Well without giving any names does anybody happen to know any stories of runaways either in the news or in your community or family that you would care to share about what happened...how long...who with...just to give us something to go on.
I remember one case that was in the news where a young girl ran away and was found in some fellows apartment attic. It was a few years back and I don't remember all the details. I think she was missing perhaps a week.
JMO
I'm not trying to offer an opinion on what I think happened in this case, but regarding your question, I am familiar with an example of someone running away for good around 16 years old.
She was a nice girl who had many friends. We all had a lot of mutual friends, and on certain occasions, some of us would hang out after school at times at different people's houses. She was sometimes present at these get togethers, and I only knew her through these mutual friends.
At some point, she started to hang around with some different friends who were into drugs and not the type of people our main group would associate with. So, we saw less and less of her in our group.
Then one day, the story spread through school that she ran away from home. Everyone thought she would probably come back in a few days, but she never did come back home. It was really sad, as she had a nice loving family and her brother who we knew through school was devastated. The rumor mill indicated she just left to live with some of these other new friends she began to hang out with. Some of them were older and had their own places, and the rumors said she was staying with one of them.
We all heard that LE did do some house searches at specific places, but never found her. The last I remember is she never was found, but that she was known to be fine (through rumor mill) and just living with these type of people doing her own thing.
It was a really sad thing at the time because a lot of her original friends saw how she changed and we all felt terrible that nobody could convince her to avoid these type of people. She chose to be rebellious and she really changed her whole attitude and everything. She was such a seemingly nice girl with a nice family, and had absolutely nothing to run away from.
So, IMO, these types of things do happen.