Normally veteran journalist Cliff Hughes and his Nationwide News Network team would celebrate any high recognition of their work. However, while they feel a sense of satisfaction that their video documentary on the disappearance of 23-year-old visually impaired University of the West Indies (UWI) student Jasmine Deen has won a Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) award, Hughes and his staff are obviously still pained by having to tell the story.

“It’s draining to hear people talk about people being missing and how hurtful it is. There were days when I went into the office and cried, and then go back to writing the script,” producer Sonya Stewart told the Jamaica Observer.

Stewart is eternally grateful to Joan Forrest-Henry, one of the video’s executive producers who, she said, helped her get through those difficult days.

“When I started crying she was there to hug and comfort me and help me deal with the whole process,” Stewart shared with the Sunday Observer.

Deen never made it home on February 27, 2020, after waiting more than an hour for a bus outside the back gate of The UWI, Mona campus. She was last seen in Papine square, where a taxi had reportedly dropped her off.

The story heightened concerns about the safety of women in Jamaica, and in March that year data research organisation Bluedot announced at $1-million fund to find Deen.

A month later police held two men — Tamar Henry and Gregor Wright — in relation with Deen’s disappearance. They were charged with possession of identity information, eight counts of unauthorised access to computer data, and simple larceny after police said they were found in possession of Deen’s identification and other items belonging to her.

A year after Deen’s disappearance she was declared dead by the police; however, her family has not given up hope as her father, Lloyd Deen, has insisted that he needs to know what happened to his daughter.

For Hughes, a seasoned newsman, doing the documentary was in keeping with what any responsible media organisation would do.

“It all started because the Jasmine Deen story touched a raw nerve in the country and we decided, let’s explore it,” Hughes explained when the Sunday Observer sought his response to the CBU award for Best Coverage of People Who Are Differently Abled in the Digital Category, presented in Trinidad and Tobago on August 16, 2022.

The documentary, which runs for just over 29 minutes, was the first in Nationwide‘s Missing Without A Trace series. The second was the story of photographer Nicketa Thomas, better known as NickFotoWorks, who went missing in October 2015. He hasn’t been seen since.

Hughes praised the team that worked on the award-winning documentary, specifically Stewart, “who really moved it from an idea to the screen. She did a lot of the leg work and the creative inputs”, he said.

Hughes also commended Tauna Thomas, who played the role of Jasmine Deen, and said that the editing and the videography were quite good.

The team also included Shawn Wynter, Frank Beckford, Travolta Alexander, Nigel Austin, Gavin Patterson, Brithney Clarke, and Marjorie Gordon.

“We’re happy that the quality of the work has been recognised. We’re not a television outfit, we do radio, and because of the growth in the communications technologies more and more we’re getting into producing vidoes. This is the first in our pieces of work that we will be doing in that space,” said Hughes, who, in 2003, won an Emmy Award for his television documentary on Lee Boyd Malvo titled The Potter and the Clay.

Malvo was a Jamaican teenager who, in 2002, was manipulated by American John Lee Muhammad and together they killed six people in Maryland and four people in Virginia over a three-week period in what became known as the beltway sniper attacks.

Hughes attributed the success of the Malvo documentary to Stewart and Angela Thame, “the two key people who worked with me and pulled it together”, he said, adding that Stewart “has developed into a fine television producer”.

“I’m so proud of her, to see her growth and development,” he added and pointed out that the second Missing Without A Trace production is also of award-winning quality.

Stewart, for her part, also gave much credit to Alexander, the television editor.

“All the Missing Without A Trace projects we’ve done so far have been difficult. There are days when you just bawl when you hear a mother or a father say something and you can’t cry in front of them,” she said.

The tears, she explained, come when they get back to the office and start editing the footage.

“It was hard,” she said.

Missing Without a Trace: The Jasmine Deen Story can be viewed on Nationwide’s YouTube Channel, Nationwide90Fm.