17 year old girlfriend escaping abusive parents.

[Guest]

so basically my girlfriend lives an hour away and is still 17 I am 18 and have my own place. She wants to come spend the weekend because her parents had been fighting a lot and taking it out on her. Can I get in trouble if she lets them know she’s leaving to go somewhere for the weekend? I live in Logan, UT

[ccsmod8]

Hello there -

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to reach out to us here at the National Runaway Safeline and posting on our public forum. By helping you during your crisis, hopefully there are other youth that are in similar situations can read this for help as well. Reading your post, we can see that you have very similar questions to a lot of our callers and you’re looking for some answers. Hopefully we can help.

As you have probably already read the multiple other threads that we have posted here on the forum board you should know that we are not legal experts. Generally what typically happens in each state is if you are below the legal age of majority, your parents would be able to make a runaway report and the police will be able to bring you back home. In this case, her parents have the right to report her, but it would be something that is illegal to do. Running away is not a crime.

It can be a little tricky at the age of 17, because there are some cases in which a police officer will not take a runaway report. Especially if there are a little closer to turning 18 years old, along with having already graduated high school. This is not the case all the time of course, but it is something that we have heard of happening before. But something to keep in mind is that though a police officer doesn't take a report it doesn't make it legal for you to leave home before you turn 18. The only way to know for sure of that would be to reach out to your local non-emergency police and asking them hypothetical questions about running away. Once your girlfriend turns 18 years old, her parents cannot file you as a runaway.

If you give us a call on our 24/7 fully confidential hotline, at 1-800-RUNAWAY (786-2929) we could help answer some of those questions you have and could potentially help you brainstorm a solution to the issues you are having. We also have an online chat service available every night from 4:30-11:30PM CST that is available through our website (www.1800runaway.org) if you don’t feel like calling in to talk on the phone.