A mother has shared her turmoil over the 25-year search of her missing daughter.

Deirdre Fenech has appeared on popular podcast The Missing to tell the story of her daughter Carmel Fenech, who disappeared from her home in Crawley on May 23, 1998, when she was just 16 years old.

Deirdre told the shocking story of the run-up to her disappearance and what she has been through in the 25 years since.

It was not the first, second or even tenth time Carmel had gone missing.

Deirdre remembered a day in 1997 when she and her son went to London to find her, just months before they never saw her again.

Deirdre and Joey were combing the streets of London, looking for Carmel, when they found themselves standing in front of a dilapidated squat.

“We knocked on the door once and they went, ‘She's not here’. And I said, ‘Excuse me, I know for a fact she's here. Cause I've just seen her through the window’. He went, ‘Well, no, no, she was here.'

“So next thing Joey kicked the door in, picked up a broken bottle, people just laying around out of their heads on drugs, picked up a bottle and he threatened this guy. He went, I don't know, maybe, maybe she's upstairs.

“And we found her hiding in one of the cupboards upstairs, wardrobes upstairs.”

Host Pandora Sykes said: “Carmel had a long-standing drug problem, one that had pulled her into the orbit of people and places that no-one, let alone a sixteen year old girl, should find themselves."

Pandora and Deirdre discussed how years have gone by without a breakthrough and Deirdre reissued her plea for answers.

“Nothing has been done because she doesn't fit the pretty upper class, middle class family,” said Deirdre.

“To some, she's just a throwaway child who went missing from a dirty roughy state in Peckham.

“But she's not… She's my child. I love my child. My children aren’t throwaway.”

You can listen to the full podcast which is out now: https://link.chtbl.com/themissing5