Nurse Develops Runaway Intervention Program
Introduction
Ten years ago, NP Laurel Edinburgh began to see a number of sexually exploited girls in her practice at the Midwest Children’s Resource Center, a child abuse clinic within Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota in St. Paul. The girls, who were runaways, were quickly slipping through the cracks. Half were no longer in school, many hadn’t been reported missing by their parents, and many were staying with gang members. Some had been gang-raped, others had had sex with men in exchange for money or drugs. All of them were from the state’s large Hmong population (people from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand). The girls presented with symptoms of depression and self-harm, such as cutting or burning. They were only 12 to 14 years old.
