‘Runaways are not on the increase’

THE case of the 15-year-old girl who went missing from home this week is not the sign of an increasing trend, a child psychologist and family councillor said yesterday.

Maria Dorotheou, 15, disappeared from home earlier this week. She eventually called her father on Wednesday telling him she was with someone in Nicosia. Meanwhile, a 12-year-old girl from Nicosia was found in a car with a 29-year-old and two 16-year-olds by traffic police during a random inspection in Larnaca.

However, child psychologist and family councillor Doros Michaelides dismissed suggestions that such cases were on the up, adding that running away was rare in Cyprus.

“In my experience, we don’t have any real problems in Cyprus with regards to runaways. We might have a case of a youngster staying out late because of oppression in the house, but to actually run away from home is a rarity in Cyprus.”

So why do children feel the need to run away? Michaelides says that family problems were usually the most common cause, adding that boys tended to run away much more than girls.

“Children usually run away from home when they feel that they are not getting what they want from home. Runaways are almost usually attributed to family problems. Oddly enough, the majority of runaways are boys rather than girls because girls tend to talk more about their problems whereas boys tend to repress their problems.

“So they think that they can handle the problem on their own and running away is way to solving their problems.”

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.