If you’ve watched CNN re­cent­ly, you’re prob­a­bly fa­mil­iar with Gab­by Pe­ti­to, the 22-year-old New York na­tive who dis­ap­peared in Au­gust while on a trip with her fi­ancé. Her body was lat­er dis­cov­ered and her death ruled a homi­cide.

The fi­ancé is now miss­ing and the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion has is­sued a war­rant for his ar­rest. The case has cap­tured the coun­try’s at­ten­tion, with the Flori­da gov­er­nor tweet­ing, “[W]e need jus­tice for Gab­by Pe­ti­to.”

A name you might not be fa­mil­iar with is Miya Mar­cano, a 19-year-old who went miss­ing in Flori­da 10 days ago. There were signs of a strug­gle in her apart­ment and the main sus­pect has since com­mit­ted sui­cide.

A body be­lieved to be hers was dis­cov­ered last Sat­ur­day. Her case was cov­ered by lo­cal (state) news ser­vices and the T&T Guardian print­ed sto­ries about her as she is the daugh­ter of a T&T-born, Mi­a­mi-based DJ. But there haven’t been any tweets from the Flori­da gov­er­nor.

Com­par­ing the cov­er­age of these two women begs the ques­tion—why has one gained na­tion­wide me­dia ex­po­sure and the oth­er has not?

There are two ex­pla­na­tions…de­pend­ing on who you ask. One com­men­ta­tor on CNN ex­plained that Miss Pe­ti­to’s so­cial me­dia ac­count makes it an au courant top­ic.

That the nar­ra­tive of a hap­py, care­free cou­ple con­tra­dicts the re­al­i­ty that her re­la­tion­ship may have been an abu­sive one; a po­lice re­port of a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in­ci­dent al­ludes to this.

The oth­er ex­pla­na­tion comes from mi­nor­i­ty groups and per­sons of colour—that this is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of “miss­ing white woman syn­drome.”

It’s the crit­i­cism that miss­ing per­son cas­es in­volv­ing white, up­per-mid­dle-class women and girls, pret­ty ones es­pe­cial­ly, re­ceive dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high­er me­dia cov­er­age.

The crit­i­cism al­so high­lights that the re­port­ing is skewed. For miss­ing black women, the fo­cus is on their back­grounds and be­hav­iours, sub­tly sug­gest­ing that they are to blame for their sit­u­a­tion.

Where­as for miss­ing white women, the fo­cus is on their roles as moth­ers and daugh­ters, por­tray­ing them in a more sym­pa­thet­ic light.

This im­plic­it bias ex­tends to how law en­force­ment re­sponds. For miss­ing per­sons of colour from im­pov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties or bro­ken homes, their fam­i­lies com­plain that po­lice tend to as­sume they are run­aways or are in­volved in il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties. As such, at­tempts to lo­cate them are sel­dom ini­ti­at­ed.

For now, let’s put aside the racial and so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions of this “syn­drome.” As in­sen­si­tive as it sounds, Miss­es Pe­ti­to and Mar­cano are the lucky ones. Even with the dis­par­i­ty in me­dia cov­er­age, their cas­es have got­ten con­sid­er­able at­ten­tion.

And as long as they re­main in the spot­light, it will en­cour­age law en­force­ment to con­tin­ue their ef­forts. That is, of course, un­til an­oth­er sen­sa­tion­al sto­ry comes along for the me­dia to ob­sess over.

So what do these miss­ing Amer­i­can women have to do with Trinidad and To­ba­go? In our coun­try, miss­ing per­sons don’t get the at­ten­tion they de­serve—not from the me­dia, not from the po­lice ser­vice and not from the pub­lic.

When it comes to crime, the mur­der rate is the met­ric we pay at­ten­tion to; the num­ber of miss­ing per­sons—not so much.

Sure, they will get a brief men­tion in the news, along with a pho­to, a phys­i­cal de­scrip­tion, what they were wear­ing, where they were last seen; and the po­lice will ask for the pub­lic’s as­sis­tance in pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion.

But that’s usu­al­ly the last we ever hear about them. Think about it…can you name five per­sons who are list­ed as miss­ing?

It could be sug­gest­ed that a sim­i­lar form of the be­fore-men­tioned syn­drome ex­ists lo­cal­ly, with pret­ty, young girls and per­sons from af­flu­ent com­mu­ni­ties gain­ing more at­ten­tion than a teenag­er from a sin­gle-par­ent home in Laven­tille.

An­drea Bharatt comes to mind for the first group, and Tanya Bark­er for the sec­ond (look her up).

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the lack of me­dia cov­er­age is hard­ly the worst part. The fre­quen­cy that per­sons go miss­ing in this coun­ty—young women and teenaged girls es­pe­cial­ly—is alarm­ing.

And that so many of them dis­ap­pear with­out a trace… How?! Ours is a small is­land with a small pop­u­la­tion; some­body in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty knows what hap­pened to them.

While An­drea Bharatt’s fa­ther wish­es his daugh­ter were found alive, at least he was able to give her a prop­er fu­ner­al.

Tanya Bak­er’s fam­i­ly, like the fam­i­lies of oth­er miss­ing per­sons, con­tin­ue to wait in agony.

For years there have been spec­u­la­tions re­gard­ing the fate of miss­ing per­sons. And the au­thor­i­ties have nev­er ad­dressed them; the re­sponse is al­ways that they are “look­ing in­to it.”

It’s shame­ful how there isn’t more pub­lic out­rage about this. To be clear—the me­dia is not ob­lig­at­ed to run per­pet­u­al sto­ries on miss­ing per­sons (though the cov­er­age might help).

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the onus is on the Po­lice Ser­vice to con­duct prop­er and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions. But the on­ly work it seems ca­pa­ble of do­ing these days is ar­rest­ing cur­few-break­ers.

As for av­er­age cit­i­zens, is there any­thing we can do—oth­er than pray that it doesn’t hap­pen to you or your loved ones? I re­al­ly don’t know.

Gab­by Pe­ti­to has a Wikipedia en­try. Miya Mar­cano has the Flori­da-Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ing her fam­i­ly.

An­drea Bharatt sparked a so­cial move­ment for change.

But for the hun­dreds of cit­i­zens who re­main miss­ing, they aren’t even a fleet­ing mem­o­ry.