I am a 17 yr old run away

[Desi]

I ran away last night and I''m staying with my best friend. I am at school. I have had a lot of emotional problems at home and I just want to know how much trouble can my friend's mom get in for letting me stay with them? I called my best friend yesterday crying and all I said was can you come get me please. within 20 mins my bags were packed and I walked straight out the front door. My mom said nothing to me so I don't know if she will call the law please help me

[ccsmod8]

RE: I am a 17 yr old run away.

Hello there –

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to get into contact with us here at the National Runaway Safeline on our public bulletin board. From your post on here, we can see that you have very similar questions to a lot of our callers and you’re looking for some answers. From what you have stated it sounds like you’re definitely going through a tough time living at home with your mother.

Like we tell a lot of our callers, the laws on that specific subject of running away vary from state to state, so our advice would be call your local non-emergency police number to get more information on that. Generally what typically happens in each state is if you are below the legal age of majority (18 in most states except Alabama and Nebraska [19 or upon marriage], and Mississippi [21]), what generally happens; your parents like your mother and/or father would be able to make a runaway report in the event that you do leave your house. Since it’s only considered a statues offense and not a crime to run away, the only thing that would happen is that the police will pick you up and bring you back home. If your mother did make a runaway report and you are planning on staying with someone else, your mother can press charges on that family for harboring a runaway when they are not giving accurate information on your whereabouts. This is also up to your mother and if she decides to press charges against you're friend's mother. That could lead to a number of different legal issues. So it is a possibility that you will be forced to go back home until you have reached the age of majority.

If you give us a call on our 24/7 hotline at 1-800-RUNAWAY (786-2929) we could help you find resources in your area to help you deal with the emotional problems you mentioned earlier and could potentially help you brainstorm a possible solution to the issues you are having. We would love to talk to you about what has been going on recently that is making you want to leave home. We also have an online chat service available every night from 4:30-11:30 PM CST that is available through our website.