Three NGOs yesterday demonstrated outside the Guyana International Con-ference Centre, Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara against a sentence handed down by a magistrate last week which saw a teen being jailed for 5 years for assaulting a baby.
Nearly 30 protestors marched outside the Conference Centre while a workshop hosted by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and attended by local jurists was in session. The CCJ’s inaugural sitting in Guyana began yesterday and concludes tomorrow.
Protestors from the Guyana Women Miners Organization (GWMO), Red Thread and the Amerindian People’s Associa-tion (APA) referred to the sentence as “criminal”, saying that it reeked of partiality since it was the child of a magistrate who was abused.
According to a report in Sunday’s Kaieteur News, a 19-year-old babysitter sentenced to 60 months in prison for assaulting a one-year-old baby left in her care. The sentence was handed down by Magis-trate Sueanna Lovell.
The report said the teen was arrested the day after the crime was committed and after admitting to it, was arraigned and sentenced. According to the newspaper the teen who lived in Lethem was hired to take care of the child at Atlantic Ville on the East Coast Demerara and was left alone with the baby. It stated that when the parents returned home they discovered bruises on the baby’s face and when they questioned the sitter, Fatima Martin, she admitted to the assault.
The protestors said that even though they were horrified that a child was abused, “we were struck by the speed with which the matter was concluded by the police and the court. Within a matter of days, a 19-year-old was sentenced to jail for an action that the lawmakers of the country do not find it fit to outlaw and that the police are usually very reluctant to investigate. And this in a country where, as we know from the experience of the organisations we’ve worked with, cases often take years to get to court, never mind through it,” the three NGOs said in a letter published in today’s edition of this newspaper.
The NGOs said the sentence was irrational for a country where drug lords are allowed to walk free and vehicular manslaughter trials are drag out for years with the guilty out on bail. “…is it irrational? One must assume that the speed of the response and the harshness of the penalty are related to the status of the offended parents, and the fact that the offender is assumed to be voiceless.”
Head of the GWMO Simona Broomes said it was unfair that the teenager should face the maximum penalty for causing actual bodily harm, when a woman who had five different charges of human trafficking against her had her file closed after a magistrate requested it.
Karen de Souza of Red Thread has called on the Judicial Service Commission to investigate the sentencing policy of magistrates. “We are saying that the babysitter is wrong to hit the child, but this sentence is not just,” she said, while stating that something else was at work and the sentence must be overthrown.
While protestors demanded that the babysitter be given a fair trial, leader of the APA Jean La Rose said that they were checking to see if the teen had any legal representation.
“Things went through the court pretty fast which is unusual since court cases would take months and sometimes years,” La Rose said.
Meanwhile, protestors accused the magistrate of using her bench in favour of friends and pleaded that the Chancellor reverse the “inhuman and biased sentence”. They said justice should be blind to status and connections.
These statements were echoed on placards while they chanted for equality in Guyanese justice system.
“The babysitter deserved a fair trial… wrongful imprisonment for 5 years is criminal,” they chanted.
The NGOs said they were talking about a course of action but will continue with public demonstrations.
