Desperate Search Continues for Missing 13-Year-Old French Girl, Parents Plead for Help

"You know, it’s very hard. She is my only family here, she is my daughter and she doesn’t give any news, I don’t know where she is, if she is in danger... We have to find her!" confides Maeva’s mother to La Dépêche du Midi. Her work is now her outlet. "Fortunately, I have work that helps me hold on," continues this courageous mother. "I’ve been in France for 14 years, the rest of my family is in Morocco, I’ve worked a lot to integrate and live properly here. I’ve had this job in construction for five years [...]," she says.

Her husband, with whom she is separated but maintains a good relationship, is also taking the situation badly. "You know, as long as we’re at work, we get some air... But as soon as we find ourselves at home, alone in the evening, that’s when it becomes very difficult, we can’t help but think, to imagine the worst," sighs Francis Antolin. "It really hurts me not to see her anymore," emphasizes his former partner.

This is not the first time that Maeva has been reported missing. The Toulouse police had brought her back to her parents after identifying her during a check. She had just run away to Toulouse. She had been placed in a boarding school in Albi, so that she could find her way back to her studies. In vain. The teenager reoffends and runs away again on June 14. "She had obviously planned her move, since she exchanged clothes with a friend when she was supposed to take the bus," believes Francis Antolin.

Maeva’s bad company would be the origin of her runaways. "When she wasn’t going to class, I know she was hanging out with young people who weren’t too good to hang out with. I would find her, I could chase her, but what more could I do?" laments her mother. For more than four months, the parents have still not heard from their daughter and deplore the fact that the gendarmes do not inform them. "[...] The gendarmes don’t really keep me informed. I even ’took’ an insult for being a little too vehement towards them. I just want them to tell me if they know anything," the teenager’s father laments.