The care of a seven-month-old baby is now at the centre of a dispute between a young mother and the Child Care & Protection Agency (CC&PA), which she is accusing of seeking to take the child away from her.
The 21-year-old mother, who was a victim of human trafficking, admits that she does not have a fixed residence, no job and the father of the child does not support his son. “I love my son, I can’t live without him. I willing to work and mind he but I just need some assistance,” the woman said, close to tears in a recent interview with the Sunday Stabroek.
The woman, who is staying at a friend, is accusing officials of the CC&PA of threatening to deprive of her son for nine months until she finds a job and a house.
“They tell me that dem guh tek he fuh six months and that I can’t see he when I want. Is like once a month or so, but I can’t do it. If coulda see he like once a week or so I woulda try but it hard,” the frustrated woman said.
She has since turned to the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO)-the organisation that rescued her from the Puruni backdam last year-for assistance and refuses to return to the child care agency even though she had given a commitment to do so.
“Everybody telling me don’t go back because dem woulda tek away me baby,” the woman said.
But CC&PA Director Ann Greene has refuted the woman’s claim, while emphasising that the safety of the baby is paramount. According to her, the child is in danger because his mother stands on the streets with him and begs. “I told her that she cannot be begging people for pampers and milk for the baby with him in the streets. What we offered her is kinship foster care for the baby because she told us that she has an older sister who can look after the baby and I told her to bring the sister but she has not returned…,” Greene told this newspaper when contacted.
The woman vehemently denied begging on the streets but said she had returned to the Ministry of Human Services Trafficking in Persons (TIP) unit in an effort to access the promised help at the time of her rescue. She was later handed over to the child care agency, where she was informed that she had to give up the child.
However, Greene said they have promised to give the woman’s sister assistance to care for the child while they try to help her find a job and help her to provide a home for the child. She said the discussion did not reach the stage of how often the woman would have access to the child during the six-month period.
“If she said that she is lying. I never told her that and we need to have her evaluated because we feel that she has psychiatric issues,” Greene said.
Abandoned
The woman appears to be very depressed and she recounted her story of being abandoned as a child, having to fend for herself in her teenage years and spending more than a year at the New Opportunity Corps (NOC) for wandering.
Greene advised that the GWMO turn the woman over to the CC&PA but President of the organisation Simona Broomes said it would not heed that advice because the woman is not a criminal nor has she committed a crime. Her only crime, according to Broomes, is wanting to keep her child and turning to a system that continues to fail TIP victims for help.
Broomes also said she does not believe the woman was on the street begging and questioned whether the authorities are not aware of a number of children begging on the streets and why they are not picking them up. She spoke of a paralysed woman who is being exploited on the street and forced to beg and whose plight she brought to the attention of the Ministry of Human Services. “But she is still there. What happens to her?” Broomes questioned.
She also threw cold water on Greene’s promise to assist the woman and her child and of giving her sister money to help with the care of the infant, while pointing out that the agency broke several promises to members of her organisation who had fostered child TIP victims. “Not a blind cent. They always say they don’t have money…,” Broomes said, while adding that instead of the authorities attempting to take away the child, they should find the woman a job and help her to get a home as is provided for under the TIP law.
She said the woman reached out to the organisation, as have several other TIP victims, and they would not turn her away.
Greene said they would be going after the woman in the interest of the baby and issued a call for her to return to the agency. “We know where to find her and we would go and find her,” she said.
‘Knock up something’
Before moving in with a friend, the young woman was living in a house with no windows or doors. It eventually collapsed. With the help of her father, however, she managed to “knock up something” by nailing together the old zinc sheets and boards and this served as her home for a few months.
But eventually she was forced to move from the location.
Looking back on her life so far, the woman only sees abandonment from her relatives and she said she does not want her child to experience the same fate.
She recalled that when she was rescued, she was advised by officials to abort the child but she refused. “I just couldn’t… I don’t know why but I couldn’t,” she said with tears rolling down her cheeks while gazing at her nursing baby.
She admits that she ran away from state care while pregnant because, as she put it, “nothing was happening for me and I felt frustrated.”
The woman’s story is an all too familiar one when it comes to TIP victims and according to Broomes it is a sad reality and she questioned how much longer Guyana will refuse to adhere to its law as it relates to TIP victims. “The state is supposed to provide for these victims; according to its own law, provide shelter and help them to find jobs,” she stressed.
Broomes recalled speaking to an official from the Human Services Ministry before the woman’s case reached this stage.
“These girls want them things they know what they does go and do,” she quoted the official as saying.
“This the attitude of the officials, they blame the victims…,” Broomes said, while noting that instead of the state helping the woman it wants to “strip her of her baby and threaten to lock her up.
“It is a cold thing. She is a mother and I am a mother and I feel for her. No one wants to give up her child,” she added.
Broomes said that her organisation cannot turn its back on the woman, while pointing out that it is a shame on the part of the administration and even the opposition, which continually fail to represent TIP victims.
“I listen to the stories of the victims and while I cry for them my strength is increased and I resolve to continue to fight this scourge that is plaguing our nation and which the authorities want to ignore and deny,” an upset Broomes said.
“I will never stop fighting trafficking in persons. I am not fighting prostitution, I am fighting sex slavery. I am fighting forced labour,” she said, while noting that many who reap the minerals from the interior ignore this crime and offer no support for those who are suffering.
It is indictment, Broomes said, of the government, the opposition, and the large mining companies and all those who pretend that TIP is not a reality in Guyana. “I would not shut up and stay silent on these issues,” she added.
