Nicosia, Cyprus. The Nicosia district court heard on Thursday that 15-year-old Stylianos Constantinou, who died by suicide in 2019, “was forced to grow up in this abusive environment from the day he was born” as the trial of 11 suspects began.
Charges against parents and social welfare employees
A total of 218 charges have been brought against 11 people—Constantinou’s parents and nine employees of the social welfare services department—regarding the circumstances surrounding his death.
His father faces charges related to alleged physical and psychological violence, as well as common assault and “cruel and inhumane treatment”. His mother has been charged with failing to report incidences of violence about which she was aware, which is a criminal offence.
The nine social welfare services department employees face charges of neglect of duty, and two have already pled guilty.
Additionally, a police sergeant is being charged in a separate case with the dereliction of duty.
First witness testimony on 2010 complaint
The first witness to testify was a police constable working at the police station in the Nicosia district village of Pera Chorio. He told the court that on May 28, 2010—more than nine years before Constantinou’s death—Constantinou’s mother had appeared at the police station and said she wished to divorce her husband.
The constable said Constantinou’s mother told him that her husband had “forced her to go to his farm from morning until night, without leaving her any time to rest”, and that she had “no social interactions with her husband”.
He added that he had been told she had already informed the social welfare services department of the incident and that the department was monitoring the situation.
The complaint, he said, was registered in police files as a “non-criminal case”. Asked by the prosecution why this was the case, he said that “the police are not concerned with breakups”.
What impact will the court’s findings have on how complaints are handled by police and social welfare services in Cyprus?
