E-Mail This Article to a Friend Lost Cause More than 200 children have vanished from Boston. To date, the BPD and state police have done little to find them BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN
	More » The List: Boston's missing children file » On the Web National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: This is the central repository for information on missing kids. In addition to the searchable database of missing persons, it has plenty of info on laws and policies, and what parents need to know. Have You Seen Andy?: Filmmaker Melanie Perkins has made a documentary, which is scheduled to air on HBO next year, about the ongoing search for Andy Puglisi. Puglisi disappeared from Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1976 at age 10. This Web site discusses the case, the film, and issues relating to lost children. Polly Klaas Foundation: Based in California, this organization is a leader in efforts to ensure safety for children. It includes info on lost children and much more. Massachusetts State Police: This, believe it or not, is the state’s main page for missing-persons information.

Susan (not her real name) is 16 years old and tells people she wishes she were dead. She ran away from the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS) this fall, took a bus down to New York City, and quickly fell into the hands of a man she says abused her sexually and psychologically — and threatened to kill her if she tried to leave. Three weeks ago, she managed to run out the front door and made it to a Manhattan police station, her neck scarred from abuse, her spirit wrecked. Two DSS workers went down to bring her back.

As twisted as it may sound, Susan’s is a success story.

Another Boston girl, Andrea Magaw, has not returned. She went missing in August within an hour of arriving at a new foster home. Boston Police Department (BPD) detectives consider hers the most urgent missing-persons case they have. Magaw, 16, requires mental-health medication she has not had access to in months. Unlike previous times she has run away, she has made no contact with friends and family.

The difference between Magaw and Susan, between missing and found, is left far more to chance than you might think. Unless they are known to have been abducted — a rarity among missing-persons cases — teens who disappear in Massachusetts are usually written off by the authorities as runaways, and are left to their own devices. The best chance to protect them is to gather and disseminate information quickly, over a broad area, so that someone — police, transportation officials, or the general public — will recognize them before they get too deep into trouble. But in most cases in Massachusetts, no emergency-response team is formed; no photos are placed on a Web site, posted at a bus depot, or sent to nearby jurisdictions. In fact, there is no protocol for action of any kind.

You can find Andrea Magaw’s photo on national missing-persons’ Web sites, all right — but no thanks to law enforcement. Her photo is on those sites because her mother Googled "missing kids" to find where to send it to. Madeline Magaw also reached out to the Polly Klaas Foundation in Petaluma, California, which provided her with 500 fliers that she posted at train and bus stations, and handed out to teenagers. She has even gone to Chinatown at two in the morning to search for her daughter among the street girls. The detective assigned to the case recently called her, for the first time in a month, she says, to see if she had any new leads.

"I wanted to do an Amber Alert, but I didn’t have proof that she was abducted." says Magaw. "They don’t take it as seriously. People just look at it as a family problem."

The BPD just made Andrea Magaw the first missing-person’s picture posted on its new blog, at www.bpdnews.com (several days after the Phoenix began asking questions for this article). But a current list of missing persons, let alone their photographs, is not available to the public. The Phoenix is making the list public at bostonphoenix.com/missing.

About 40 girls ages 12 to 17 go missing in Boston every month. As of December 1, the BPD’s list of 351 active missing-persons cases, provided upon request to the Phoenix, included 210 under the age of 18 (and more who were under 18 when they disappeared).

Missing juveniles — legally considered too immature and inexperienced to make responsible decisions in the world without adult supervision — are usually broke and alone, and often emotionally troubled or depressed. "They are prey out there," says Denise Monteiro, DSS spokesperson. "They’re going to end up dead, or raped, or forced into prostitution." Indeed, an estimated half-million children work as prostitutes in the US, at an average age of 14. The FBI estimates that as many as two-thirds are runaways. And Massachusetts has no coordinated effort to find them.

LUCK AND HAPPENSTANCE

Authorities have good success with old-fashioned detective work, when they have the time and resources to undertake it, says BPD deputy superintendent Darren Greeley. In fact, a particularly worrisome case just ended well. William Lamar, an 18-year-old Northeastern University student with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, disappeared in late October. He was tracked to London and found last week.

Finding and helping lost teens requires quick action, broad scope across jurisdictions, shoe-leather detective work, and coordinated distribution of information. Unfortunately, Massachusetts’s state government does the least it is required to do by federal mandate: it runs a one-person statewide clearinghouse of reports sent in from local police, and maintains an Amber Alert system that notifies media and authorities statewide on the rare occasions (10 times since Massachusetts launched it in 2002) when a youngster is known to have been abducted and in danger.

In other words, we rely on luck and happenstance — and the fortunate dedication of a few individuals — to locate the vast majority of missing kids.

That was the way Sarah (not her real name) was found last weekend. A 15-year-old runaway from a Boston-area DSS facility, Sarah showed up at the home of some extended family members; one of them thought to call DSS to see whether the girl was supposed to still be in state custody. She was — and last time she ran, she was gone for a year on a cross-country jag. DSS notified Andrea Watson, private citizen, president of Parents for Residential Reform, and the state’s unofficial top runaway rescuer. Watson got in touch with a friend Sarah stays in contact with, who set up a three-way phone conversation in which Sarah revealed the address near Lawrence where she was staying. Police from Salem, Sarah’s official home residence, drove up and got her.

Thank goodness for Watson, because the official authorities weren’t likely to find Sarah anytime soon. "We took a report yesterday that she is missing," confirmed police captain John Jodoin of Salem last Friday, before Sarah was found. So, what action did the department plan consist of? Essentially, wait until someone bumped into her. "She’s listed as a missing person. Any [officer] who would have contact with her would take her into custody," Jodoin said.

That’s just not good enough, says John Bish, whose daughter Molly was 16 when she disappeared five years ago from her lifeguard job in Warren; her remains were found three years later. "Law enforcement is set up to deal with criminals. Police officers are oriented toward looking at perpetrators," he says. "Ideally, if there’s a young person missing, [law enforcement] should assume that the child is abducted unless they learn otherwise," says Bish, who points out that 75 percent of missing children who end up dead are killed within the first three to four hours of their disappearance.

While the Amber Alert program claims a perfect record in recovering the 11 children it has been used for in Massachusetts, traditional dissemination of photos and information is also surprisingly helpful: one of every six of those long-lost souls featured on postcard mailers gets located, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Names and faces are especially useful at bus depots, train stations, and other focal points of a young person’s travel. Susan, the girl recently recovered from Manhattan, simply got on a bus, like many runaways in Massachusetts do, says Watson. They arrive broke, alone, and desperate for affection. "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to spot a runaway coming off the bus," Watson says. "They get off the bus in New York, and these guys are there ready to recruit them."