Is it true that all of the kids in the "Runaway Train" video were reunited with their guardians?

Question

I saw someone mentioning this on Youtube:
Sad and important video: do you know that - as far as I have heard shortly - all the kids shown here have been actually found based on this video? They responded themselves to it.

Answer 1

I thought it had led to one or two being reunited.


Back on track
Soul Asylum, themselves now reunited, helped reunite runaway teens with families, though not every ending was a happy one

By Carl Kozlowski

Just about any major social issue finds a celebrity willing to help draw attention to it and raise funds to combat the problems involved. The plight of runaway children is no different, as evidenced by the memorable 1992 video for the song “Runaway Train,” by the band Soul Asylum.

A midtempo acoustic song with haunting lyrics from the perspective of a teen living a harsh life in the streets, “Train” became a worldwide hit, won the band a Grammy for Best Rock Song that year and even today remains a staple of rock radio stations. Yet it was the song’s video, as devised by its director Tony Kaye, that had a real impact on the issue of runaways.

Rather than focusing on the band performing the song, it was filled with stark, milk carton-style images of actual runaways above their names and the dates on which they were reported missing. The results seemed positive, as the band received an invitation to meet President Clinton at the White House after several of the video’s youths were reunited with their families.

But according to Soul Asylum guitarist Dan Murphy, the reality of the video’s impact was more complicated than that. Speaking by phone from Minneapolis, where the band is based and was rehearsing for a July 10 “Tonight Show” appearance and a comeback tour for its first major-label CD in eight years, titled “The Silver Lining,” Murphy explained that even the best of intentions can go wrong.

“Some weren’t the best scenarios. I met a fireman on the East Coast whose daughter was in the end of the video, and he’d been in a bitter custody battle with his wife over her,” Murphy said. “It turned out the girl hadn’t run away, but was killed and buried in her backyard by her mother. Then on tour, another girl told us laughingly ‘You ruined my life’ because she saw herself on the video at her boyfriend’s house and it led her being forced back into a bad home situation.”

Murphy recalled that Kaye, who went on to direct the highly acclaimed 1998 film “American History X,” was eager to break the mold in creating the video, since he had earned a reputation as a strong visual stylist outside the world of MTV. He sold the band on the idea of helping runaways because, aside from the obvious nice idea of helping kids, the video was their third for their album “Grave Dancers Union” and they could avoid the trap of burning out the public’s interest.

But even as the band now rebounds from its own travails, including the cancer death last year of its founding bassist, Murphy noted that lead singer Dave Pirner is still involved in helping the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and that the band performs benefits for the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, which helps missing and sexually exploited teens and children. While he hopes that most of the kids who reunited with their families have overcome their issues and developed into “twentysomethings who are OK and contributing to society,” he has come to realize that happy endings often can come about only through hard work.

“My recognition was that there’s a reason that young kids run away, mostly because of abuse. There were some happy results from it, but you have to resolve the situation that caused an 11- or 13-year-old to think the harsh world is better than their home,” said Murphy. “I don’t think people are genetically wired to leave a loving home situation, but rather a harsh abusive situation. You have to fix that dysfunctional situation before you can truly say everything’s OK.”

07-13-2006

Answer 2

No, I don't believe all of the kids in the "Runaway Train" video got back with their families.

Answer 3

1