update: for XMAS, please help this veggie man find his family:reward

[Guest guest]

Thanks to Chris they found out this guy did not loose his memory. He just

wanted a Canada VIsa.

None of his family claim to know him. He is from a middle class family from

Britian and posed for a gay magazine.

Till now it's still a mystery why he lied. He even turned down several

lucrative movie offers for his story. He is currently living in a rundown house

in Toronto.

sunny outdoors wrote:click here to see photo

 

http://www.theeagle.com/brazossunday/102101trappedinhimself.htm

 

Everyone has did their " best " to find his family in

Europe. An active vegetarian in Toronto didn't even

know about this 2 year, sad sad, unfair story. Please

everyone, pass this info to your European veggie

friends or workers of a Veggie Restaurant in Europe.

Does anyone have an international web site like,

veg.org and post his picture?

 

October 21, 2001

 

Trapped in himself

Man with no memory struggles for identity

 

By HELEN O’NEILL

Associated Press

 

 

 

AP file photo

 

'Mr. Nobody' lost his identification and his memory

when he was mugged on a Toronto street in 1999.

Despite wide distribution of his photograph and story,

he remains unable to get a passport or the right to

live and work or travel.

 

Once, he had a name. And a birth certificate. And all

the other scraps of paper that made him somebody.

 

Somebody with the right to live and work and travel.

Somebody with the right to be protected in a country

that cherished his very existence because he could

prove it. Somebody with a future because he knew his

past.

 

But that was in another life — a life that ended two

years ago when he was mugged on a Toronto street. He

was robbed of his wallet and his memory.

 

Worse, he was robbed of his identity.

 

He awoke in a hospital in November 1999, not knowing

who he was or where he came from. He didn’t know where

he had learned French, Italian, and Latin, or where he

had cultivated his love of opera, his aversion to

meat.

 

Even today, all he knows is what doctors and linguists

have told him: that he is suffering from global

amnesia, that he speaks with a distinctive British

accent, possibly from Yorkshire, that once he was

somebody.

 

But who?

 

A photograph taken after the mugging shows a young

man, probably in his late 20s, with, dyed blonde hair,

a round face, prominent nose and dark eyes. He is 5

feet 10 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds.

 

The man’s photograph and fingerprints were circulated

around the world. Television programs in Britain

documented his plight, although there has been little

coverage in the United States. Interpol and

international missing persons organizations

investigated. Still they have no leads.

 

He wants to go to England to see if he can find

himself, or maybe confront some shadows of his past.

Surely, he argued in court, the least a man deserves

is the chance to reclaim his identity.

 

But society has no place for a man without a name. And

it doesn’t make provisions for a man without a

country.

 

He cannot travel without a passport. He cannot get a

passport without a birth certificate. And he cannot

get a birth certificate without knowing where he was

born.

 

So, the man the British media dubbed “Mr. Nobody”

lives in limbo, reading Latin verse in a public

library, or holed up in a dingy rooming house on

Vancouver’s east side, growing increasingly paranoid

and depressed. He refuses to talk about his plight

anymore. He shuns further media coverage, saying it

portrays him as a freak — fascinating only because he

cannot prove who he is, or who he is not.

 

“I am stateless. It is as though I don’t exist,” he

said in court. “My life is senseless. I can hardly

sleep at all. As I cannot work and provide for my

material and spiritual needs or leave the country, I

consider myself a prisoner; therefore, I am kindly

asking to be set free.”

 

The freedom he sought was the creation of an identity,

complete with a birth certificate and a name, one that

would allow him to leave Canada in search of himself.

The name he asked for was Philip Staufen.

 

That is the name that appeared on his plastic

wristband in Toronto General Hospital where he was

first treated. It had a birth date of June 7, 1975.

 

He says that after repeatedly telling hospital staff

he didn’t know who he was, he was pressed to give the

first name that came into his head. So he blurted out

Philip Staufen — the name of a medieval German king

and holy Roman emperor.

 

Police have tracked people with similar names all over

Europe and found no connection to the mystery man. No

one has been issued with a British passport in that

name.

 

So Mr. Nobody lives in a vacuum, haunted by a past he

cannot remember and a future he cannot plan.

 

“My actual situation has left me prey to too many

abuses and humiliations,” he said in court. “I have

found myself having to live on the streets or with

violent and vulgar people.”

 

The judges were sympathetic, but they denied his

“application for identity,” declaring that they could

not create a legal fiction by giving him a birth

certificate. However, he did eventually win a federal

ministerial permit that allows him to live and work in

Canada for 18 months. It was issued in the name of

Philip Staufen.

 

But, with no passport, Staufen still can’t leave the

country. And it’s not clear what happens after the 18

months are up in December 2002. Under normal

circumstances, people may apply for Canadian

citizenship after living in the country for three

years. But the application form requires a name and

birthplace.

 

At first Staufen rejected the ministerial permit,

saying if the system could allow him to use the name

for 18 months, it could grant him a passport in that

name too. He went on a hunger strike for a week in

protest.

 

“What I want is to be given an identity,” he said. “I

want to be able to leave Canada. I want to be

anonymous and to live my life in peace.”

 

No one who has dealt with Staufen doubts his story.

Not the police who investigated his case, doctors who

treated him, the people who temporarily took him into

their homes, government workers who tried to help him.

All see no hint of deception or fraud.

 

“It just seemed mind-boggling that someone could be so

alone in the world and no one seems to be looking for

him,” said Stephen Bone, a Toronto detective who spent

days with Staufen trying to find clues to his

identity.

 

 

 

Ap photo

 

Detective Stephen Bone discusses " Mr. Nobody's " case

at a police station in Toronto. Bone is the chief

investigator in the case of the man who has suffered

from amnesia since he was mugged in Toronto in 1999.

Since that time the man has sought legal recognition

in Canada unsuccessfully.

 

Bone brought Staufen to a linguist, drove him to a

homeless shelter, helped him buy groceries, won his

trust. The detective watched as the man with no memory

discovered clues about himself: that he took milk and

sugar with his tea, that he didn’t like meat, that he

loved to read.

 

Initially, Bone said, Staufen believed it was a matter

of time before detectives unlocked his identity. With

money from supporters, Staufen traveled to Montreal,

and then Vancouver, where he found a lawyer, Manuel

Azevedo, who took up his cause. He was given welfare

assistance of $525 a month.

 

But as time dragged on, Staufen became frustrated and

withdrawn. He questioned images in his head: Were they

pieces of his past, or something he had read?

 

Once he asked Bone: What if I have a past that I don’t

want to remember?

 

“I feel very sorry for him,” Bone said. “The thought

of a human being having no identity and no one to turn

to. It’s almost like if you don’t have a name you are

nothing.”

 

Only a handful of cases of total amnesia have ever

been documented. With treatment, most patients

eventually recognized, or “relearned” pieces of their

past. And recovery usually happened within months.

 

Because Staufen is still suffering after two years,

some psychiatrists suggest he may be suffering from a

psychogenic “fugue” state — a memory disorder in which

he has blocked out an incident too awful to remember.

 

There have been other such cases. In the 1980s there

was a widely reported case of a woman who had wandered

the streets of New Orleans for years not knowing who

she was or where she came from. With help, she

rediscovered her past: as a wife and mother in Boston.

After suffering a series of tragedies involving her

children, her mind had simply blocked out the

wrenching memories.

 

But recovery requires treatment.

 

In the case of the woman in New Orleans, a priest

finally helped her get proper treatment. This summer,

The Vancouver Sun urged the Canadian government to

intervene in the Staufen case, by making a one-time

exception to the rules, and granting him a birth

certificate and passport.

 

“It is inexcusable for the governments to continue to

do nothing,” the newspaper wrote. “That amounts to, by

default, allowing bureaucratic inertia to destroy this

man’s chance for a decent life.”

 

Others suggest that Staufen hasn’t done enough to help

himself. They question why he doesn’t pursue

treatment, why he doesn’t seek more publicity, why his

attorney refuses to comment anymore.

 

“Legally, he has obtained a lot,” said Jeffrey Loenen,

a Victoria lawyer who represented British Columbia in

the case against Staufen. “He is perfectly free to

leave the country, if he can find a country that will

take him.”

 

But what country will welcome a man with no name, no

past, no apparent future?

 

Dr. David Arciniegas, director of neuropsychiatry

service at the University of Colorado School of

Medicine suggests that amnesiacs are like characters

from an Albert Camus novel, burdened by the weight and

absurdity of their own existence.

 

Their struggle to survive in a world that is neither

understanding nor forgiving can have devastating

effects on their personalities and mental health.

 

“There is only the present,” Arciniegas said. “And the

present can be unbearable without a past to define

it.”

 

For Staufen, there appears little chance that the

present will change, or that his past will be defined

anytime soon.

 

“My daily existence has been under the dominion of

destitution, illness, ignorance, violence, abuse,

insult and homelessness,” Staufen wrote in June. “It

is only a matter of time that madness or death could

be added to this list.”

--

thanks TL for finding this article for me on-line

 

I will give $200 US worth of organic vegan goodies for

anyone who can help find this man's past. the reward

has no expiration date. sunny_outdoors

 

=====

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In, September 2001, I took part in the World's Largest Garbage Collection,

during the CA Coastal Cleanup day. Statewide, more than 35,000 cleanup

volunteers got in the Guinness Book of World Records. Want to join me in the

year 2002 and break a NEW world record? Maybe I can get us a free t-shirt too.

 

 

 

Check out Shopping and Auctions for all of

your unique holiday gifts! Buy at

or bid at http://auctions.

 

 

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