Police north of Montreal sound alarm after third teenage girl reported missing | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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Police north of Montreal sound alarm after third teenage girl reported missing

Sarah Hauptman is shown in a family handout photo. The mother of one of three teenage girls who disappeared from a Montreal-area youth centre in the past few days is pleading for her safe return.Josee Chaput says she fears her 16-year-old daughter Sarah Hauptman is at risk since going missing Saturday night. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO
Original Publication Date February 04, 2016 - 10:20 AM

MONTREAL - The mother of a teenage girl who disappeared while on a visit to the family residence from a Montreal-area group home is pleading for her safe return.

Josee Chaput said she fears Sarah Hauptman, 16, has been at risk since going missing Saturday night.

"We're waiting for her, we will always love her, and we won't sleep peacefully until she's back," she told The Canadian Press on Thursday.

While Hauptman fled her parents' home in Laval, two other girls also vanished from the group home Monday.

One of them, a 14-year-old, was found in good health Wednesday evening but Laval police have asked the public for help in finding Hauptman and Mathilde Geoffroy Aube, 16, the other girl who left the group home.

Insp. Alain Meilleur of the Laval police major-crimes unit said there is evidence the teens may have been targeted for sexual exploitation.

The Laval centre houses at-risk youth who can be preyed upon by criminals and sex-trade recruiters.

"It's not the institutions themselves that are targeted, but rather the vulnerability of the people who are there," Meilleur said.

Chaput said her daughter fled Saturday night through a window of the family home.

Her husband woke up at around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, noticed a light was on and saw the door to Sarah's bedroom was locked.

"My husband used a knife to open the door and we saw the window was open and the screen was out, so we knew already she had left," Chaput said.

She said her daughter had run away before, which was why she was staying at the group home.

Meilleur said the highly publicized disappearances are bringing attention to a problem police have been confronting for the last few years.

"It has always been happening, but less exposed, less known by the public," he said.

Criminals, he pointed out, can recruit vulnerable youth through social media, through their peers or by frequenting areas they are known to attend.

Quebec Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux said addressing the problem of youth exploitation would be a "very big priority" for authorities.

"I am personally very preoccupied by this and I have a lot of empathy for the parents who are living this situation," he said in Quebec City, adding that more action is needed at the prevention level.

"There are things that are being done right now, and we probably need to do more, notably in the area of prevention, and that will be a very important angle of attack."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2016
The Canadian Press

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