Today Is...International Missing Children’s Day

1993 was the Grunge years in music for me but in June of that year there was a different kind of song which got to number 7 in the UK Charts which would appear between the Nirvana and Pearl Jam videos which i always found quite hard to watch, because it's subject matter was wholly depressing.  
The song was Soul Asylum's 'Runaway Train' and the video featured children who had gone missing along with their full name and when they had gone missing and these sections were tailored for different countries so the video for the United States version begins with 'There are over one million youth lost on the streets of America' while the UK version begins with "100,000 youth are lost on the streets of Britain'.  The video was directed by Tony Kaye and showed some difficult scenes of abuse, child prostitution and babies being stolen from pushchairs but what made it so hard to watch was that it was true, these things were really going on and the children whose name was on the screen were real, missing children.
After the video, the lead singer speaks direct to camera saying 'If you've seen one of these kids, or you are one of them, please call this number' with the following screen showing a number one could contact.
The song came back to me today on a Guess The Year radio show and i did wonder if any of the kids in the video had actually been found and after Googling it i found an interview where Kaye said that 26 had been found although he didn't say if that was just in America or Worldwide although 26 is great, it is quite bittersweet.
In the UK Version of the video was Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, who each went missing in 1991. Their remains were found in 2007 at a house in Margate, victims of Peter Tobin who was later convicted of both murders.
It also featured Mark Bartley who was kidnapped in 1992 and was recognised in the video by a man who knew Bartley was staying in the flat below him but by the time the police arrived, Bartley and his kidnapper were gone and he had never been seen since.
What is pleasing is that Kaye and Soul Asylum defied the Record Companies who didn't want the missing kids in the video, instead wanting more shots of the band so they could get better exposure but the band refused, and said the video with the kids stayed.
I'm not sure what Soul Asylum did next, i don't think i ever heard another song by them, but because of them 26 kids returned home or were located and they deserve a massive clap on the back for that.