Soul Asylum and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

There is a myth that America is super invested in.

That myth is that when children go missing it is because they have been taken, coerced or lied to, to get them to leave, and that strangers are the ones guilty of causing children to go missing. In reality, the reason we hear so much about stranger-danger cases on the news is because they are so incredibly rare.

The reason the news doesn’t cover non-custodial parent kidnappings, or kids running away because their parents were beating on them them or sexually abusing them, is because those crimes are depressingly common. They happen all the time, and quite frankly, the 24-hour news machine doesn’t care. They only care if the child or the perpetrator is rich and/or famous, or a politician, and even then, it’s rarely more than a blip.

What does this have to do with Soul Asylum?

Soul Asylum is, full disclosure, one of my favorite bands. Grave Dancer’s Union, their biggest album is not their best album, but it’s good. And “Runaway Train,” the biggest single off that album, is also pretty good. But what’s important here is the video.

Slate’s Nick Keppler wrote a stellar article about tracking down several of the kids whose pictures were featured in the first run of that Soul Asylum video, which also featured dramatized footage of kids being abducted and abused. Most of those kids are now in their 40s and 50s and have lives and families of their own, and solid reasons for running away. None of them were taken, or forced into leaving. They left of their own volition because for one reason or another staying wasn’t a healthy option for them. Some cited sexual abuse, one of them left because of untreated mental illness her family either couldn’t or wouldn’t help her with.

But they all had reasons they left.

The fact is, in the United States, we treat children like they are the property of their parents. Regardless of whether or not something will help or hurt a child, the parents’ beliefs are almost always the deciding factor as to what medical treatment, access to resources, or education that child will receive.

I have had a couple of friends who ran away from home after they were outed to their parents, and received severe beatings, were locked in their rooms, threatened, had their friends threatened, had all communication with the outside world taken away, etc… As an adult I’ve known quite a few folks who have spoken with me about running away to avoid sexual or other forms of physical abuse. I’ve had friends who were institutionalized back in the 80s, the heyday of the child institutionalization kickback scams, for things as mild as “talking back.”

According to the FBI, fewer than 1% of missing children are abducted by a stranger. Most of the time if there is an abduction, it is a non-custodial parent or other relative, for which they did not cite a percentage, and they state that 95% of missing children run away. (Reuters, 2019.) And the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s own, more recent, statistics bear this out. Of the 27,664 cases in which they were involved, 3 were stranger abductions. (NCMEC Impact page.)

And, to be honest, given the statements they gave Mr. Keppler for his article, there is likely a little inflation of stats there, but even if we take them at their word, the majority of children (under 18 years of age) who go missing do so of their own volition.

If kids have a reason to leave, then why would we force them to go back. Some of these kids are running for their lives, not away from them. We need to listen to children when they run. We need to ask why, and we need to quit valuing returning children desperate enough to find life on the streets more appealing than staying at home, more than we value those children’s lives.

Because right now, we don’t. We treat runaways like stolen property, to be returned to their families at any cost.

And that’s not ok. These kids know when they aren’t safe. When the dubious safety of the streets is a better shot at survival than staying at home.

The majority of people who sexually and physically abuse children are their parents, step-parents, or other closely related family members or trusted friends or authority figures.

Not Drag Queens. Not that gay couple down the street.

Family members, Pastors, Priests, Ministers.

Listen to kids, and quit treating them like stolen cars.