710 cases of missing children between January and last month

KUALA LUMPUR - There are a total of 710 reported cases of children under 18 who went missing between January to November, this year.

Bukit Aman's Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division (D11) principal assistant director Assistant Commissioner Siti Kamsiah Hassan said of the number, 634 of them have been found which was 89.3 per cent.

She said 76 children were still missing.

"Based on the analysis and study of the cases from the statistics, police found that the disappearance of the children was caused by six categories.

"Firstly, running away from home (category). The main factor children and teenagers were reported to have done so was because they wanted to be free from their family or guardians.

"Running away from home is the most common cause of disappearance, accounting for 82.26 per cent of all cases," she told Sinar, today.

Commenting further, Kamsiah said apart from the desire to find freedom, the cause that contributed to them running away from home was disharmony in the family.

She added that the act of running away from home was to follow a friend or lover, misunderstanding with family members, looking for a job at a young age, lack of family attention and lack of interest in studying.

In addition, she said the disappearance of children due to accidents was as much as 0.83 per cent.

This, she said involved natural disasters such as landslides, drowning in the river, lost in the forest or eaten by crocodiles.

She explained that the disappearance category accounted for 2.16 per cent of the total number of cases.

For the category of being victims of crime, Siti Kamsiah said the number recorded was around 0.04 per cent.

She said children involved in this category were victims of revenge and anger of irresponsible individuals against the children's parents.

She said in the category involving kidnapping, the children who were kidnapped were believe to have been abused and killed by the suspect.

She said although the numbers in this category were the lowest, it was crucial to take cases where children were victims of crimes seriously adding that the police always prioritised and paid close attention to these situations.

She said 1.39 per cent of minors were taken away by their guardians.

"When a mother, father or guardian runs away, it usually arises from a disagreement about taking care of the child.

"It also involves the right to claim custody of a child where one of the parties is suspected of taking the child away and running," she said adding that the matter involved legal and illegal guardians.

She said there were 4.15 per cent of the cases of missing children which the cause was unknown.

"As an example of a case in Sarawak, a mother woke up to find that her six-year-old son was missing.

"The mother suspected that her son had fallen in the river because the residence was a house on the water.

"There is no evidence of invasion and no ransom demands made by any party. In fact, there are no eyewitnesses who can confirm the incident," she said.