Alarm at rising number of runaway women

DAMMAM: There are numerous reasons for women running away from home. They include domestic violence, lack of control and supervision, family disintegration, alcohol abuse and drug addiction, wrong association, direct expulsion by the family and poverty.

In the Kingdom, about 15.80 percent of runaway women are between 13 and 19 years old; 44.30 percent between 19 and 30 years old while 30.30 percent are between 30 and 40 years, with 9.60 percent between 40 and 55 years. By far the greatest numbers are those who are young, a study by the Naif University for Security Sciences found.
The study, prepared by Khaled Al-Dailej, on the criminal responsibility in inciting women to escape, warned against the weakness of specialized studies in this issue with the lack hindering the exact reasons for the problem.
“The issue of runaway women raised controversies among specialists because it has various causes and dangerous results. It was necessary to look carefully at the causes before looking at criminalization and punishment,” he said.
“These statistics indicate that most runaway Saudi women are young, at a time when they are supposed to be more flexible. The most common motivation is the influence of others who have committed the crime before.”
The researcher defined in the study the types of escape, including for moral reasons which is the most common due to the conservative nature of society. The girl feels herself isolated psychologically, and stays in her room for a long time out of fear of her family, refusing any discussions because of her desire to assert herself.
Another type is an actual physical escape in which the girl throws away all principles and virtues in an attempt to fulfill her wishes. He said that there were hundreds of cases of runaway girls who have not been acknowledged because of the nature of Saudi society which prefers silence to admitting problems arising from domestic violence.
Lawyer Bayan Zahran said: “The most important reason for women running away is ill-treatment. Civil society should admit the existence of such problems, and avail itself of the sound and legal means guaranteed by the state in cases of abuse.”
She said any girl subjected to violence, whether psychologically, physically, or verbally, has the right to recourse to seek protection from abuse in the region in which she lives.
She said that when girls flee from their families, they may be exposed to displacement, penalties including imprisonment, as well as the refusal of some families to allow the runaways to return home.