Passport rules trap British amnesiac in Canada

Once, he had a name. And a birth certificate. And all the other scraps of paper that made him somebody.

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 he has been told: that he is suffering from global amnesia, that he speaks with a British accent, that once he was somebody.

But who?

Living in limbo

The man's photograph and fingerprints were circulated around the world. Television programs in Britain documented his plight. 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 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 he 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.

"I am stateless. It is as though I don't exist," he said in court. "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."

Wants identity created

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 wristband in Toronto General Hospital where he was first treated.

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.

No one has been issued with a British passport in that name.

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 win a 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.

Detective won his trust

No one 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.

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.

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?

"I feel very sorry for him," Bone said. "It's almost like if you don't have a name you are nothing."

Unusually long amnesia

Only a handful of cases of total amnesia have ever been documented. With treatment, most patients eventually recognized 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 "fugue" state -- a memory disorder in which he has blocked out an incident too awful to remember.

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.

"There is only the present," Arciniegas said. "And the present can be unbearable without a past to define it."