IN FRANCE A CHILD MISSING EVERY TEN MINUTES

Figures that are cold in the back : in France, a child disappears every ten minutes.

Police and gendarmerie services counted more than 51,000 disappearances of children in 2019. These include runaways or abduction by a separate parent. But sometimes the reason for these disappearances remains unknown.

Every May 25, the International Day of Missing Children raises public awareness of these tragedies and publicizes 116,000, a free, European number that allows families to find a child. This issue processed nearly 1,200 cases in 2019. It provides social and psychological assistance to families, offers support and provides care for parents in distress.

Fortunately, most of the missing children are found. "A third of these young people return or are found within seventy-two hours, a second third in the first quarter following their disappearance" explains Parisian Laureen Burbau, director of communication at Droit d'Enfance. But another third, that is to say thousands, disappears definitively each year, without being able to trace them.

In the majority of cases, these untraceable children are adolescents who have run away from the family home.

They fall into wandering and when they reach the age of majority, they disappear from the Register of wanted persons.

Many of them fall into drugs, prostitution or become marginalized.

The police and gendarmerie services are also focusing their research on these voluntary departures, a wandering minor being always vulnerable.



Carl Delsey for DayNewsWorld