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I’m housing a runaway.
I’m a 28 year old woman I work in a hostel, and for a few weeks there had been a young looking boy staying there.
He claimed to be sixteen but looked no older than thirteen. On the day he was leaving, I managed to stall him and get him talking, and I was more than shocked by what I heard.
He is only fourteen, and had ran away from home a good month ago. He would not tell me where he has come from, and the name he has given does not sound like a real one.
He was leaving the hostel because he ran out of money, and when I expressed concern he told me if I called the police he would be gone before I even hung up the call. I would have rather had him somewhere safe than wandering the streets, so I convinced him to come and stay with me for a few days.
He has now been living with me for a week.
He still has not given me any more information, but it is quite obvious that he has been abused by someone. I have 5 sons of my own, and he currently shares the room with my eldest, who is 11, and my son said he has seen marks all over his back when he was changing once. He is very jumpy and does not sleep much, and is extremely scrawny for someone his age.
I am desperate to call the police, but I fear if I do he will run off and end up back on the streets. He said no one is looking for him (which is true– there have been no missing reports, and for a fourteen year old, I would presume it would be all over the news by now) and he can’t go back, which he seems convinced the police will make him do. I assured him that is not the case, but he is very untrusting.
I am at a loss of what to do.
Call the police and hope he doesn’t run or let him stay longer and gain his trust and hopefully find out what has happened.
I do not want him out on the streets, but from what I’ve seen, I do not want him going back to wherever he came from, either.
This open post was written 2 months, 3 weeks ago | V/U/S: 112, 1, 2 | Edit Post | Leave a reply | Report Post
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