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Show Family Weekly December 1, 1968 What's Behind the Growing By BILL SURFACE Author of "The PoitoMo1 Ivy" and "Intid Internal Havana" Am! S3 Sip Inn1 - Son Francisco's THE OTHER Haight-Ashbur- afternoon, a in Syracuse, N.Y., became so nervous when Alice, her daughter, was unusually late in returning home from school that she began telephoning friends. What 8he heard was even more disconcerting: Alice hadn't attended school that day! Horrified, the her husband only to have him initially dismiss Alice's absence as "nothing serious." By 3 a.m., however, he could no longer conceal his anxiety. He had telephoned the police, hospitals, and almost every relative or acquaintance, only to learn that Alice had vanished. Alice, the parents envisioned, had either been injured in an automobile accident, kidnapped, assaulted, or even killed. different possibility began to emerge the next afternoon. Extensive questioning of Alice's friends revealed that when she was unhappy she had 1) periodically mentioned "those beautiful, peaceful people" in New York City's East Village, 2) she was last seen near a bus station. In all likelihood, a police officer emphasized, she was a "runaway." The parents found no solace in that assumption. They realized that A hippie-dominat- ed Family Weekly, December 1, 1968 y section is a popular retreat for runaway Alice had only about $8 with her and were well aware of the harrowing experiences of similar runaways ar- riving in the East Villafi without adequate funds. Young girls often were hooked on drugs, molested, or forced to panhandle or sell "nickel bags" of marijuana in order to live. Moreover, the dead body of a runaway girl from an affluent suburban home recently had been found beside her tattooed body in a deboth murhouse tenement crepit rundered. And a tiny, away who slept in parks had been raped twice and her "flower husband" beaten unconscious. Unable to wait, the father and a brother drove to the East Village. Then, for three days and nights, they walked among the derelicts, drug peddlers, and hippies showing Alice's picture. About all they heard was: "Haven't seen her" or "She'll turn up in a couple of weeks." Sixteen days later, the mother, answering the telephone, heard a longdistance operator ask if she would accept a collect call from Alice in a suburb of Boston. Alice, who wanted money to return home, was depressed and unwilling to discuss her experience. Later, after confiding that she stayed at a distant cousin's apartment near a area, she came to realize boy-frien- hippie-dominate- d teen-ager- s, that she couldn't find a happier life leaving home. This type of incident now occurs with disturbing frequency. FBI statistics reveal that an unprecedented 129,532 children under 18 years of age were found by police as "runaways" in 1967 and that 54,401 of them were less than 14 years old. Another 4,860 were under 10. Yet, as distressing as the problem may seem, it is still growing. Many police departments indicate that runaways are increasing and that more of them are young girls from good homes. The tragedy, once it strikes a home, is aggravated by the parents' virtual helplessness. When days pass without word, ads like these appear in hippie newspapers or on bulletin boards in hippie hangouts: "Judy J. Your mother is heartsick. Please call" . . . "Barbara R. All is forgiven if Ly you'll come home" . . . "$1,000 reward to anyone who locates this girl." Other grieved parents turn to members of Congress. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, for example, says that he frequently is awakened by telephone calls at 3 a.m. by horrified parents unable to trace their children. As Ribicoff recalls: "'Abe,' they'll say, 'is there anything you can do to help? The truth is there isn't much I, or any other Senator, can do. The law says that Federal au- - thorities (the FBD enter only one kind of missing-perso- n case that of kidnapping. "In most cases, there is no suspicion of kidnapping. A child just vanishes into any one of 50 states and thousands of communities, each having its own separate police force. In the case of one of my constituents, more than two months elapsed before his college-ag- e son was found dead." Ribicoff has introduced a bill that would establish a Federal office for nationwide investigation of persons missing 72 hours or longer. Meanwhile, parents of runaways are left pondering, "Why?" or "What's happening to my child?" Psychiatrists maintain that many unhappy, independent, or rebellious children have long contemplated leaving home but have been deterred by the realization that they didn't have enough money to subsist. Today, however, they feel that they know how to carry out their threats: obtain free food, lodging, and thrills from seemingly generous hippies maintaining "communal pads" in the East y Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbur- district, Chicago's Old Town, and more accessible cities and farm areas stretching from New Jersey to New Mexico. Instead of finding a glamorous life, the vast majority of runaways find that they won't even be taken in by hippies if they are too young and, even if they do find a "home," they usually cannot live there without being exploited by superficial, bullying hippies, hypocritical protestors, drug pushers, and, sometimes, even sex criminals. Not long ago, a girl in Vickery, Ohio, after watching hippie motorcyclists "burn rubber" (drag race), hitchhiked to the East Village with a friend. Within two days, she had been raped, thrown alive down a shaft, and taken to a morgue where her body lay unidentified for two weeks! Within a few days, most runaways are unharmed but so hungry or disillusioned thr.t they want to return home. But they are hesitant to do so because they 1 fear their parents' fifth-flo- cr ) |