This interested me; seen on Wikipedia and mentioned elsewhere -
(Have to say that I wouldn't have sent any of my kids off where they didn't know anyone for a fortnight at that age. But that's just me.)
Can't remember where, but I've read that one of the reasons the Young Gifted and Talented Programme was abandoned was to do with concerns about inadequate safeguarding. Dunno, could be rubbish.
However, some believe that Gosden met someone there who had might be implicated in his disappearance.
Gosden had been given a mobile phone which he promptly lost. It's crossed my mind that if it wasn't lost and that he actually hid it, that's how he might have been in touch with an abuser.
Again, just my thoughts. One would assume that after his disappearance it had been routinely tracked through the company's records as in the Soham case.
Or he could have been given a new phone that was kept topped up by an abuser. If he'd kept it secret nobody would know.
Why would he do this? He'd been abused/brainwashed/compromised/scared out of his wits/groomed at the residential school and felt unable or unwilling to tell anyone. All this can be done to kids with frightening ease by a skilled abuser.
So that's what I think: a. he was groomed, possibly at the residential school, and b. he had a secret phone.
But what do I know?
I really do hope everyone is wrong and he resurfaces somewhere safe.
We hear now and then about people who are trafficked as forced labour and end up in another country, disorientated and afraid to speak to anyone they don't know. It's surely possible for this to happen to a former abductee.