The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported over 18,500 runaways in 2016. 1 in 6 of those runaways were likely sex trafficking victims.
A staggering 86 percent of the runaways were in the care of social services or foster care when they went missing.
Now the spotlight is on Washington, D.C. and a small but growing group of missing girls and boys who are likely runaways.
These cases have come to light thanks to Black Twitter’s angry complaints that no one is investigating reports of the missing girls.
In fact, the missing children are being investigated as likely runaways by the D.C. Youth and Family Services Division — not the police.
A few of the girls who have been found safe had a history of running away. Which explains why the D.C. Youth and Family Division is investigating their cases, not the police.
13-year-old Taylor Innis (pictured top) went missing on March 10, 2017. Despite being only 13, Taylor appears older than her stated age. She is 5-foot-6 and weighs between 125-135 pounds. Taylor was last seen on the 4700 block of 5th Street at 10:30 pm.
Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to call the D.C. Family and Youth Division at (202) 727-9099.
Another missing girl, 15-year-old Dayanna White, was last seen on March 3. Her mother reports that she never returned home from school.
Like Taylor, Dayanna is already on file at the D.C. Youth and Family Services. Dayanna’s mother admits she ran away a year ago, after she got mixed up with the wrong crowd.
Despite the social media uproar, Mayor Muriel Bowser denies there is an increase in missing persons in D.C.
“The number of missing persons reports has remained constant since 2014. What has changed is our way of getting that information out quickly and the tools that we are using to get that out,” she said during a March 16 press conference.
No Amber Alerts have been issued because the system was created to help recover abducted children, not runways who went missing after meeting men on social media.
The lack of Amber Alerts suggests that D.C. police do not believe these teenagers are in imminent danger.
