RUNNING away from home is not uncommon among children, teenagers especially. The high numbers are worrying but figures show 97 per cent of runaways go home or are found and returned. However, three per cent do go missing and are still missing. Hence the need to distinguish between the two groups to enable solutions to be found. While the high numbers of runaways are worrisome, the ones missing and not found suggest darker forces at work involving criminal abductions, although there are instances of them being spirited away by a parent. These are children from broken homes. There are, too, the latchkey kid phenomenon of children left unsupervised after school. They are in danger of abductions and peer pressure.
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