In a police station in Tucheng in Taipei County, Hsiao Chiang, a first-year middle-school student, sits off to one side, crying. (Names for this story have been changed.) After two months away from home, the previous night he was discovered by the police to be a registered "missing youth" during an inspection at a Shulin Internet cafe. The police brought him back to the station for the night, and notified his mother to come pick him up the next morning.

For two months, Hsiao Chiang lived at a friend's house, getting up every day whenever he woke up, and going to Internet cafes in the afternoon. Since he had no money to eat, not to mention play online games, he helped others "train" their on-line game characters and made enough to play and eat a bit here and there.

Looking physically and emotionally tired, Hsiao Chiang says that he used to live with his mother in Shulin, but moved to Taipei City's Wanhua District when she opened up a teashop. He didn't like the man his mother was living with, and was not willing to leave his old friends, so he ran away from home and stopped going to school. "She doesn't care what I do, anyway," he says.

With his mother's agreement, after the police juvenile squad threatens to send him to a detention house, Hsiao Chiang agrees to go home with his mother.

Will he run away from home again? With tears streaming down his face, Hsiao Chiang immediately replies "Yes, I will!" His response is not surprising, because everyone knows full well that if his relationship with his family does not improve, his name will show up once again on the missing persons list.

Schools and the home are fortresses that protect children. Why, then, are more and more children choosing to run away from home and school? This is a problem that deserves attention from all parts of society.

Choosing to run away

In recent years, more and more young people like Hsiao Chiang have disappeared temporarily or permanently after running away from home.

According to statistics from the Criminal Investigation Bureau's Office of Crime Prevention, in 2005 there were 3,959 reported cases of teenagers running away from home or leaving school, and 6,645 were listed as missing.

Furthermore, according to figures from the Child Welfare League, in Taiwan over 2,000 missing persons from ages 0-18 have not been found, and most of these are between ages 12 and 18. Among the reasons for their disappearance, "running away from home" was listed as #1, and it is estimated that some of those whose disappearance was caused by "unknown factors"--which is the #2 listed reason--have parents who will not admit they ran away.

"In the past five years, the main reason that teenagers go missing has become that they voluntarily leave home," says Huang Jui-jung, assistant director of the Child Welfare League's Missing Children Data Resource Center. Nowadays, children are very independent and open, have large networks of friends and acquaintances, and have many resources at their disposal, so running away is not a difficult thing for them. Once teenagers run away, some live at their friends' homes, or hole up in Internet cafes, or live on the streets or in parks, or drift between the big shopping malls.... Working from time to time, or just scraping by with their friends, they can hang on for a while.

Walls are places where young people express themselves--they are often covered with kids' thoughts, dreams, feelings and worries.

A master tracker

Even though young people's ideas about leaving home may be getting easier to achieve, the National Police Agency (NPA) has taken a more active role in helping with missing persons cases, with improved results.

In 1998, the NPA established an ID enquiry system as a part of the police's web-based services network, as well as a lead group for missing person inquiries within the household registration teams that was charged with developing highly skilled computer "search experts." With improved computer technology and matching functions, the success rate for finding missing persons has risen rapidly.

According to NPA statistics, in past years there have been over 380,000 missing persons or persons of unknown whereabouts nationwide. As of the end of last year, over 360,000 people had been found. Among these, there was a 90% success rate or higher for finding those persons who were considered "involuntary disappearances."

One expert tracker, Wang Min-nan, an officer with the Panchiao police, points out that in comparison with cases of lost elderly people or unidentified corpses, it is much more difficult to find individuals who have voluntarily left home. Since these cases involve relatively "mobile" people who have no fixed residence, they are usually found when police make inspections at places like Internet cafes, pool halls, or KTV parlors.

The Juvenile Delinquency Team, which is devoted to preventing youth crime, is the main force in helping to search for students who run away from home or school. In recent years, the Juvenile Affairs Division of the Taipei County Police Department has worked actively in schools to find students who have dropped out. Inspector Hsu Hung-ming, nicknamed the "Spiderman" of the Juvenile Affairs Division, says that in schools with large populations of students whose families have moved to Taipei for work, on average there will be five to ten students from each grade who run away from home or school.

Based on his many years of experience, Hsu Hung-ming can immediately pick out a runaway in a crowd of kids. In places frequented by young people, such as KTV parlors, Internet cafes, and pool halls, Hsu Hung-ming can find on average over 20 missing youths per month; last year alone he found 248.

"Runaways look pretty grungy, jumpy, and a little out of it," says Hsu. It used to be easy to tell a runaway from how long their hair was, but now that schools have lifted restrictions on students' hairstyles, that marker is no longer the key for Hsu.

The web is another tool for searching for people. To get closer to young people's inner worlds, Hsu Hung-ming uses the handle "Black Dog Mountain Brother" to chat with kids online. By getting a young person's MSN or instant messaging ID, they can be traced as soon as they log on and make contact with friends on the Internet.

"Finding people isn't hard," says Hsu. "But once you find them, the real problem is how to really get them to psychologically 'go home.'"

Wang Min-nan, an expert at finding missing persons, says that while helping to find disoriented elderly people or to identify corpses are good deeds, bringing a missing child back home is even better, because it saves both the child and their parents.

You don't understand me!

Why are young people willing to stay away and not go back home? This is a question that is worth digging into.

"Dysfunction in the family is the main reason that children leave home," says Chu Chin, manager of the City People Foundation's Luchou Center for Children and Teens. According to Chu, 99% of children who drop out of school, run away from home, or show aberrant behavior come from broken homes.

"Children are not loved enough," says Chu. In a time with high divorce rates and high unemployment, parents themselves may face a host of problems that make it difficult to spend time with and provide help for their children. Many children grow up in an environment where they are badly ignored and left to their own devices.

When a family has already become dysfunctional, of course children have to leave," says Chen Yu-wen, associate professor in National Taiwan University's Department of Social Work. Chen says that some "runaway" behavior should be seen as appropriate acts of self-defense and refusal to be hurt again. This is especially true for children who have been physically abused: once they are able to, they naturally will choose to leave home.

Actually, there are different types among the children who run away: there are both "runaways" and "throwaways." Some young people think up a way on their own to leave a bad environment, while for others, it is more like they have been thrown away by their families. According to Chen Yu-wen, every time the police conduct a "spring wind" operation to pick up minors who are wandering around late at night, there are always a few kids who are never taken home by their parents. Rather than say these young people have run away from home, one should say they were left behind by their family.

Some young people run away because their home is not functioning in a healthy way, yet others do it because their life is too easy.

"For some children," says Huang Jui-jung, "their life has been planned out too well. They lack any goals in life, and so they run away to the outside world in search of excitement." Huang says that while this may be hard to understand, these kids are definitely one form of runaway case.

When parents are often away from home for work, their house can become a place for runaways, and the juvenile squad comes by occasionally to check out the place.

Internet runaways

"Internet runaways" is a new term that has cropped up in recent years. It refers to another type of runaway, one who disappears or runs away from home because of the Internet.

According to Hsu Fu-sheng, a professor in the Police Administration Research Institute at Central Police University, in a wired society with cellular phones, computers, and other information products, parents' ability to control and supervise their children has fallen off sharply. There have been many cases of young people becoming obsessed with the Internet and running away from home, being tricked by online friends and disappearing, or going online to sell their bodies.

According to a survey from the Taipei Youth Activity Center, at the end of 2005, almost 60% of young people in the greater Taipei area said that their favorite activity is going on the Internet. Among these, over 70% go on the Internet every day. Overall, nearly 70% go online to "chat," and almost 40% play online games.

Statistics from the Child Welfare League show that the age for Internet runaways has already dropped to middle-school-aged kids. One surprising fact is that 80% of these runaways are girls.

One young woman, Hsiao Ju, graduated from middle school, but had to stay home to help out after her mother fell ill. With no opportunity to make friends elsewhere, she found them online. Once, when she arranged to meet with an online friend, she was taken away against her will, sexually assaulted, and kept in confinement for a few months. After she finally made it home, Hsiao Ju was afraid of everything and constantly worried, and her behavior was out of control. On top of that, she had become pregnant by the person who had abducted her. After paying such a terrible price in this "Internet disappearance," in the future Hsiao Ju will need more help and support from her family if she is to recover.

After getting a talking to from juvenile squad officer Hsu Hung-ming (right), Hsiao Chiang finally goes home with his mother after two months away from home.

Risk and opportunity

According to NTU Social Work associate professor Chen Yu-wen, "Running away from home often leads to other problems and other kinds of deviant behavior," such as selling sex, theft, and participation in gangs. "Running away" is not inherently criminal, then, but problems arise in the risks that it involves.

What problems can a child face if they run away from the protection of home and school too soon?

According to American criminologist Travis Hirschi's "social control" theory, human beings are naturally inclined to commit crime if they are not controlled by external laws and cultivated and nurtured by their environment. From this perspective, when children are not attached to their parents and school, if they should move beyond the boundaries of social control, it will not be easy to hold their behavior in check, and when they encounter criminal influences, they may give in to the forces around them and start breaking the law.

With 24 years as a police officer and nine years on the juvenile crime squad, Hsu Hung-ming says that virtually all juvenile crime is related to peer pressure.

"Children who run away from school and home often end up getting together and egging each other on. It's just too easy for them to make trouble," says Hsu. Kids who go beyond normal standards of behavior may end up being victimized or themselves become victimizers, and are a high risk group with "criminal tendencies."

In the first half of 2005, for example, of the 128 students Hsu Hung-ming found who had dropped out of school, 28 had run away from home, and some of these had begun to sell sex, some had gone into "eight generals" troupes at temples, while others had taken their chances with breaking the law, getting into drugs, theft, robbery, and extortion.

According to statistics, the crime rate for dropouts is around 40-50%. The issue is that while not all dropouts may run away from home, virtually all runaways decide to drop out, fearing being found at school. For these children, both dropouts and runaways, the crime rate only goes higher.

"For runaways, economic resources are the biggest problem," says Hsu Fu-sheng. The employment market for young people is very limited, and if they spend long stretches of time wandering the streets, young men are very easily absorbed into gangs and a life of crime, while young women can easily be led into prostitution.

Hsu Fu-sheng point out that, in an era when the Internet is highly developed, the lines separating adults and teenagers have also been broken. The criminal acts once committed by adults can now also be committed by teenagers--and they may do it even better. In any case, the likelihood of being a victim or victimizing others is also greater.

The web has become a way for young people to make friends, pass the time, or even break the law. Naturally, then, 24-hour Internet cafes have become a favorite places for young people to gather.

Behind the decision to run away

What would cause a child to run away and put themselves in danger? Is the problem with the runaway child, or with the "home" that they are leaving?

The home is an environment that provides love and nurturing. In the past, it was common even for poor families not to lose their ability to do this. Yet as the economic situation has generally improved, the functioning of the home seems to have become less and less healthy.

Chen Yu-wen argues that the main reason for this lies in ever-increasing competitive pressures and differences between rich and poor.

Hsu Fu-sheng, on the other hand, believes that most runaways either don't get enough love or enough discipline. According to Hsu Fu-sheng, "The structure of the family is not the main point. Rather, the main point is interaction between family members." When parents are too busy to look after their children, when they are too strict, or when they too doting--all of these things can cause problems.

According to Tseng Juo-wen, a counselor for runaway children at the Taipei County Juvenile Guidance Committee, in dealing with children's "disappearance," parents have all kind of reactions: panicked, angry, brokenhearted. Some say, "They met some bad friends," "His classmates made them do it," etc. In other words, many families will blame a child's running away on external forces that "pulled" the child away, yet very few will think seriously about what things in the family were "pushing" the child out.

"Children are very conscious of parents' feelings," says Huang Jui-jung of the Child Welfare League, who reminds parents that children sometimes run away in order to get their parents' attention. Huang says, "For some parents, when their child disappears, they can't even say if the child has any 'distinguishing characteristics,' and don't know who the child's best friends are, or where they usually go." Huang recommends that parents should put more energy into their children.

Indeed, "Children don't turn bad overnight. Most of them have been through a childhood filled with conflict, and by the time they reach their teenage years, when they have the ability--and when parents' ability to control them is reduced--then the problems start to come out," says Chen.

Unending pain

When a child first disappears, most parents are panic-stricken and immediately contact the police and join in the search.

"The first seven days are key," says Huang Jui-jung. The longer children are away from home, the harder it is to bring them back. After seven days, children "go wild"--they may have seen too much, and the situation they are in can become more complicated. If they have, for example, lost their virginity, committed crimes, or been abducted, the situation becomes even harder to resolve.

In any case, when children disappear or run away, it causes great pain for everyone in the family. How to cure the pain, however, involves the future of the family and the child.

According to Huang Jui-jung, when a child runs away, it is a time of constant pain for child and parents alike. The basic way toward resolution, however, is for both sides to think hard about what they can change. Unfortunately, many families treat a child's running away as a "family secret" and treat it as if it has never happened. They may act this way, never communicating about it, until it happens again.

One mother, whose daughter ran away from home for many years because of discipline problems, simply cried and cursed whenever concerned friends and family tried to help or find out what had happened, and eventually refused to talk about it at all. After her daughter had been gone for many years, her friends arranged for mother and daughter to meet, but the mother still gave her daughter only a cool reception. One can imagine how painful it was for her when her daughter simply turned and left.

Who will take them by the hand?

Disappearing or running away may not be the worst thing in the world, and it may even be a growing process for some families. How can it be possible to reduce the risks to children out in the world so that they do not go down the wrong path? This is one area worthy of greater effort.

NTU social work professor Chen Yu-wen points out that the United States provides 24-hour emergency centers for runaway children that keep them off the streets and reduce risks to them.

While Taiwan does not have this kind of protective services, some private organizations are paying attention to this problem and putting energy into it.

The City People Foundation has established a Center for Children and Teens in Luchou, Taipei County that, through adventure experiences, makes friends with teenagers with all kinds of deviant behaviour.

"Children don't want to be preached at," says Chu Chin, the center's director. Only by creating mutual relationships quickly through various activities and then talking and becoming friends with troubled teens does the center find opportunities to counsel them.

The International Campaign to End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT), whose Taiwan branch was founded 11 years ago, found that many children who left their halfway schools often went back into their old situations--including involvement in prostitution--once they lost the companionship and services they had been provided with. Two years ago, ECPAT began to transform its work, and launched the "Wings" program, which offers housing and help with finding work to young women until they are able to lead a stable life. "With love and support that is like a family's, children will not easily fall back into their own ways," says ECPAT executive director Li Li-fen.

The home is certainly a safe haven for many people, but it is also true to say that the home can be a hurtful place for others. If we want to help children truly go back home, then it is important first to bring the love back home.