Madrid
Updated:
Save
Why do our children run away? Dozens of parents may be wondering at this time, because adolescent minors run away from home every day of the year and for very different reasons.
The
ANAR Foundation You can clarify some doubts and have answers. In fact, the assessment made today, May 25, when the International Day of Missing Minors is celebrated, is that the ANAR telephone number for these cases (116,000), a single harmonized number in the European Union, received 2,892 requests for help for disappearances in 2021 which led to the attention of 1,172 cases. The reasons for these consultations are grouped into six sections: escape or escape ideation; expulsions from the home; parental abduction; loss, accident or other type of disappearance; kidnapping by third parties; or unaccompanied migrant child or adolescent.
Leakage remains the leading cause of disappearance, with 66.5% of the total of 1,172 cases attended (779 cases). In most of them, their protagonists are fleeing serious situations of violence, such as physical or psychological abuse, sexual abuse, gender violence or bullying. The cases of escape attended by the foundation have increased compared to 2020 by 52.7% (779 cases in 2021 compared to 510).
Minors are next in importance. expelled from home with 212 cases (18.1% of the total). “In many cases, the parents of these minors have problems setting limits and managing their children’s serious behavioral disorders. They do not know how to act and their degree of desperation leads them to expel them from home, committing a serious crime, “he explains. Benjamin Ballesteros, Director of ANAR Programs. Expulsions have grown from 2020 to 2021 by 26.9% (212 compared to 167).
In third place are parental abductions or kidnappings (101 cases representing 8.6% of the total disappearances). usually occur within mixed couples in which one of its members is a foreigner, as occurred in the Juana Rivas vs. Francesco Arcuri. Its difficulty is aggravated when it occurs in countries that are not signatories to the Hague Convention, adds ANAR. Parental thefts have increased by 48.5% in the last year compared to the previous year (101 cases compared to 68). Among our borders, there is an increase in cases of kidnapping for criminal purposes, which are the most serious cause of disappearance. ANAR has had evidence in 2021 of 18 caseswhich represents an increase of 125% compared to 2020, when there were 8 cases.
Finally, losses, accidents or other types of disappearances have increased by 28.9%, going from 45 cases in 2020 to 58 in 2021. ANAR has also intervened in 7 cases that have required international coordination given their cross-border component.
The autonomous community from which the most inquiries have been received regarding cases of missing minors is Madrid (822 consultations, which represents 28.4% of the total and 318 cases), followed by the Valencian Community (470 consultations, which represents 16.3% and 161 cases) and Andalusia (305 consultations, which represents 10.5% and 103 cases).
Profile of the disappeared
The ANAR Foundation has received more cases for missing girls (66%) than for boys (33.5%). The age group of 16 and 17 years concentrates 39.9% of the cases, followed by adolescents of 14 and 15 years (30.6%). 79.4% of leak cases correspond to adolescents between 14 and 17 years old.
In 75.6% of the cases, the ANAR Foundation has offered psychological, legal and social care simultaneously and 185 follow-ups of personalized support have been carried out for the relatives of disappeared minors in 2021. «One of the worst things that can happen to a human being from a psychological point of view is the disappearance of one of their children -explains Sonsoles Bartholomew, Director of the Legal Department of the ANAR Help Lines-. That is why in ANAR we fight so that no more cases occur and we ask that the families be granted the status of victims”
www.abc.es
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism