Throwaways and Runaways

“I CUT my hair, dressed like a man, put chains and padlocks around my neck, and stuck a safety pin through my cheek, and in this way I began my life as a punk.”​—Tamara.

If you had seen Tamara on the streets, would you have guessed that she was a lonely, abused teenager whose homelife left her void of the attention and affection she was crying out for? Would you have thought she was a rebel heading for trouble with the law and perhaps for a life of crime? Tamara reveals to Awake! the frightening events that led to the kind of life she lived from the age of 14, a life-​style she never wished for.

Throwaways

Tamara relates: “I grew up in a small mountain town in Italy, in a family in which affection was unknown. Sadly, I witnessed the intense arguments that exploded between my parents and the unrepeatable insults that flew on those occasions. I often ended up in the quarrel and being beaten mercilessly by my heartless father. I used to bear the welts for weeks.

“When I was 14, my father gave me a few dollars and a one-​way train ticket to the nearest city, where there were many perils. I made friends with other youngsters who, like me, did not have anyone interested in them. Many of us became alcoholics. I became arrogant, vulgar, and aggressive. I was often without food. One winter evening my friends and I burned the furniture to keep warm. How I would have liked a family to care for me, to be interested in my sentiments, my anxieties, my fears. But I was alone, terribly alone.”

There are hundreds of thousands of “Tamaras” in today’s world. On every continent, there are children who have been abandoned by parents who have neglected their responsibilities.

Runaways

Other youngsters decide to leave home because “it is simply too terrifying a place for them to remain; it is too painful, it is too dangerous, and they run out into the streets.”​—New York State Journal of Medicine.

At nine years old, Domingos was abandoned to an orphanage when his mother remarried. Because of the beatings he experienced by the priests, he planned to escape. His mother took him back, but he was subjected to constant beatings by his stepfather. Running away was the only way he found relief from the cruelty at home.

Sadly, “millions of children cannot trust the adults in their own households for a minimum standard of safe care,” writes Anuradha Vittachi in her book Stolen Childhood​—In Search of the Rights of the Child. She also writes: “Three children a day are estimated to die of abuse at the hands of their parents in the United States.” In too many cases, a child’s sexuality is violated rather than protected by a family member.

Exploited and Traumatized

Domingos was forced to live with other street children who were involved with robbing and stealing, as well as taking and selling drugs. Tragically, many who run away from bad conditions at home are exploited by pimps, pedophiles, and pornography rings. Hungry and lonely, these young ones are offered a place to stay and promises of belonging to a “caring” adult, only to find that they pay with their bodies in a life of prostitution. Without work skills, many learn to survive on the streets in any way they can, including being seduced and seducing. Some do not survive. Drugs, alcohol, murder, and suicide claim many young victims.

Commenting on the life of street children, one former child prostitute said: “You’re scared out here. You know, what gets me upset is that a lot of [people] think that when they see a kid sleeping on a train, or they see a kid hanging out all the time, they think it’s ’cause they wanna be. Now that I’m older, that’s not how I see it. These kids are each crying in their own special way. They don’t wanna be like that, but their parents don’t want them.”

Seeking “Freedom”

There are other hundreds of thousands of youngsters reported missing from home who have been lured into the streets by the freedoms they imagine are out there. Some want freedom from poverty. Others desire freedom from parental authority and rules that they may feel are too restrictive.

One youth who tasted the so-​called freedom from parental control and from the principles of a Christian home was named Emma. Having left for a life with her friends, she became enslaved to drugs. But after experiencing the brutality of the streets, Emma expressed the desire to return and to end her drug habit. Sadly, though, she did not cut her ties with bad company, and on a summer evening with her friends, they injected heroin. For Emma it was the last time. She went into a coma and died the next day, alone and abandoned by her “friends.”

Can the future of children victimized by their parents or by others be better? Will there ever be a world that will not exploit youths? What hope is there that family life can be improved and appreciated so that youngsters will not want to run away? The answers can be found in the following article.