After 20 years after the disappearance, a woman found a daughter with a new name and her own children.

Twenty years, ten months and two weeks after her daughter disappeared, Cynthia Haag sat in a house she refused to leave in the hope that the missing daughter would return, heard a phone call. Her other daughter called her, claiming that Facebook had received an unexpected message from Crystal, the missing sister and daughter.

Фото: Depositphotos

Haag prepared herself for another disappointment, but when she saw the photo, I immediately realized that it was she. The daughter, whom she last saw an 14-year-old girl, matured. A lot of questions arose in the head of the mother. Why is Crystal gone? Where was she? Why did she come back? And most importantly, is she okay now?

Half an hour later, Haag's eldest daughter, Bianca Davis, was sitting in a car and was driving north to New York, where Crystal lived north of Harlem. Late in the evening, after rumors spread throughout the entire area of ​​West Baltimore, and the house was filled with people, Crystal finally appeared.

Her hair was now short. She once spoke Spanish. And she's no longer 35-year-old Kristal Haag, but 44-year-old Kristal Saunders. However, at that moment, none of these changes mattered.

“Still my pretty girl,” Cynthia said, hugging her.

Her missing daughter was finally at home, but the difficulty was just beginning.

About half a million children disappear each year. Most of them are soon or are returning. For some, it takes less than a year to reunite with their families, for less, more than a year. However, it is extremely rare that a missing child appears after several decades, like Crystal.

Between 2011 and 2016, only 56 children disappeared for more than 20 years and returned, according to a report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In many cases, according to experts, the meeting does not end with kisses and hugs. The situation is much more complicated.

"It's not easy to find and rebuild your life," said Robert Lowery, a fellow at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who edited its report on missing children. “There are feelings on both sides that they will have to reconcile, but it will take a lot of time, patience and understanding.”

The longer they are not, the harder it is to take them.

60-year-old Laurie Peterson, a mother from Colorado Springs, Colorado, learned ten years ago that her son Derek had appeared four years after the loss. A worried teenager who escaped from a residential health facility at the age of 16 for most of four years was homeless and lived in another part of the country, in North Carolina. Meanwhile, returning to Colorado Springs, Peterson's condition worsened. Believing that he died, the family began to do DNA tests.

“I cried every day on the way to work, and then I cried all the way home,” she said.

Then, for him to come back suddenly, after all that they went through, after they mourned him. At first it was hard to forgive him.

“It’s not really a mother-son relationship,” Peterson said of her bond with her son. "I missed those years when he grew from a teenager to a man, and there are things I don't know about."

Most missing children are runaways, like her son. But not everyone who disappears had behavior problems. Some simply disappear and their family doesn't know why. People like Crystal.

The calendar was 26 April 1997, Saturday. Cynthia worked as a cashier at a local grocery store. In those days, she didn't earn anything, just a few bucks an hour, but she was proud that there was always food on the table, and her children had clean clothes. She worked all the time and raised children alone.

Mother had to go to work that morning. She recalled the smile of 14-year-old Crystal, the fourth child. Cynthia compared her with a ray of light — a “sweet girl” who received an award in fifth grade for always praising others, loved school, and got along with everyone, including classmates, three brothers and sisters.

Crystal ate some cereal and milk and walked over to her mom. “Stay home today,” Cynthia remembers her daughter saying. These were the last words her daughter heard for 21 years.

Immediately after she returned home and saw that Crystal was not there, she phoned friends, relatives and those who could know her. After the setbacks, Cynthia went to the police.

Mother was lost in questions: Has someone abducted her? Maybe she ran away? The only thing in which she refused to believe that her daughter was killed or she somehow died.

Since then, she has seen Crystal in every brown-haired woman. "She always wore a baseball cap," Cynthia said. But this clue was not enough to find her.

Cynthia stopped celebrating Christmas - without Crystal she thought it was wrong. Only in the police report was conducted after the disappearance of the girl.

29 April 1997: "Crystal Haag has not returned."

19 August 1999: "The investigation is ongoing."

3 May 2006: "The case of the Crystal is still open."

20 September 2010 D .: “All efforts to search for [her] have been exhausted.”

Crystal remembers these years differently than her mother. She said she barely got along with her siblings and didn't consider herself as happy as her mother said. In fact, she was so unhappy and so scared that the only plan she saw for salvation was to escape.

She recalls that when she was 9 years old, a neighbor began sexually assaulting a girl. Over the next few years this happened so often that it seemed almost normal. She never told anyone about it, but as she became a teenager, she began to suspect that there was nothing normal about it. By then, the abuse had been going on for so long that she said her mother probably knew about it—a suspicion that grew into conviction. Her mother called it ridiculous and wrong. “What mother would do that?” Cynthia said.

Spring Saturday 1997, Crystal did not eat breakfast at home, as her mother tells. She went to hang out with friends. After spending several hours with them, she suggested that the mother would be angry, so she decided to stay longer.

“And then it was 12 o’clock at night and I wasn’t going to come back,” she said.

According to her, she got on a bus to New York and recalled how she walked through the city streets in the morning, seeing the license plates of the Statue of Liberty. She had nothing with her, so she was a little afraid. The first few nights she slept on the street until she reached Vernei Manhattan, where she introduced herself as a new man: 23-year-old woman Crystal Saunders. Now she does not remember why she chose this particular name.

Soon, she began to clean up the houses and apartments, lived in the Dominican area, got pregnant from a local resident and received a fake driver's license. Later, she said, she even purchased a Medicaid card, which for pregnant women in New York is relatively easy to obtain without official documents.

The new personality was easy to remember at first because it only changed small details. Last name, age - everything is plausible, because she looked much older than she was. As for her family? She told people she didn't have one. “It’s not uncommon to not have a family,” she said.

Time went by. Kristal was fluent in Spanish, had four children, and plunged into the Dominican community.

And so on January 29, 2014, when Krystal actually turned 31 years old, she posted a photo on Instagram. In the photo she is holding a birthday cake. “Happy 40th birthday to me!!!!!!” wrote Crystal, who by then worked in the food industry.

“We've seen this before,” said Lowery of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "Some kids don't want to be found and they take on new identities."

In the national records database, Crystal Marie Saunders, who is now 45 years old, is a fully realized person with a list of New York addresses, a debt of $ 1 282, and criminal conviction. But according to Crystal Marie Haag: nothing.

Sneaky checking family Facebook

When her eldest child, Brian, who is now 20 years old, was twenty years old, he began to ask questions. Where was her family? Everyone has at least some family, he said. At first, she didn’t tell him what she had been doing regularly since Facebook appeared: sneakily tested her family in Baltimore.

She really wanted to contact them and often thought about Cynthia. But she was scared and ashamed for handing them over. It was only after her son began to persuade her that she wrote to her sister, Bianca. And then everything happened so quickly. Bianca came for her. Crystal stepped through the threshold of the house she left 21 years ago. And Cynthia was so happy to see her - she even asked Crystal to sleep in her bed that night, so Crystal decided to stay.

However, the joy of reunion was soon replaced by uncertainty, even resentment.

Crystal: "She treats me like a child ... but I have children."

Cynthia: “This is like meeting a completely new person. She leaves as a child and returns as an adult. ”

Crystal: “It was very difficult, and sometimes it’s easier to just stand aside.”

Cynthia: "I just want to love her."

But in addition to this, Cynthia should have known why she had gone so long. Crystal, after several months of ambiguity, finally told that she was constantly raped. And she thought Cynthia knew.

Cynthia said she was in shock. She said she had no idea what happened, but no matter how many times she said it, Crystal said she still wasn't sure it was true. She loves her mother - that's why she came home - but their relationship is destroyed by so many problems that at times it seems that they are immersed in it.

However, both continue to try. Crystal now lives with her aunt in the same area and often sees her mother, who is on disability pension. They came into each other's lives, but each wants more. “I wish we were a little closer,” said Cynthia, now 61.

But this is the beginning. This is also the end of something else: when her daughter returns home, Cynthia will finally leave the house, which she has refused to leave all these years.

Read also on ForumDaily:

Personal Experience: America and Domestic Violence

How to protect your rights if you are going to work in the US

Why do children commit suicide and can it be prevented

10 ways to stay in the USA

Under what circumstances can you lose the right to receive US citizenship

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.