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Show Family Weekly November 15, 1970 WMtt to Do Oralis Away Yot Chid. Iff He may be in a "runaway shelter" or an old friend's home By BILL SURFACE The other evening, a dis- traught couple from N.J., rushed into a police precinct station in New York City to report that their Hacken-sac- 15-year-o- !d k, daughter had been missing for nearly 10 hours. Blaming a "smart aleck girl for talking her into running away," die father emphasized that his daughter was probably being preyed upon by dope addicts in New d York's grimy, East Village section. hippie-dominate- When the mother aske1 how long it would take the police to locate the daughter, a detective looked piqued. "Here we're combing this neighborhood for a big dope dealer we've been after for months. There's three of the meanest muggers you've ever seen. And a rapist who carried a machete still loose. That's just for openers. And you want us to drop everything and look for your kid first. We don't work that way. "We've just got to find her tonight," the mother cried, as a sergeant routinely filled out a report on the missing girl's description. "What are we going to do?" Never before have so many parents in the United States faced this type of crisis. Small children have always run, or wandered, away from home only to be found, after a harrowing search, seldom farther away than the next block. But now this problem has been compounded by the unprecedented who number of preteens and teen-ageare fleeing from their homes. With bicycles, hitchhiking, and marathon rock festivals now in style, more than one and a half million children about 65 percent of them girls were missing from home long enough last year to be reported to local police as "runaways." Though police were able to find only a small percentage of the missing children, they still arrested 149,052 youngsters under 18 years old as runaways. Of these, 58,885 were less than 15 years old and 4,929 were under 10. Though countless other runaways have reached their 18th birthday and are le gally free of parental consent, they similarly leave grieved parents wondering, once they vanish, if they are dead or alive. What, then, does a parent do when this nightmare strikes? Recalling grisly headlines about the murder or rape of some runaways, far too many parents assume the worst: their youngster has been lured into either communes such as the East Village, or San Francisco's Chicago's Old Town or one of the notorious types of "families" like that headed by Charles "Satan" Manson, runawhose control over small-tow- n ways has been dramatized in the murder trial of actress Sharon Tate. drug-infest- Haight-Ashbur- ed y, RZegardless of the state or town from which a child disappears, the vast majority of 20,000 alarms arriving at the New York Police Department's Missing Persons Unit, for example, emphasize that a runaway "is believed to be heading for the East Village or phasizes one Midwestern policeman, on child is the basis that "a usually well behaved as a runaway and the troublemaker at home is likely to get into trouble away from home." In seeking a teen-ag- e runaway, parents should allow the teener's behavior to be their guide in deciding if they can recover him unharmed or should they file a missing-persoreport, have him arrested, and possibly risk harmful notoriety. In one typical reaction, concerned parents in upstate New York notified local and state police of their daughter's disappearance then went to the nearest newspaper and television station for help in locating her. Newsmen described the father's futile search for his daughter outride seedy "crash pads" in the East Village, and raised the distinct possibility that the girl had either been sexually abused, forced to live with "speed freaks," steal or, sell drugs. well-behav- ed ns 16-year-- Haight-Ashbuiy- ." "That's like guessing a child has run either north or south," maintains Captain Joseph Lynch, head of the Missing Persons Unit. "And it doesn't help to locate the child." Some children do run to these, hippie hangouts if they are within easy reach. But by presuming that a child is a captive of them, parents have caused runaways to suffer more from the stigma of their indiscretion than anything that occurred while they were away. A parent should act, em well-meani- ng The girl later turned up wnharmed at a relative's house in Massachusetts but the family couldn't dispel the publicity that she probably lived with drug addicts. As a result, she needed to change schools and undergo psychiatric counseling. Parents have quietly recovered runaway by focusing their searches in what seems to be the most practical place for them to hide. According to police departments from California to Connecticut, most runaways go to popular teen-ag- e beaches, teen-age- rs music festivals. If their parents have moved within the previous year or two, runaways often return to their former neighborhood to stay with old friends. Though they may be missing as long as 36 hours, many children have persuaded an acquaintance (usually unknown to their parents) to let them stay at their house under the pretense that they have parental permission. Cnce the general locality of a runaway can be established, parents cannot assume that police, often preoccu- pied with the rise in violent crimes, can readily find him. Whether relying upon a policeman or private detective, both types of investigators often face the same frustrating limitation as a patrolman familiar with teen-ag- e hangouts in Chicago's Old Town. "Parents bring us pictures of runaways that were taken a couple years before or at a graduation," he said. "But the runaway has grown, got long hair, or fancy glasses. Sometimes kids even take all their pictures with them so the police can't identify them. Here the parent can spot their kid in a group halfway across a park. But we can talk to a kid and not even recognize him as the runaway from Indiana unless the parents are with us." Innumerable parents have promptly located runaway teen-ageby contactd ing either the pastor, organization or "runaway shelter," which can be found in almost every urban area or college town where runaways congregate. Often called the "runaway minister," many such clergymen (and their staffs) maintain rapport with disillusioned runaways by refusing to tell either police or parents of their whereabouts after they ask for food or lodging. But once a parent contacts them, the clergymen frequently act as intermediaries to persuade the child to return home. By conveying the parents' concern rather than anger, most clergymen also are able to reduce differences with the child so skillfully that the runaway, upon seeing his parents, runs to them instead of from them. rs church-supporte- rs 6 break into their parents' summer or winter home, loaf around college campuses or other schools, museums, parks, busy downtown areas, or the exciting . viv,. .... Three yourg boys who ran away in Erie, Pa., were returned home by police. |
