[user104658]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Why wouldn't the man have just come forward after it happened though if it were an accident? Instead living with both the guilt of killing the boy and putting his parents through a life of torment at not knowing where Ben was, if he was alive, if awful things were happening to him etc

Selfishness; even with it being an accident it's likely that he had been in some way negligent so he would probably have been convicted of manslaughter. Even without the legal implications it's likely that he thought he couldn't handle the guilt / shame of other people knowing what he had done.

It is horrendous though. As impossible as it would be to deal with the loss of a child at all... knowing straight away that your child has been killed in an accident, probably died instantly and didn't suffer, is a million miles away from believing that your child has been abducted and likely endured hours / days / years even of fear and horror. Not knowing if they are alive or dead and being unable to grieve. What he has taken from that family out of self-preservation is unforgivable in my opinion. And there's no one to answer for it now, as he's dead anyway. Although you have to question how long this friend that came forward knew about it, and potentially other people in this man's life?

Might also be tasteless timing to point out, but this also just confirms a very real crime statistic: a significant proportion of reported abductions are people (often family members) trying to cover up an accidental death.