NISMART : The National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Throwaway Children

In the literature on missing children, runaways have sometimes been referred to as the “voluntary missing,” to distinguish them from abducted and lost children. However, this term misstates the nature and complexity of the problem. It is generally recognized that children who leave home prematurely often do so as a result of intense family conflict or even physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. Children may leave to protect themselves or because they are no longer wanted in the home. The term “voluntary” does not properly apply to such situations.

 

To represent this complexity, NISMART–1, following the practice of many youth services agencies, employed the concept of thrownaway youth to characterize young people who were forced out of their homes or were refused permission to return (Finkelhor, Hotaling, and Sedlak, 1990). NISMART–1 presented separate estimates for the incidence of runaways and thrownaways. However, further analysis of NISMART–1 findings suggested that the distinction between runaways and thrownaways was less than clear cut. Many youth had both kinds of episodes, and many individual episodes had both runaway and thrownaway elements. Moreover, the categorization of an episode frequently depended entirely on whether information was gathered from the youth, who tended to emphasize the thrownaway aspects of the episode, or the caretakers, who emphasized the runaway aspects.