The Invisible Children
by Virlanda Miller
The Charlotte Post
It's 11 pm on a school night. A parent notices her 16-year-old daughter has not returned home from a friend's house. The mother is frantic, the father is anxious. The parents start making phone calls. The friend their daughter visited claims to know nothing of her whereabouts. A police report is filed, and the parents face a long, sleepless night. Or two or three. It's a parent's worst nightmare.
Less than one week later, the girl is found in another state, alive and unharmed, but happy to have been found and ready to come home. She is brought home to her overjoyed parents, who believe the crisis is over. Their daughter is home again. But why did she run away in the first place, and how could this have been prevented?
This scenario is not uncommon. Hundreds of parents in the Charlotte area face this type of ordeal every year, as their children leave home under all types of circumstances. Mecklenburg County leads the state in the number of missing person cases per county, with 3,638 reported missing in 2003, according to statistics provided by the Missing Persons Bureau of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Of that group, 2,816 were age 17 and under, of which 1,852 were black.
For Al Hart and Lee Tuttle, missing persons are not just numbers or statistics, however. They are two of four detectives in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Missing Persons Bureau, the only one of its kind in North Carolina devoted specifically to missing person cases. Their job is to solve these cases and reunite runaways with their families, and provide resources to these families to assist them in directing a young person's life in a more positive direction.
While Hart and Tuttle acknowledged the large percentage of black youth classified as runaways, Tuttle explained the issues motivating a young person to leave home affects families of all races and economic levels. "There is a wide range of issues the families (of runaways) are dealing with," Tuttle said. "A child could have a basic 'falling out' with their parents because they didn't like what they had for supper. And there are more complex issues, relating to school, substance abuse by the parents or the children, and gang activity."
Once a child is reported missing by a parent, guardian or some other authority figure, an All Points Bulletin (APB) is sent out, and the information is entered into a national crime computer database, making it possible for quick action to be taken if the child is found in another state. Cases are assigned to detectives, and the investigation begins. Contrary to popular opinion, a person does not have to be missing at least 24 hours before police will take a missing person report, according to Tuttle.
Hart said a missing person's background in relation to crime is examined, to determine if he or she was a victim of a crime or had committed a crime. Families and friends of the runaway are interviewed, as well as teachers. Investigators determine if the missing person is in danger, involved in a gang or left home voluntarily. "What drives our cases is the amount of information provided to us," Hart said. He said some cases have little information, which makes the investigation more challenging, but as long as the person is considered missing, the case remains open and is never classified as a "cold" case.
In the case of runaways, the majority are found alive, but in a variety of situations. "Some kids leave home for a 'cooling-off' period, go to a friend's or relative's house," Hart said. "Some are involved in crime. Many suspects in auto thefts are juveniles. And some leave home to get involved in gangs." He added that many also leave the state, and a few even leave the country.
"They're willing to travel with older adults," Tuttle said. "Kids are becoming more independent, and have this false courage...running off with people they have no business with."
Hart and Tuttle cited the lack of parental involvement as a problem in the lives of many runaways. Hart recalled a time when parents were more involved in the lives of their children and knew who their friends were, but he has worked cases where young girls were found in motel rooms with older men, and when the parents were interviewed, they knew nothing about these men who had befriended their daughters. Tuttle added parents were allowing their children's friends to come over for days at a time, and are not questioning why these children stay that long.
"Parents are feeding children who have been reported missing," Tuttle said, "but they don't know it."
Tuttle said the habitual runaway, in many cases, will eventually turn to a life of crime, and intervention is necessary to prevent this. "Look at a runaway as somebody who's going to have more problems in the future," he said. "I think the challenge is to see that runaway, whose grades in school have slipped, as an opportunity for intervention to get them off that track, to where they're staying at home, listening to their parents, and being surrounded by positive influences."
Hart and Tuttle believe parental involvement is a deterrent to runaway behavior in young people. They encourage parents to play an active role in the lives of their children, by spending time with them, and enrolling them in sports or church activities, so that they have adult supervision, even when their parents are not there.
In working with families where a runaway has returned home, Hart and Tuttle refer them to programs that can help these troubled families rebuild. These programs include the Youth Network, which assists troubled youth; the McLeod Center, a chemical dependency center, and Reality, a program sponsored by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Department, which gives young people the opportunity to experience life in jail and interaction with jail inmates.
