THE GREEN SEAT PROJECT

 The Green Seat Project Inc. was founded by Sally Leydon as an independent, community-driven initiative to raise national and international awareness for long-term missing persons. With more than 29 years lived experience in the missing space, Sally understands completely the ambiguity families face when a loved one goes missing. The profound experience of ambiguous loss is amplified when there is often no physical grave to visit, no urn to hold and no dedicated sanctuary to sit quietly and remember their missing loved one.

Our project bridges this gap by establishing bright green public bench seats as places of hope, reflection whilst bringing with this, public curiosity and awareness. 

Sally's mother, Marion Barter, an award-winning schoolteacher, disappeared in 1997. It took Sally 22 years of fighting to be heard when police simply marked her mum as an ‘occurrence only’ in October 1997, this being equal to someone stealing your bicycle. No action was taken until Sally was given a media opportunity and together with ch7 they created a podcast called The Lady Vanishes. With more than 25 million downloads around the globe, the huge public interest helped identify who was noted as a ‘person of significant interest’ by NSW State Coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan. After 3.5 years of inquest costing the NSW Government over 1 million dollars, the coroner ruled Marion died on or around the 15th of October 1997, five days before Sally walked into Byron Bay police station and told police something was wrong. 

Marion is still missing, but solid leads continue to roll in 29 years on, solely through public awareness. One lady recently telling Sally, “You don’t know, what you don’t know”.

Sally has taken her own lived experience and launched this movement, realising that thousands of other Australian families face the same silent battle when they simply have nowhere to go.

It is important to mention, The Green Seat Project is not a personal memorial for any individual person - they represent a collective community-based effort to ensure the missing are never forgotten whilst providing families, friends, and your community with a place to go to remember them.

"It took me 22 years and needing to do a podcast, together with a petition that attracted 30,000 signatures, for my mum to finally be recognised by authorities as a missing person. With hundreds of thousands of people affected every day in this space, sadly I am not alone. As I always say, someone, somewhere, knows something and we can and must do more to help bring the missing home" 

— Sally Leydon, Founder