’s wanted to do since five years after Ben went missing.
Still missing: Ben Needham aged 21 months, shortly before he went missing on the island of Kos in 1991
Mystery: The circumstances of what happened to Ben, pictured before he went missing in 1991, have never become clear
'And for the first time ever in my life, she’s really happy and at peace with herself.
‘The bit where Mum talks about going off clubbing crucified her. I don’t blame her for wanting to go out and party.
‘Alcohol – even though it’s bad – offers an escape route. You can forget about reality. If my mum had sat and done nothing, she would have killed herself.
High profile: Ben's disappearance was the most notorious case of its kind in Britain until Madelaine McCann went missing in 2007
‘After I was born, she got really depressed, she felt that she couldn’t look after me. I don’t remember being unhappy when I lived with my grandparents for two months.
'I’ve always adored them, they’ve always been there for me and we’ve always been a very close family.
‘When Mum eventually came to pick me up, I can remember running out of the door shouting, “Mummy, Mummy’’ as though she’d never left. I think that gave her strength.
‘I realise now that she needed an escape so she could become Kerry Needham again. She was always Ben Needham’s mum. She needed to go away where no one knew her and have a bit of a life.’
Kerry has been trying to interest publishers in her story for more than 15 years – but was turned away every time.
‘Publishers would tell her there was no happy ending,’ Leighanna said. ‘Parts of the book make you smile but then, in the next breath, you’ve got tears streaming down your face.
‘It brought back a lot of memories for Mum and for me from when I was growing up.’
The most harrowing sections tell how Kerry was at the depths of despair, guilt and depression after splitting up with Ben and Leighanna’s father, Simon Ward, just two weeks after Leighanna was born.
The only way Kerry could cope was to turn to alcohol and the transient company of nightclubs. It was a desperate time in which she twice tried to take her own life.
‘I’ve read a suicide letter she wrote,’ says Leighanna. ‘I was about 11 and it was my first holiday staying with my grandparents when they were living in Northern Cyprus.
‘Alcohol – even though it’s bad – offers an escape route. You can forget about reality. If my mum had sat and done nothing, she would have killed herself.'
Leighanna Needham
‘I was going through family photos and came across it tucked in between the albums.
‘The letter said: “How am I supposed to look after another child when I couldn’t look after my first one? Someone took him off me, they must have thought I was a bad mum. They must have seen me and I must have done something.”
‘I cried my eyes out because, at that age, I felt she couldn’t love me or look after me due to something I had done. I couldn’t come out of my room. But it opened my eyes to how she had actually felt. I didn’t blame her for that.’
Leighanna said that Kerry broke down when she later confronted her mum about the letter.
‘She told me that she had been in a very, very dark place. She didn’t want to live any more because she just wanted the pain to stop.
'She told me that it wasn’t because she didn’t love me or didn’t care about Ben – she just wanted to stop hurting.’
Devastated: Ben's uncle Stephen, grandad Eddie, Kerry and grandmother Christine Needham in 1991 after Ben went missing
Choking back tears, Leighanna, says she now realises that the letter was a wake-up call to how emotionally damaged her mother was, despite her putting on a brave face for so long.
‘She has since told me that after Ben went missing, she used to hear him crying. She had a bedroom full of his toys for when he came home.
'She used to get up in the night and go to rock him to sleep and he wasn’t there. Before I was born, she was going insane with grief.
‘She had counselling and was advised to have another baby. At first she said she couldn’t do it. It hurt her to have me. Now I understand.
‘My mother is a strong, amazing woman. I admire her so much. We’re mother and daughter, but we’re best friends. She’s been my mum, dad, brother and sister. She’s been everything in one.’
But there is no doubt that Kerry’s determination to keep Ben’s case in the public eye has had a huge impact on Leighanna.
Living in hope: Kerry Grist (formerly Needham), with a picture of what her son might have looked like age 20
When she was 22 months old, she took part in a TV documentary reconstruction of Ben’s disappearance: ‘I had all my hair cut off for it and Mum told me it was like looking at Ben,’ she said.
‘Until it came up in a family conversation when I was about 12, I thought I had dreamt it.
‘I remembered following an oldish chap with a beard who was carrying a yellow duck and turning round to look at everyone, wondering why everyone was watching me and why I was being allowed to run off.
'My mother was really taken aback that I remembered it – I’d been the same age as Ben was when he was taken, so she thought he might remember something too.
‘Sometimes it does feel like I’ve spent my whole life growing up in Ben’s shadow. When I was younger, before I knew the whole story, I felt like I was born to replace him.
‘We’re still waiting for the happy ending. But the book has been cathartic for Mum. It’s her story, something she’s wanted to do since five years after Ben went missing.'
Leighanna Needham
‘When I was about three, I used to play a game, “Who could be this?”, in toddler talk with my grandad.
‘He’d show me a picture – of, say, Michael Jackson – and I’d say, “Who could be this?” I remember first being aware of Ben’s photo on the wall and saying to my mum, “Who could be this?”
‘She explained he was my brother and he’d gone away somewhere. I said, “Come on then Mummy, let’s go and find him.” Mum told me how much that upset her.
‘She also said I am the reason she is still alive. When I was younger, it was always a big weight on my shoulders. I’d worry what she’d do when I left home and have a family of my own. I wondered if she’d die
‘I’ve been wrapped up in cotton wool all my life. I wasn’t allowed to do anything as a child.
‘I couldn’t even stay over at a friend’s house until I was 13. I was always told it was “just in case”.
Continued hunt: 18 officers from South Yorkshire Police went to the island of Kos to continue the search for Ben last autumn
‘I don’t suppose I was that aware of how over-protective everyone in my family was of me until I got to that age and started rebelling.
‘I remember having a bad fight with Mum when she wouldn’t let me go to a local youth club. I screamed at her, “You only don’t want me to go because of Ben,” which really upset her.’
Now working as a trainee accountant for a recruitment company near her home in Sheffield, Leighanna says that the childhood insecurities she harboured about her mother’s love for her have turned into a fierce instinct of wanting to protect Kerry and her family.
Tragic: Kerry Needham pictured in Kos in 1991
Over the years, many people, including the Greek authorities, were quick to judge their behaviour. ‘I have got into a few fights with small-minded people who have bad- mouthed my mum,’ she added.
‘Anyone who thinks she’s obsessed, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Ben was her life, her first-born baby boy, she adored him.
‘There’s been a lot of misconception about what happened, so many theories.
‘My grandmother still blames herself, even though it’s not her fault. The Greek police tried to blame the family to imply that it wasn’t anyone from the island who’d taken him.
'The theory that gipsies had been watching the family and sold him to a childless couple is one that we all still want to believe.
‘We all feel that he will find us, with modern-day technology, everything that is now available that wasn’t 21 years ago.
‘I believe he will realise that something is missing from his life and find us rather than us finding him.’
Leighanna says that Kerry, 41, feels the book will prompt someone to come forward and solve the mystery of what happened to Ben.
Kerry sold her garden fencing company three months ago and moved to Turkey to live with her brother Danny.
‘I went to visit Mum two weeks ago and she looks so happy,’ says Leighanna.
‘She’s put on weight, she’s got a great circle of friends and she loves being with my uncle Danny. He runs an entertainment club and does his own Elvis tribute act. He’s like the brother that I never had.
‘If Ben came back my life would be completely different. I’m not saying that when he walks back in he’ll stay and it will all be happy families because, hopefully, he’s got a family of his own. But Mum, all of us, just want to know he’s all right.
‘We believe we’ll see Ben one day. But now, as a family, we’re emerging from the shadows because of the book. It has given us renewed hope that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.’
Ben by Kerry Needham. Published by Ebury Press on May 9, hardback £16.99. Also available as an ebook.
THE SEARCH FOR BEN NEEDHAM: HOW HE MIGHT LOOK
Search for Ben: Computer generated images suggest how Ben might have looked aged eight, left, and 13, right
A series of false leads have given the Needhams hope in the years since he went missing.
In 1998, a tourist saw a blond boy of ten on a beach in Rhodes, but a DNA test proved he was not Ben.
In December 2012, Kerry Needham was contacted by a Greek woman who gave her a photo she claimed was of Ben aged five or six, but it failed to lead to a breakthrough.
Over the years police released a series of computer images showing how Ben might look as he was growing up.
Grown up: Computer generated images suggest how Ben might have looked aged 18, left, and 21, right