The number of children missing after running away from home has risen by 10 percent over the past three years, the Missing Children Data Resource Center said yesterday.
Center director Lin Wu-hsiung (林武雄) told a press conference that the percentage of children who went missing after running away from home in the center’s database hit 84.6 percent last year, from 73.7 percent in 2006.
The trend was also evident in figures released by the National Police Agency, which showed that 8,210, or 72.4 percent, of the 11,337 minors currently listed as missing had run away from home, Lin said.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
Among the runaways in the center’s database over the past three years, 57.5 percent were teenagers who had been attending junior high school, Lin said, adding that the majority were 15-year-olds.
Missing children who had been found by the center between 2006 and last year said they had stayed with boyfriends, friends, classmates or Internet friends after running away, Lin said.
More than 60 percent of the children who were found said they had run away from home more than twice, Lin said, adding that they left home a second or third time because the communication barrier between them and their family members had remained unchanged.
“Many said they left home on impulse, but later realized that running away was not as much fun as they imagined it would be,” Lin said.
Ministry of the Interior Children’s Bureau secretary-general Chen Kun-huang (陳坤皇) urged parents to enhance communication with their children by listening, understanding and appreciating children’s needs and spending more time with them.
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