Guyanese man, who says that his Guyanese partner abandoned their newborn baby at a Barbados hospital before fleeing the island for Guyana, is now awaiting the results of a DNA test before he can be united with his son.
The mother is said to have declared that the child had died.
According to a story in the Barbados Nation the child was left wrapped in a blanket at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) on August 29 and since then authorities there have been attempting to locate the parents.
The woman apparently gave birth to the child the same day she fled and has not contacted her partner since, the report said.
The report quoted a local attorney-at-law, Samuel Legay, who informed the newspaper that the child’s father is a 30-year-old Guyanese who has legal immigrant status in Barbados and who had since retained his services and desperately wanted to see his three-week-old son for the first time.
The lawyer said that the child’s mother, who is 20 and who has a one-year-old son with the man who is also in Barbados, departed the island for Guyana 24 hours after she left the newborn wrapped in the blanket.
“My client was not aware of her actions in any way whatsoever.
That’s why he has been so helpful to the police,” Legay told the newspaper and further stated, “All we are waiting on now are the results of the DNA test to prove my client is in fact the father of the baby.”
The lawyer said his client, who has been in Barbados for four years, has been very co-operative with the police and was interviewed over a three-day span last week.
The lawyer told the newspaper that his client informed him he might be the father of the baby after reading the first newspaper article about the baby, which revealed that police were seeking assistance with finding the parents of an abandoned child.
According to the report the lawyer said the police were first contacted about his client’s suspicions on September 8, and it was after a number of interviews that his client gave lawmen from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) a saliva sample for police to confirm him as the biological father.
The lawyer, however, feels that bureaucracy is keeping things back.
“I’m sure the hospital would have also done a DNA sample of the baby.
I really don’t know something like this should take such a long time to complete.
I hope it has nothing to do with the fact that the parents are non-nationals,” the lawyer said.
The baby boy has been in the care of the QEH since being abandoned, but the hospital has refused to release any information regarding the infant’s state of health, or the possible identity of its parents.
