One mother’s desperate 28-year fight to find her missing son

On a cold winter’s night in 1996, teenager Damien Nettles vanished without a trace (Picture: Val Nettles/Metro.co.uk/Adam Williamson)

‘People have told me he was cut up and fed to the pigs, that he was chopped up and put in a lobster pot, that he was thrown overboard in the middle of the Channel, that his head was kicked like it was a soccer ball, that he was stuck with a pitchfork…’ says Val Nettles, reeling off just some of the horrifying rumours she has heard in the 28 years since her son Damien vanished.