Stylianos repeatedly asked his speech therapist to become his mother, she told Nicosia District Court. She described a boy who, she said, told her he spent nights working on the family farm, went to school hungry and was afraid of his father.
“Miss, can you be my mum?” was the plea she recorded in her 2020 statement. The witness became tearful as she spoke about his requests, and the court paused proceedings so that she could continue her evidence.
Giving evidence for the prosecution, the speech therapist said the boy had serious difficulties expressing himself, a very poor vocabulary and serious weaknesses in literacy. The only groups of words he knew were the farm animals, she said. Asked by the prosecution what affected his learning, she said: “Imagine being in a jungle, being chased by a lion and having to solve a maths equation.” A child living in constant fear and panic cannot concentrate, she explained.
What the boy told her
She described an incident in which, according to what Stylianos told her, he left home after his father beat him and walked all night through the gullies to school. When he arrived he was exhausted and his eyes were red, she told the court.
His mother had come to the school earlier with her two younger children and, according to the witness, said she feared her husband would go there to hit them. The speech therapist said Social Welfare Services were informed after the incident, the mother and children were taken to the police station, and the boy gave a video-recorded statement.
Reading from her written statement, the witness described other incidents in which, as Stylianos told her, his father was violent towards him. One day, she said, he told her his father had beaten him with a belt the day before. Questioned by prosecutor Elena Konstantinou, she said that when they lifted his shirt they saw black diagonal marks on his back. She described them as bruises that, in her assessment, matched what the boy had told her. On another occasion, she said, he told her he was very scared of his father and tried to obey him so that he would not be hit.
His condition at school
The witness said the boy came to school unkempt, in dirty clothes, with blackened hands, nails and teeth, and a strong smell. His clothes and shoes did not fit him, she added. She recalled only one occasion when he came to school freshly washed, when he happily told her he had had a bath.
His hands were covered in large red rashes, which he put down to the animals, she said, adding that he told her his parents did not take him to the doctor. According to the witness, he said he had told his mother, but she would not take him.
He told her there were mice in the house, the fridge was broken and there was often no food, the witness said. At every lesson he told her he was hungry and exhausted, saying he had not eaten the night before because he had worked all night at the animal pen, sweeping and milking the goats.
“School was his haven”
Despite his difficulties, the boy wanted to learn, the speech therapist said, recalling that he asked her to teach him to read and write because he wanted to become something. “School was his haven,” she said, explaining that he had improved in his learning but, in her assessment, the signs of neglect had not.
Her overall finding, based on what Stylianos had told her over time, was that he was going through difficult times. She wrote that he did not find support and love from his mother, and that his father, she wrote, beat him, shouted at him and swore at him, and kept him permanently as a worker on the farm. For the boy, she concluded, his father was a source of fear and terror.
Asked about Social Welfare Services, she said that despite the service having been informed, she had never spoken to one of its officers. The relevant authorities knew what people close to the child had reported to them, she added.
“Sadly, Stylianos had to die for some people to realise what they should have done from the start,” she said in closing.
