The mother of a boy recovering in hospital from physical abuse allegedly inflicted by his father, yesterday blamed the police, saying several earlier reports had yielded little action.
Beverly Smith, mother of the 11-year-old boy who is hospitalized with injuries and bruises to his body and a broken finger following a severe beating allegedly at the hands of his father for “playing too much,” said that it is because of the abusive nature of her husband that she left their home one year ago taking her then six-year-old daughter with her. “Their father (name given) would beat for everything under the sun. I lived with him for ten years and it he was not always like that, but when it started it made up for the times he didn’t and more” she told Stabroek News in a telephone interview yesterday.
Smith said she received a call on Friday from welfare personnel informing her that her son was hospitalized at a public health facility. She said when she made calls to her sister who lives near the child and his father she was told that he had not visited her that day as he normally would for meals or money. On further investigation and after speaking to the lad via cell phone she was told of the terrible ordeal he went through at the hands of his father. His mother said this was not the first incident as “beatings till he bleed” was a normal routine in his life. If his father was displeased about chores left uncompleted or if he felt that the boy was not doing enough he would be beaten mercilessly.
Numerous times when the family lived together, she said, she took her complaints to the Leonora Police Station and was told, “We ain‘t getting in, is either man and woman story or family problems” she said.
She said that one day last year after she could take the abuse no longer and fearing for her life she fled with her then six-year-old daughter, after the man took her son to visit a relative. She said she moved far from the area and never again communicated with her reputed husband, although she did speak to her son frequently on the telephone or secretly when she visited her sister who lives nearby.
Further she stated that a scar on her forehead and burn marks on her hands are evidence of the violence she endured from her reputed husband
Smith stated that because of the number of times the police failed her she never again sought help either from them, neither did she seek alternative help at the Human Services Ministry or Help and Shelter as she felt that they too would do the same.
Efforts to contact Police Commissioner (ag) Leroy Brumell, Deputy Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud and Public Relations Officer Ivelaw Whittaker, to respond to the claims were not successful.
The mother who said that while she has led a somewhat normal life in another community she still lives in fear that her reputed husband might find her daughter and herself and kill her as he had said he would do several times.
