ÐÓ°ÉÐÔ°É

A St Catherine mother is seeking the intervention of the State to rescue the fortunes of her 14-year-old daughter who ran away from home two weeks ago.

The distressed mother, who has since filed a missing person report with the police, told THE STAR that while it is the first time the youngster is running away from home, the child has serious behavioural issues.

The woman said that the teenager is her only child and she has tried her best to provide for her, yet the youngster seems bent on continuing down a bad path.

"She called me from a private number this morning (yesterday) and gave me a fine piece of tracing. She told me that I should take her picture off social media and stop saying she's missing because she is not, and she says I will never see her again. I was told that she is in another parish, and I have passed on that information to the police. I am frustrated because I tried my best with her," the mother said.

"She is my only child and I love her very much, but I cannot do this alone. She would sneak out of the house at nights when everyone is sleeping, and only God knows where she goes. She is very unruly at school and she just don't have any manners. She gambles at school and she smokes to the point where I wonder how she hasn't got expelled as yet," she said.

Wrecking her life

Based on information that the mother said she has received, her 14-year-old child is living with a young male in western Jamaica.

She is hoping for the intervention of the authorities so that her daughter can be prevented from wrecking her life.

"She is my belly pain and my only child and I love her very much, but I can't manage her. I want her to be placed into a place of safety whenever she is found. I have reached out to the relevant authorities already but they were saying that they couldn't take her like that because she didn't commit any crime and so on. I have done my best with her and I don't know what else to do, except to hand her over to the government," the mother said.

Children's Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison, when told about the incident, said it is a matter of great concern. She has implored the teenager's mother to remain in close contact with the police until the child is located.

"What needs to happen now is that the police need to be very innovative in how they stake out that particular house because ultimately, what we want to do is locate her, then we can start understanding what she has been up to for the past two weeks," Gordon Harrison said.

"This may be the trigger for a larger investigation, depending on what we find, but the first thing is to make sure that she is located and her safety is guaranteed," she said.