Cyleste MARKS

Celeste Marks was last seen in April by her mother.

Missing girl ran away with older man

06:00 AEST Wed May 19 2010
7 hours 12 minutes ago
 
By ninemsn staff
 

A woman has launched a public appeal for her 16-year-old daughter to come back home to Sydney after she ran away with a man more than twice her age.

Tanya van der Merwe is due to return to her native South Africa next month after her work visa was cancelled and is desperate to find her daughter Celeste Marks before she is forced to leave, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Ms van der Merwe said Celeste began dating her boyfriend Philip Davis, 34, after meeting him at a butcher shop in Carlingford, north western Sydney where she worked as a casual.

On April 24, Celeste ran away from home with just the clothes on her back.

"The phone rang, she went into the basement and disappeared. That was the last time I saw my daughter," Ms van der Merwe was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as saying.

Mr Davis had sent SMS messages saying he couldn't live without seeing Cyleste, she said.

Ms van der Merwe said she had only managed to speak to her daughter once briefly since she left, when Celeste told her she was "far away".

"My heart was cut down," she said.

"We do not know where she is. We do not know if she is safe. We know she is with a 34-year-old man I have never met and that she is in a relationship with this man," Ms van der Merwe said.

Ms van der Merwe said she feared Mr Davis had encouraged her daughter to stay in Australian illegally after her visa expired.

"She is going to be listed as an illegal immigrant, she cannot work, she is on the run. I want to know if my daughter is safe," she said.

NSW police have been unable to help Ms van der Merwe find her daughter because at 16 years old she is legally allowed to live away from home.

Cryptic clues left online but where is Cyleste Marks and her older boyfriend?

A SCHOOLGIRL who ran off with a lover more than twice her age has left cryptic clues on a social networking website.

Cyleste Marks is believed to be hiding out somewhere in Sydney but has listed Port Macquarie as her hometown.

The 16-year-old is holed-up with her 34-year-old boyfriend Paul Davis.

Mr Davis, who is believed to have a young son, started a new Facebook page on Friday. On it he posted a photo of a van with a ski on the roof and said he was "in a relationship" with Cyleste.

Cyleste recently told her worried mother Tanya van der Merwe that she was "far away". But her parents believe she could still be in Sydney.

Mrs van der Merwe has to return to South Africa in six days and fears her daughter could become an illegal immigrant.

"We haven't heard anything yet and it's just so terrifying," Mrs van der Merwe said.

"If she doesn't return she'll have to face the consequences with the immigration department and I don't want to think what that could be.

"To hear nothing about where she is is the worst thing."

Mrs van der Merwe said she had received little assistance from police or the immigration department in tracking down her daughter.

Mr Davis, who graduated from Cumberland High School in 1993, met Cyleste at a butcher shop in Carlingford, where she worked as a casual.

Mosman resident Janet Coombes contacted the immigration department yesterday to report that she had seen Cyleste at the Spit Rd apartment complex where she resides.

She was told that the department was not interested in the case.

"There's a girl who lives above me and it looks like her and the man she's with is a fair bit older," Ms Coombes said. "I told immigration about it but they weren't interested."

Neither Cyleste nor Mr Davis were at the apartment yesterday.