Missing Miriam from Saxony-Anhalt discovered in Berlin
Created: 01/07/2022Updated: 01/07/2022, 12:03 PM
"Police" is written on the door of a patrol car.
© David Inderlied / dpa / illustration
When children and young people are missing, many are quick to think of crimes.
Often, however, they only ran away to escape conflict or to look for a supposedly more exciting life elsewhere.
Berlin - The missing 15-year-old Miriam from Saxony-Anhalt has reappeared in Berlin.
After a phone call from her environment, the police were able to find her on Friday night in an apartment in the Reinickendorf district.
"You are fine," said a spokeswoman for the Berlin police on Friday morning.
She was in the apartment voluntarily and not the victim of a crime.
Initially, the girl remains in the care of the police.
Whether there is also an investigation into a criminal offense is not communicated because of the minor's personal rights.
Miriam had disappeared since mid-2021.
The mother and the police suspected she was in Berlin, apparently also because Miriam had reported it herself.
According to a report in the "Bild" newspaper, she ran away from her mother in Saxony-Anhalt and fled to Berlin.
The police had looked for Miriam with two photos. This caused a stir because two very different pictures were published. One photo showed a woman who looked significantly older than 15 years. It can also be found on the girl's Facebook profile and has apparently been heavily edited on the computer. What you can see is a very artificial-looking face with exaggeratedly large eyes and lips. The police also said the girl liked to wear colored contact lenses and had long hair dyed dark blonde. Other photos on the Internet profile show her dressed more revealingly in an expensive car and in a bar.
The public search began many months after Miriam disappeared.
The mother reported some time ago, according to the police.
However, you have only recently agreed to a public manhunt.
According to “Bild”, the mother said that the Berlin police initially rejected the public search.
She then wrote a letter to the Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik, whereupon the police took action.
According to the report, Miriam then called the newspaper on Thursday and said she had broken off contact with her family and did not understand the wanted man.
Because of the published photo, the case is also reminiscent of 15-year-old Rebecca from Berlin, who disappeared almost exactly three years ago on February 18, 2019.
Back then, too, the police used a photo for the search that the girl had retouched on the computer and that bore little resemblance to other pictures of her.
Unlike in the current case, however, the police assume that Rebecca was murdered; the girl or her body was not found despite an intensive search.
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Many thousands of people are reported missing in Germany every year.
According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), 200 to 300 searches are recorded every day, about the same number is deleted because of completion.
Half of the missing are children and young people.
They go away for a variety of reasons, often because of problems at school, with parents, or because of lovesickness.
Most of them reappear very quickly.
In 2020, 73,701 young people between the ages of 14 and 17 were reported missing.
72,159 of these were found again during the year (97.9 percent).
In children up to 13 years of age there were 14,614 cases in the same year, of which around 97 percent were cleared up.
However, from 1951 to the present day, there remain more than 1,600 unresolved cases of missing children.
According to the BKA, more than half of these children are unaccompanied refugees, permanent runaways or were taken away by one of their parents following family conflicts.
With the rest - a few hundred to almost a thousand children - "it is to be feared that these victims of a crime or an accident (..) or are no longer alive".
dpa
