The story of the American disappeared 20 years ago, returned home with children, a new identity and speaking Spanish

Twenty years, ten months and two weeks after the disappearance of her daughter, Cynthia Haag was in the house and refused to leave.He was waiting for his missing daughter to come home – when his phone started ringing. His other daughter was on the phone, saying that he had just received an unexpected message on Facebook.

It was crystal. The girl lost a long time ago.

Cynthia is prepared for another disappointment. But when he saw Facebook's profile picture on the same day of March of last year, he immediately knew it. The same white and straight teeth. The same eyes narrowed. The same bright smile. The girl I had last seen at 14 years old: Now she is an adult.

The questions began to fall in his mind. Why did Crystal leave? Where was she? Why had he resurfaced? And, the most basic of all, was it okay?

In half an hour, the eldest daughter of Cynthia, Bianca Davis was in the car, driving north of New York, where Crystal lived north of Harlem.. The following night, after the news spread throughout West Baltimore and the house was full of people, finally Crystal appeared.

His hair was now short. She spoke Spanish fluently. And this was no longer Crystal Haagwho would have 35 years, but had adopted the pseudonym Crystal Saunders, who I had now 44. At that time, however, none of these changes mattered.

"She is always my pretty girlCynthia said, hugging her.

His missing daughter was finally home, but the difficult part was just beginning.

Around Half a million children are missing each year, the vast majority of whom are soon to be found or are back. However, for a few, it can take months before they return with their family and for a few, it can take up to a year or two. But It is extremely rare that a missing child who eventually returns is missing as long as Crystal. Between 2011 and 2016, only 56 children who had been away for over 20 years have returned, according to a report by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

There is a conventional narrative about how these meetings unfold, with tears and cuddles and the promise of a new and happier start. "The end of the fairy tale" For example, Meaghan Good, curator of the Charley Project, described it as a database of people who have been missing for a long time. But in many cases, say the experts, the situation is much more complicated.

"It's not as simple as being found and restarting one's life", said Robert G. Lowery Jr., a manager of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who edited the report. "There are feelings on both sides that will have to be reconciled, but it takes a lot of time, patience and understanding."

The longest someone left, more difficult.

Lori Peterson, 60, of Colorado Springs, learned this about ten years ago when her son, Derek, reappeared after four years. A teenager with problems who escaped from a residential treatment center at the age of 16 had spent much of those four years homeless or living on the other side of the country, North Carolina. Meanwhile, in Colorado Springs, Peterson has deteriorated. Convinced that Derek was dead, the family began DNA testing to see if they matched those of a cadaver. "I cried every day on the way to work, then all the way back home"he said.

Then he suddenly came back, after all that had happened, after having a candlelight service to finally put him to rest. At first, it was a challenge to forgive him. And in a way, the damage was irreversible. "It's not really a mother-child relationship"said Peterson.I've missed the years when he's gone from teenager to man, and there are things I do not know about him"

The majority of children who disappear they are like Derek: fugitives. But all those who disappear do not have behavioral problems. Some simply disappear without their families knowing why. Some are like the case of crystal.

Had they kidnapped them?

It was April 26, 1997, a Saturday. Cynthia worked as a cashier at a local supermarket. At that time, she did not earn much, only a few dollars an hour, but she was proud of the fact that there was always food on the table and that her children had clean clothes.. She was busy working and raising her children all the time, but she was doing it as a single mother.

That morning, he looked at work to see Crystal, 14, his fourth daughter, who was smiling as always. Cynthia knew it as a flash of light: "a sweet girl " who won a fifth grade award to always congratulate others, who loved the school and who He was good with everyone, including his peers and brothers.

Crystal took milk and cereals and approached her mother. "Stay at home todayCynthia and her daughter remembered. She did not see her at 21 years old. In the first hours after Cynthia's return home and the discovery of Crystal's disappearance, she called her friends, family and anyone who knew where Crystal was. before he finally enters into contact with the police. His mind was thinking of different possibilities. Had they kidnapped them? Has she escaped? She refused, then, and later, she thought her daughter was dead.

Thereafter, He looked for Crystal in the face of each dark-haired girl. One day, she was walking down Baltimore Street at the back of a cab and she thought she saw her outside one of the clubs on the sidewalk, but when she did not see any of them. she ran, the girl had already left. On another occasion, she was again at the back of a bus going away, who knows where.

"She always wore a baseball cap"said Cynthia. But this index was not enough to find it. Cynthia stopped celebrating Christmas, it seemed wrong, without Crystal, and the years pbaded, with intermittent reports from the Baltimore police who marked the pbadage of time.

April 29, 1997: "Crystal Haag did not come back"

August 19, 1999: "The investigation is continuing"

May 3, 2006: "Crystal's case is still open"

September 20, 2010: "All efforts to locate it have been exhausted"

Crystal remembers these years differently. She said that she was barely listening with her brothers. She said that she was slipping regularly. And she said that she was not the happy girl that her mother remembered. In fact, she was so miserable and so scared that the only plan that seemed logical to him was to escape.

At the age of 9, he remembered a neighbor started to badually badault her, and in the following years it happened so often that it seemed almost normal. She never spoke to anyone about it, but when she became a teenager, she realized that there was nothing normal about it. By then, the abuse had lasted so long that, he began, he had begun to think that his mother should have known about it., a hint that has become a belief. His mother called it ridiculous and fake. "What kind of mother would do that?" Said Cynthia.

After picking up your milk and cereals at the grocery store this spring Saturday of 1997, Crystal did not stay at home as requested by her mother. She spent time with friends for hours. She knew that her mother would be home soon and would not be at work, she would go crazy, so she decided to stay longer outside. "And then it was 12 o'clock, and I would not go back"he said.

He took a bus to New York, he said, and remember to have walked the streets of the city at dawn, seeing the registration plates of the Statue of Liberty. She had nothing with her, but remember that she felt little fear. These first nights He slept outside, until he arrived in Upper Manhattan, where he introduced a new person to the world: Crystal Saunders, a 23-year-old woman, although she does not remember why she chose this name.

Soon she was cleaning houses and apartments, living in a Dominican neighborhood, pregnant with his first child by a local man and had a fake driver's license. Later, he said, he even acquired a Medicaid card, which For pregnant women in New York, it is relatively easy to obtain without an official document.

The new identity was easy to remember at first, he says, because he had changed only small details. First name. Age, believable because he looked much older, and his family? She told people that he had not, and that they did not insist on the subject. "It's not a strange thing to have no family," he said.

But with time, when Crystal learned Spanish, gave birth to four children, immersed herself in the Dominican community and even adopted new parents, people he called "grandfather", "grandmother" and "cousin" in social networks. I do not have to remember it anymore. His new identity had subsumed the old.

And yes, on January 29, 2014, date when he turned 31, he posted an image on Instagram. He was showing himself holding a birthday cake. "Happy 40 for me!" Write Crystal, who then I have worked in the food industry.

"We have seen this before"Lowery said of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "Some of these kids do not want to be found and badume new identities."

In the national register database, Nexis, Crystal Marie Saunders, now 45, is a completely accomplished person, with a list of addresses in New York., a 2010 lien in the amount of $ 1,282 and a criminal conviction for the criminal sale of a controlled property. But for Crystal Marie Haag: nothing.

When the eldest son of Crystal, Bryan, now 20, He reached his teens, began to ask questions. Where was your family? Everyone has at least one family, he said. At first, he did not tell him what he'd been doing regularly since Facebook's creation: furtively checking his family in Baltimore.

He really wanted to be close to his family and often thought about Cynthia. But I was terrified to contact them, ashamed of what I had let them go through. It's only after her son started asking her, that she wrote to her sister, Bianca. And then everything happened so fast. Bianca came to get her. Crystal walked through the door of a house that she had left 21 years ago. And Cynthia was so happy to see her, even asking Crystal to I slept in bed that night, which Crystal decided to stay.

The joy of the meeting, however, soon gave way to uncertainty, even resentment.

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

Cynthia: "It's like knowing a completely new person. She leaves as a child and comes back when she is an adult"

Crystal: "It has been very difficult and sometimes it is easier to just stay away"

Cynthia: "I just want to love him"

But other than that, Cynthia had to know why her daughter had been gone for so long. Crystal, after being deceived for months, finally came out and told him. She had been raped several times in her childhood. And she thought Cynthia knew it.

Cynthia said she was surprised. She said that she had no idea what had happened, but no matter how many times she said it, Crystal said that she had no idea what had happened. she was still not sure it was the truth. She loves her mother, that is why she came home, she interrogated her for so many years, but there are so many problems that sometimes weigh on their relationship and that sometimes seem stagnant.

Still, both are still trying, Over the months, 2018 has risen to 2019.

Crystal, who moved her family to Baltimore, is currently living with an aunt in the same neighborhood, she volunteers at a local recreation center and often sees her mother, who is disabled. They are in everyone's life, everyone desires more. "I would like us to be a little closersaid Cynthia, now 61 years old.

But it's a start. It's also the end of something else: With her daughter at home, Cynthia will finally leave the house that she has refused to leave all these years.

"Next year," he said. "I went. It's time to go there. "