Posted on 09/23/2002 2:53:04 PM PDT by venum254
Blanchette hasn't seen her daughter in 10 days, not since 13-year-old Haley Blanchette vanished from the home of her mother's cousins in Newport, R.I.
Haley Blanchette, whose nickname is "Heaven," has been missing since Sept. 12, when she was seen boarding a bus from Newport to Providence.
That's where the trail gets cold.
Caroline Blanchette smokes cigarettes and waits. She lives on disability and Haley's father, Caroline says, died just after Haley was born.
"It was really only the last year that I had trouble with her," Blanchette said. "This summer it was tough."
The "trouble," Blanchette said, involved Haley and an older, bad crowd of people from the neighborhood, some of whom were much older than she was.
"She wouldn't listen to me," Blanchette said of her daughter.
Haley would have been a student at Morton Middle School this year, but, faced with her worries, Caroline Blanchette decided that maybe her daughter would benefit from a year spent living with two cousins in Newport.
"She was happy about it," Caroline said, adding that her daughter "loved" her Newport cousins.
That love didn't keep Haley Blanchette from running. Just two days before her last disappearance, her cousins went to New York City and brought her back. Port Authority police in New York had found her and notified her family.
On Sept. 12, she was gone again.
"That's when she took off," said Blanchette.
She said Haley told her cousins she was going for a walk.
"She said she wanted to think," Blanchette said.
That was 11 days ago, and Caroline Blanchette is still waiting, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, talking to friends, relatives and the police on the phone.
On a gray Sunday evening, she deals out pictures of Haley like they were tarot cards, a way into the past or the future. She names the location of each pictures, names the other s in the frame.
Blanchette fears that anything at all could have happened to her daughter.
"She's my only one," she said, showing the picture of Haley grinning from behind a pair of gold-framed glasses. That's the picture on the fliers they're passing out, one of the pictures she gave to the police in Boston, in Fall River, in Newport.
"I have a private detective, too," she said.
There's a $1,000 reward for anyone who provides the police with information leading to Haley's safe return.
"I know it's not very much," Blanchette said, shrugging, her voice quivering a little.
And it isn't as if Blanchette doesn't know the risks, doesn't know that little s on the run sometimes end up in bad places.
"She could be anywhere," Blanchette said of her daughter. "If she's even alive."
Then she sat down at a table littered with photographs and lit a cigarette.
The wait resumed.
"Providence RI" is not the best place to run to.
FMCDH
There are certain pervs that wait at bus stations for unaccompanied young females to get off of the bus and try to find a ride. The perv introduces them to a life of drugs and prostitution. I pray that the girl gets found and returned safely to her family.
/john
I have been a volunteer social worker for many years and have seen this over and over again, with boys and girls. Most of those who run....run toward that life.....they already know about drugs, etc. from local "friends". Many come from abusive homes as well.
No doubt that they girl and her family stand in the need of prayer...satan is strong and devouring all the souls he can get his claws into.
That poor girl, it always sad to read about yet another victim of his lies and hate.
Prayers continue. And the 14 y.o. wonders why I read stuff sometimes at FR and get something in my eye and give her a hug. There, but for the Grace of God...
/john
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