A 14-year-old girl was so anxious to meet the father she had never known, that even though it involved heading to an unknown interior location she convinced her mother to go with her so she could spend the Christmas holiday with him.
Her 31-year-old mother was sceptical, but her daughter’s pleading swayed her and she decided to make the trip. But after almost two weeks of virtual captivity, being forced to have sex with the man to appease him, and fending off his constant sexual advances to her daughter, the woman said that without a doubt this was the worst decision of her life.
“I regret going, I hate him and don’t want to see him ever again,” was how her teenage daughter described her decision and what she thought about the man she was so anxious to see.
The two were rescued by Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) member Marina Charles last Monday from a location in Region Eight, and today the woman is hoping that the police would at least assist her in having two suitcases with their clothing and personal documents returned to them.
She said the man has been calling her relatives and making threats but she is determined to make a report to the police and have them investigate what she described as a “horrifying experience.”
The woman said she was just 17 when she met the man and she later became pregnant with their daughter; however, the relationship did not last. She said while her daughter grew up knowing someone else as her father she had told her that she was the biological daughter of someone else. She recalled when the child was about six she had allowed her to spend time with the man and his then wife.
“I remember he was married so that and all make me go to the interior; is after I know he and the woman divorce and that he went to court plenty time for beating her and all them things…” the woman explained.
She had migrated to a neighbouring country and eventually married a national from there, but overstayed her time by seven years and was eventually arrested by the authorities earlier last year. The child was sent to Guyana in September to stay with her grandmother and her mother came to Guyana early last month. Upon her arrival the child told her that she was speaking to her father on the phone and that he had invited her to visit him in the interior where he operated a shop.
“I spoke to him and he tell me that he was living in a two bedroom house with the shop at the front and he send some gold for us to sell and get money to travel to the location,” the woman told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
The child was excited to make the trip and her mother felt it would have been a good idea for her to know her father.
Sleeping on one bed
All went well until they arrived at the location and the man invited them into a crudely built room that had a single bed. The woman said they sat on the bed for a while talking but by then she knew something was seriously wrong as there was no sign of a two bedroom house and while there was a shop attached to the building it was obvious it was not his.
“When I see he not moving I ask to talk to he outside and I asked he where he sleeping and he turned to me and said ‘This is it,’” the woman recalled adding that there was nothing she could have done at that point.
That night the three slept on the one bed and it was later learnt that the man was renting the accommodation and he was not into mining nor did he own a shop, but was in fact a cocaine distributor.
She said the next morning she told the man she wanted to leave but her daughter said to give it a try. By the second day, however, they knew they had to leave, but it was then their real problems started.
“We had all kinds of problems, we could not bathe or use the toilet in privacy and he was always looking at us from the window and he always don’t want we talk to nobody. But we didn’t know nobody and the only persons who use to come and knock on he door was people who want buy cocaine, so who we would a turn to?” the woman asked.
Two days later the man told them if they wanted to leave they could, and the woman said they quickly packed their bags, but when she checked her wallet she realized he had removed $25,000 from it and had only left $1000 and some small change.
“When I turn to he and ask about the money he just standing there and laughing like an idiot, but right there and then I know he had we because we couldn’t go anywhere without money,” the woman said.
She said shortly after that the man kissed her daughter on her lip and when she objected he said the child was his daughter and he usually kisses his daughters on their lips. On another occasion he attempted to “French kiss” the child but she pulled away and he became angry. He also stopped leaving the room when they were changing pointing out that the girl was his child and he and the woman once shared a relationship.
“He want my daughter to lie down on the bed with he and hug he up and then he hit her on the butt and every time I object is a big argument and he keep threatening me and it was so hard…” the woman said in tears.
“What I saying may sound really stupid and even now looking back I can’t believe that it really happen, but remember we had no money and everybody there was he friends and we couldn’t leave and go nowhere,” the woman said as tears streamed down her face.
And the man kept reminding her that “this is the bush” and that no one would assist her. He also made them cook and wash for him and told them that if they wanted to leave they had to make him “feel nice.”
“I said if is sex he want I would do if it mean getting to leave and that he would leave my daughter alone,” the woman said.
She recalled that she was horrified when the man approached her for sex even as their daughter lay on the same bed.
“His thing was to lift up my skirt, do what he had to do and that was the end of it…” the woman said even as she stole sideway glances at her child who sat through the interview quietly and only spoke when a question was directed to her.
But even though she was having sex with him the woman said the man did not seem inclined to let them go and every day they argued and at times she was forced to shut up when the man threatened to become physical.
‘Take my daughter’
The woman said that she was sinking into a state of depression as she was not sure how they could leave the area as they could not make a phone call to her relatives and she was not sure of their location.
But it was last Sunday she was sitting outside the room on a bench with the man ‒ the child was in the room ‒ when Marina Charles came to the location and rented a room.
“As soon as the woman come he tell me to be quiet and not to let my daughter come outside because the woman was from oganisation and that she would take away my daughter.”
She said soon after the man told her that they should be intimate and she asked for it to be done in an abandoned room because she was ashamed for it to be done in front of her daughter. She said later in the night they had another quarrel and because she knew Charles was next door she raised her voice even as the man kept demanding that her daughter lie with him on the bed and hug him up so they can sleep.
The next morning she said she quickly left the room where she met Charles but before she could say anything the man approached the woman and made all sort of allegations against her indicating that he wanted to take the child away from her.
Charles said she had overheard the man abusing the woman and child the night before and while she told him that she would call the authorities she asked the woman if she wanted to leave and the latter eagerly replied in the affirmative. She told them to quickly get dressed and paid for them to leave on a minibus, but the man tried to stop them and she told him she would call the police.
Failing to prevemt them the man joined them on the bus and the woman said he verbally abused them throughout the trip, at one time even hitting her in the face as she attempted to stop him from touching her child. She said even when the minibus driver stopped and placed them in another seat the man followed them and continued to abuse them.
In Linden the minibus driver drove into the Wisroc Police Station compound and the woman said she made a report about the man’s behaviour to two female police officers who joined the bus and said they would watch the man.
When the bus reached McKenzie the man left the bus and the two officers also disembarked. Instead of arresting the man, however, they allowed him to walk away and they went in another direction.
“I don’t understand that at all; I made a report to them and they should have arrested him, but they just allow he to leave,” the woman said.
She said while they were going up they had two suitcases which could not be accommodated in the bus and the man called them and told them to leave it with his relatives in Linden. The relatives travelled to the bus park and uplifted the suitcases and now the woman said she is not sure how they would get these returned since the man has since told her relatives that the suitcases would not be returned.
“All I need right now is for the suitcases to be returned because we are without clothes and documents. Right now we wearing my relatives’ clothes because we don’t have no clothes,” the distraught woman said.
Last Thursday the woman, her daughter and Charles gave statements to the police and it is hoped that the man would be arrested.
