The parents of a missing 9-year-old in South Dakota said that their daughter has a history of running away from where she lived.
Serenity Dennard went missing in early February and was feared dead, the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office said five days after she went missing. However, she may have made it to an indoor location or someone may have picked her up, officials noted.
She had still not been found as of March 25, although a renewed search involving seven K-9 teams was planned for March 30.
Serenity vanished from the Black Hill’s Children Home, a residential youth treatment center near Rockerville.
Her parents told the Rapid City Journal in a new interview that she moved there in the summer of 2018.
Chad Dennard, 37, and his wife Kasandra, 25, spoke about their daughter in the present tense, in the hope that she’s still alive.
“Serenity is a very…, she’s Serenity,” Chad said. He said she “absolutely loves animals and babies,” including her family’s dog, cat, and five-month-old baby girl.
She’s “very intelligent” and “thinks deeper into stuff than anyone I know,” Kasandra added. “She likes to be the center of attention, she likes all eyes on her,” which makes it hard for her to make friends at school, Kasandra said. “She’s charming. She can win your heart but at the same time she’s going to tear it apart at some time, too.”
‘She’s Serenity:’ Missing 9-year-old girl’s parents share their daughter’s story https://t.co/AGmYbrwqoe pic.twitter.com/r4BOw0vub0
— Rapid City Journal (@RCJournal) March 25, 2019
“She’s a sweet girl, she’s very smart, she just struggles,” Kasandra said.
Serenity was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder and disruptive dysregulation disorder.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the attachment disorder “is a rare but serious condition in which an infant or young child doesn’t establish healthy attachments with parents or caregivers.”
“Reactive attachment disorder may develop if the child’s basic needs for comfort, affection and nurturing aren’t met and loving, caring, stable attachments with others are not established,” it added.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the dysregulation disorder “is a childhood condition of extreme irritability, anger, and frequent, intense temper outbursts.”
A child with the disorder experiences “irritable or angry mood most of the day, nearly every day; severe temper outbursts (verbal or behavioral) at an average of three or more times per week that are out of keeping with the situation and the child’s developmental level; and trouble functioning due to irritability in more than one place (e.g., home, school, with peers).”
Symptoms for Serenity included refusing to do homework, breaking toys, and threatening self-harm. Another one was running away.
She runs away because she doesn’t know how to process her emotions or because she begins to feel too comfortable where she is, according to her parents. She’s run away from daycare, school, and her own house.
Chad Denning told the Journal that his daughter most certainly planned her escape from the Children’s Home. Staffers there said another child ran away, prompting a staffer to chase that child. That’s when Serenity took off.
Chad Denning and his ex-wife adopted Serenity in October 2014 after her birth parents were sent to prison and she had spent time in foster homes. Denning divorced several months later and got together with his current partner in mid-2015.
Their challenges with the young girl came to a head in July 2018, and the couple enrolled Serenity at the Children’s Home.
“It was just to the point where it was ramping up, her behaviors were getting worse,” Kasandra said. “It was kind of to the point where we couldn’t any longer be up 24/7 watching her. I mean it was going to end in she was going to hurt herself or one of the other kids.”
