Why Children Disappear
THERE has probably been a time in every mother’s life when her child has appeared to be missing. The child may have delayed in coming home from school, from play or from a trip to the local store. As time ticks away, the mother may become frantic with concern over the safety of her child and may even institute a search. Usually, the errant child walks in—safe and sound—perhaps now to face some disciplinary measure at the hand of the overwrought parent.
Yet there is a growing number of children who do not return home, who simply vanish from sight. How many? No one really knows. “We don’t have such data, unfortunately,” says Leo Goldstone, senior adviser for statistics with UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). “Internationally we don’t collect it.” Since most cases are treated solely as a local problem, precise national statistics also do not exist. As U.S. Senator Paula Hawkins declares: “No one even knows how many children disappear each year.” She adds: “But we do know that this is a problem we can no longer neglect.”
However, there are estimates. “The United States Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 1.8 million children disappear from home each year,” reports The New York Times. “Most return almost immediately. Many are victims of parental kidnapping. Hundreds become victims of foul play. But 50,000 children still remain unaccounted for every year.” The newspaper also states that a thousand dead bodies of youngsters “go unclaimed every year in this country.”
Most Are Runaways
By far the largest number of children who turn up missing are runaways. Over 50,000 young people are reported as running away from home each year in Italy alone. In the United States there are an estimated 1,300,000 incidents annually. “But these are runaway episodes,” says Charles Sutherland, director of Search, publishers of The National Runaway/Missing Persons Report, “and not actual missing people. They also include chronic runaways.”
Up to 90 percent of the runaways return within a period of two weeks. Why do they run away? Usually it is because of a traumatic or unhappy situation at home or school. The period of adolescence is fraught with emotional situations that, although minor in nature, are very significant to the youngster involved. A disagreement with a parent, fear of ridicule from one’s peers, low grades or trouble at school can easily trigger a runaway reaction.
Parental separation, divorce and remarriage, as well as fear of consequences due to minor scrapes with the law are other reasons. Problems of a more serious nature—an alcoholic parent, physical or sexual abuse—are also causes of runaway episodes. These situations generally increase during periods of economic hardship within the family.
“Throwaway” Children
Hundreds of thousands of children in the United States each year fall into the category of the “technically homeless.” The majority of these are “pushouts” or “throwaways”—children who are abandoned or pushed out of their homes by their parents, or abused and made to feel so unwanted that their only alternative, they feel, is to leave. Official records of these cases do not exist, as parents who abandon or discard their children seldom report them as missing.
Often, when authorities telephone regarding these children, the parents will say: ‘Keep them. We don’t want them back.’ The reasons range from selfishness and a desire to be free from the responsibility of caring for a child, to an incorrigible child on drugs whose actions the parents just cannot cope with anymore. What happens to these youngsters? The New York Times reports: “Many homeless teen-agers simply live on the streets, becoming prostitutes or peddling drugs to survive.” It adds: “And to some of these homeless young people, the difference between home and the streets is not great.”
Among the poorer nations, abandoned children are even more common. Here parents simply cannot afford to feed and take care of them. Sometimes they will try to sell their children so that both child and family may survive. Desperate parents in India will often abandon a child at a railway station. A reported 5,000 abandoned children roam the streets in Bogotá, Colombia, living by their wits, preying on and becoming the prey of others.
Stolen—Even by Parents!
Thousands of others become “missing” children because they are abducted by one of their parents. Usually these abductions are related to separation or divorce proceedings, where the child is snatched away by the parent not awarded custody by the courts. These children are “missing” in the sense that the mate who has custody does not know where they are being kept. Sometimes these youngsters are taken out of the country. Often they are told that the other parent either died or does not want them any longer. Many end up being physically abused, some even murdered.
Then there are unexplained disappearances and children who are kidnapped or abducted by strangers. These cases often make the headlines in newspapers. In some countries children are stolen for the purpose of being trained and used for prostitution and thievery, or purposely deformed to invoke pity as beggars. A documented case is that of Tulasa who at age 13 was “kidnapped from her native Nepal and sold into Bombay’s teeming flesh markets.” As reported in India Today, in a scant eight months she was “sold” to three different brothels and forced to cater to the “perverted demands of up to 2,000 men.” Only when she was so diseased that she was admitted to a regular hospital, “with a list of ailments as long as her age,” was she finally able to break free from her captors and pour out her story. It resulted in the arrest of 28 people in the “flesh trade.”
Whatever the reason for a child’s disappearance, it is a very heartrending situation for parents who want and love their children. Can parents do anything to prevent it?