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Missing Clare man found

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

But while the news of his finding brings joy to his family in Ennis this Christmas, Damien Casey’s story raises the complex issues that surround those missing who may not want to be found.
Casey, who’s 24, went missing in September 2002, having failed in his goal to get into Harvard law school and being generally depressed with his life, according to his father, Eugene. Irish and American authorities confirmed that he had flown from Shannon to New York and then spent a few days in a hostel in the city.
After that nothing, except worry and wrenching visits to New York for his parents, including a visit to a psychic here who said their son had drowned.
After an early December article in the Irish Echo included a photograph of Casey, staff in two Irish bars, the Playwright and Anna Liffey’s, saw the face of a young Clare man they recognized right away.
“It has to be him,” they said, as did others who saw the photograph. Local police contacted the Garda in Ennis, who conveyed the hopeful news to the Casey family.
The family decided to send Damien’s sister Rachel to see him, to chat to him and to tell him of their concerns and to ask him to come home. A local police officer, Brendan Hosey, who knew Damien Casey to see before he found out that he was missing, said the situation could be tricky, that it was important that he “isn’t spooked.”
On Tuesday, Rachel tracked her brother down in New Haven and had a chat with him.
Several people who recognized Casey’s photograph said that although living in a shelter and being physically well, he had mental problems. He was a loner, they said, but he had asked a bar man he knew if he could come to his house to watch Ireland play in the Rugby World Cup.
Rachel Casey said that her brother was upset at having been found, or as he put it, at being “caught now.”
His father said he had spoken to Rachel, who said Damien “wasn’t very receptive, wasn’t very happy.”
After a year and two months, the Caseys finally know their son is not dead or in harm’s way — but their questions and concerns are far from over.
“He wouldn’t accept money, he wouldn’t accept food,” Eugene Casey said. “He’s in a rejectionist mode of everything.”

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